The Veil (22 page)

I didn’t say anything; I just stared out into the dark, trying to digest everything.

“Look,” he said, after a moment. “I’ve let my personal feelings get in the way here. I know you don’t feel for me what I feel for you. I get it. I’m only asking you to understand why I’ve made certain decisions—”

“What?” I interrupted, certain I couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly.

Luc sighed. “It’s okay, Addy. I saw your face after I told you I broke up with Emily because I had feelings for you. My timing was terrible, I know.”

“
What
?” I said again, staring at him incredulously. “You told me our dating was all
pretense
. That was the word you used!”

“Only after I saw that look on your face.” His eyes widened a bit. “You looked . . . horrified.”

“I wasn’t horrified! I was
shocked
. And you didn’t say you had feelings for me—you only said you’d told Emily that you did. I thought it was just part of the pretense!”

“It wasn’t,” he said simply, quietly. “I thought you knew.”

“
Of course I didn’t know!
” I was yelling at him now, but I didn’t care who heard.

“Oh, really?” He wasn’t yelling, but his voice had a very sharp edge to it. “Well, you made it pretty clear to me what you thought about us ‘dating.’ Every time I called you my girlfriend, or put my arm around you at school or
anything
like that, you’d get all tense and scowly! You were pretty blatant about it. I couldn’t believe you had it in you to be so hurtful!”

“
What!
” I turned to face him, furious. He thought I was being
hurtful
? “Well, did you ever think for a minute the reason I don’t like being your fake girlfriend is because it’s the exact opposite of what I really want to be? I’m not a faker, Luc, especially about things that actually mean something to me. I don’t like lying to Nate and Olivia about us—that’s hard—but the part I really,
really
don’t like is acting like you and I are together, while at the same time having to remind myself it isn’t real and that I can’t enjoy it too much because it doesn’t mean anything to you!”

We were facing one another now, angrily staring each other down (well, he was staring me down; I was staring up at him at an angle that made my neck ache). We stood frozen for quite some time while I caught my breath after my rant.

Then, Luc’s face broke into a smile. “We’ve been concentrating so hard on fooling everybody else,” he said, still smiling. “But really we were just fooling each other.” He took a step toward me, and my hands started shaking.

“We didn’t fool Gran,” I stammered. Now that he was so close, I had to look almost straight up to see his face, and doing that made me feel strangely dizzy. “She told me yesterday she didn’t think our acting was any good at all.”

A sudden gust of wind blew my hair in front of my face, and suddenly I could hardly see him through the reddish blonde strands. Luc reached down and brushed my hair back, holding it with one hand so it couldn’t blow back across my eyes.

“Is that why she said ‘and the Oscar goes to’? I didn’t get it.”

“I think so,” I said, completely forgetting what it was we were talking about. Could we possibly be discussing what I thought we were discussing? My head felt funny; I’d thought that Luc’s pull on me from a
distance
was strong—now that we were standing practically on top of one another, I was totally incapable of rational thought. I was also pretty sure if I moved a single muscle, my legs would collapse, and I’d keel over. Wisely, I decided to keep still. At least I wasn’t sweating.

Keeping one hand in my hair, Luc circled his free arm around my waist and pulled me up against him so I was on my tiptoes. His jacket slipped off of my shoulders, but I didn’t feel cold. As I looked up at him, my heart most definitely skipped a beat before it dropped down and began turning somersaults in my stomach.

“You are infuriating, Addison Prescott. Addy Russell. Whatever your name is.”

“And
you
. . .” I began without knowing how exactly I intended to finish the sentence.

But it didn’t matter, because that was the moment when Luc bent to kiss me. Tightening his arms around me, he lifted me up again, completely off of my feet this time. He leaned back against the balcony wall, taking me with him. I hooked my hands around his shoulders, unwilling to let our lips part.

When we finally came up for air, he pulled me even closer, his lips lingering on my cheek. “
That
is what I should have done that
day by the lake,” he said, moving his lips down to just below my ear. His voice had a softness to it now I’d never heard before—a warm, tender lilt that sent tingly shivers all the way down to my toes. “I wanted to. You have no idea.”

