Page 95 of Phantasm

My heart thuds harder, and I turn to look at Darian over my shoulder.

His chest is still moving.

Relieved, I face forward, clutching my injured shoulder. “I don’t want him to defy the Bishop because of me.”

“It’s a little too late for that,” he replies, chuckling. “He put a target on his back when he made the rash decision to marry you. It’s only a matter of time before the Bishop discovers your real identity and makes an example out of him, if he hasn’t already figured it out. No one has defied him like that since your father had the guts to go back on their deal.”

“I can’t believe he promised me to the Bishop’s son before I was born.”

Sinclair frowns, glancing at me. “Are you serious? You’re the daughter of not one, but two Elders. Of course, you’d go to a high bidder.”

I choke on my breath. “A high bidder?”

“You’re so naïve,” he responds, not quite containing his amusement, but then he sobers, gripping the steering wheel. “Shortly after Darian moved into his new house, I caught him talking to the shadows in the cellar.”

I stay silent, sensing he has more to say.

“According to his psychologist, it was his mind’s way of protecting him from reality. Somehow, the phantasm of your father allowed him a sense of control, something he lacked the night his mother was raped and murdered.”

“Did you not tell him it wasn’t real?”

He grinds his teeth and checks his mirrors. “He had it under control. You don’t know Darian the way I do. Trust me when I tell you he was improving.”

“So what changed?”

“You did.” He says it so easily, my breath catches.

“Me?”

Sinclair hums an agreeing sound as we enter a filter lane. “Before you, Darian was a vault. His emotions were locked up so tight that he was barely human, but then you crashed into his life and pried him open.”

Crashed into his life?

“Excuse me? He forced me to marry him.”

No one held a gun to his head. He could have me killed that night. Instead, he chose to marry me.

“He did it to stop the Bishop’s son from sinking his claws into you. Trust me, you got the better end of the deal.”

“I don’t get it. Why would he do that?”It makes no sense. Why would he feel a sense of loyalty to me?

“Beats me,” Sinclair says, slowing to a stop at a roundabout. We watch a silver Mercedes drive by while Darian’s labored breathing fills the small space in the back seat. “Let’s just say, Darian was a very impulsive kid before his parents’ murders.” Rolling his head on the headrest, he looks at me. “The night hemarried you was the first time I’d seen him act impulsively since we were young.”

A blush creeps up my neck, and I break eye contact. Sinclair can’t be right. Why would Darian risk his position in the Exodus and his standing with the Bishop to keep me safe?

“I think you intrigued him when you bulldozed yourself onto the property under the pretense of belonging to the cleaning crew. It was a very bold and reckless move and sure to catch the eye of a man in power.”

He gives me another pointed look before entering the roundabout, and I shrink a little in my seat, embarrassed by how naïve I’ve been. How could I think I could just waltz right in and go unnoticed?

A thought occurs to me. “Do you think the Antichrist used me? Lauren said they knew who I was when they recruited me and did it intentionally to use me in their war.”

“Honestly,” Sinclair replies as the streetlights become far and few between, the stretches of darkness growing wider, “I don’t know.” Shrugging, he gives me an apologetic look.

I chew on that for a while as my gut twists uncomfortably. “Where do I go from here?”

I don’t belong anywhere. I can’t go back to the rebels after Sinclair killed their members, not that they’d want me anyway; I’m just a weapon in their war, and I refuse to be a pawn anymore.

But I also can’t stay with Darian if it puts him in danger.