“I think I have
some
idea,” I corrected him, smiling as his breath tickled the hairs on the back of my neck.

He pulled away slightly to look at me. He cupped my face in both hands, still keeping the wind from blowing my hair. “Do you have any idea what your face looks like the first few seconds after you lift the veil? When you’re looking at my world? Our world, now.”

“No.”

He smiled. “It’s part wonder—total awe and amazement. And part skeptical—like you think it’s trying to put one over on you, and you’re trying so hard to figure it out. It’s
you,
Addy, it’s absolutely you. Everything in the world that you are, in just one look. I was pretty sure I was in love with you the first time I saw that face, the night we looked down at the city together. That’s why, the next day at the lake, I wanted you to look just at the shoreline first. I wanted to see the look again before I showed you the island. When I saw it again, I was certain. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” I told him honestly. “I’ve had such a crush on you from the first day of school.” I should’ve been embarrassed to tell him that, but I wasn’t. Not once a look of genuine delight came over his face.

“You did?” he smiled, and I grinned back at the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t know.”

“You should have,” I smacked him playfully in the arm. “How can you not notice a girl who spends all of her time staring at you?”

“I was spending a fair amount of time trying to stare at
you
without you noticing. We must have just missed each other.”

I leaned in and rested my head against his shoulder, twining my arms behind his back and putting all of my weight on him. His arms wrapped around me again, and for a long time we just stayed
like that; it felt good to be close to him, knowing I didn’t have to lie anymore or keep my feelings carefully walled up.

Later, I would work myself into a respectable frenzy, rehashing every second of the last few minutes in my head, incredulous at the notion that the beautiful, unobtainable Lucas Stratton could feel for me what I felt for him. But not right then—at that moment, there was no room for anything but utter contentment.

When I finally rocked back onto my own two feet, Luc smiled down at me, but his eyes had grown serious again. I knew what he was thinking.

“So,” I ventured, “I guess all of this will be for nothing if I end up getting executed, huh?” I’d meant it to be funny, but it didn’t come out right.

Luc frowned. “That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”

“It seemed a real possibility just a few minutes ago,” I pointed out.

“It still is a possibility, technically speaking, but I don’t think it’s very likely. You see, one of the reasons the Others are so obsessed with getting you before the Council is when the Council is faced with the question of whether to execute you or not, they
won’t be able to do it.
And the Others know it. The Council won’t be able to condemn an innocent girl, especially the granddaughter of Rosabel Stirling, to death. They’ll be torn between their principles and their compassion, but in the end they’ll let you live. In doing so, they’ll break their own rules, and then the Others can denounce them.”

“I guess that’s good news for me, bad news for everybody else,” I summed up.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Luc said hesitantly. “It’s hard to predict what the Council will do. That’s why I don’t want to risk bringing you before them.”

I nodded my head toward the living room. Heavy curtains obscured our view inside, but I could imagine Gran and Mr. Stratton still yelling at one another.

“What do you think they’ve decided? They didn’t seem too interested in getting my opinion.”

Luc pulled me into him and kissed the top of my head. “Nothing is going to be decided without you,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s all about what you choose, Addy.”

He seemed fairly confident as he opened the balcony door and ushered me back inside. But I wasn’t entirely sure Mr. Stratton would see things the same way.

——

L
UC AND
I
WALKED BACK
into the living room hand in hand. Gran was seated on the sofa now, with her boys standing at attention behind her. Mr. Stratton paced in front of the fireplace.

Gran hid a smile at the sight of us; Luc’s father stared at our intertwined hands for a long moment before raising his eyes to Luc and giving a barely perceptible shake of his head.

Luc’s hold on my hand tightened, and I felt a sudden wave of loathing for Mr. Stratton.

Gran cleared her throat. “Now that we’re all on the same page, I think it’s time to decide what we’re going to do.”

“Yes.” Mr. Stratton stopped pacing and leaned against one side of the marble fireplace. “Addy, since Lucas has already made it perfectly clear what he thinks, I’d like to know your thoughts.”

The fact that he was actually asking my opinion—when I had been so sure just a moment ago that he’d do no such thing—gave me the courage to bring up the thought that had been nagging at me ever since I’d read the summons.

“What about the fact that I’m only
half
human? Doesn’t that change things at all?”

Mr. Stratton refolded his arms in front of him. “That’s the argument, of course. The law says any
human
who discovers the existence of the Annorasi world must die—if we decide you should appear before the Council, we will, of course, point out that you’re only half human. It’s a strong argument, but I don’t know if it’s enough to guarantee the outcome we want.”

“We don’t know how it would go,” Gran pointed out. “There has never been a half human, half Annorasi before.”

“Correct,” Mr. Stratton said. “There’s no precedent for a situation like Addy’s, which is what makes this whole thing so risky.”

“Which is why we are absolutely
not
bringing her before the Council,” Luc interjected, with conversation-ending authority.

Mr. Stratton left his place by the mantle and began to pace again. “Hear me out, Lucas. You will agree, I assume, that choosing to defy the summons comes with its own set of drawbacks. The Council will be humiliated, its authority questioned. Addy would become a fugitive, and so would you if you chose to remain with her. The two of you would be hunted as you’ve never been hunted before.”

Luc pulled me in closer to him, making it perfectly clear what he would do in such a situation. I felt a shiver of happiness at the thought he wouldn’t leave me, but also a sudden stab of guilt. If the Council thought I was a human for the purposes of Law Thirty-Seven, what about the rule against human/Annorasi relationships? Was Luc already in trouble?

“Consider for a minute what would happen if Addy brought herself before the Council,” Mr. Stratton continued. “There is at least a chance they would agree that since she’s only half human, she is not subject to Law Thirty-Seven. She would be safe. And as for what the Others would make of such a decision, whether they could use it to their political advantage, who’s to say we haven’t already reached a point where the Council must find a way to assert their authority over the Others? We don’t know for sure that ruling in Addy’s favor would make things any worse for the Council than they already are.”

“And if they rule against her?” Luc asked, his face expressionless.

Mr. Stratton regarded his son thoughtfully, then shifted his gaze to Gran. “There may still be a way to prevent her execution.”

Gran sat forward on the couch and looked directly at me, no one else. “If the Council decides against you, Addy, they’ll most likely give you to the Others to carry out your sentence. It won’t happen immediately—the Others will have to take you somewhere outside of the Council chamber first. We should have enough time to get you back.”

“How?” I asked her.

Gran gestured to the ten men standing behind her. “The Council doesn’t know about them. Neither do the Others. If the Others take you outside of the Council chamber, my boys will be ready. They’re more than a match for anything the Others have.”

Luc shook his head. “It’s too risky.”

The largest of the ten men, the nearly bald man with the small tuft of blonde hair on top of his head, stepped forward and crossed a pair of muscular arms, which were about as thick around as the widest part of my legs, over his barrel chest. “We won’t lose you, Addy,” he said. “We’ll follow you, no matter where the Others take you, and we’ll get you back. That’s a promise.”

The other nine warriors, all in similar stances to their leader, nodded in unison.

“It’s your decision, Addy,” Mr. Stratton said, from over by the fireplace.

I swallowed, and looked around the room at Luc, Gran, her boys, and Mr. Stratton in turn. “If I don’t go before the Council, or if the Council rules against me,” I said slowly, “it won’t be just me who gets in trouble, will it? It will be all of you too.”

“No,” Luc said quickly.

I gave him a hard look, and he sighed.

“Okay, maybe,” he amended. “But we can handle it. You’re the primary concern here.”

And it won’t just be the people in this room
, I thought to myself.
Look at what almost happened to Olivia tonight. The Others know me now
—
they know where I live and who my friends are. Going into hiding with Luc and becoming a fugitive won’t make them any safer
—
it might even put them in more danger than they’re already in.