Nevermor by Lani Lenore

standing there, feeling like she’d been
awakened from a pleasant dream by violent shaking.
    What sort of boy
is this?  What have I done by coming here?
    “Are you coming
or not?” he asked, and she pulled her eyes up from the blood long enough to
realize that he had gone several steps away from her.
    “Well, I’m not
sure that I want to go with you,” she said honestly.
    Once again, he
laughed.  “Where else are you gonna to go?”
    Wren looked
around, as if she hadn’t already seen all there was to see.  Unfortunately, he
was right.  She wasn’t sure if she could find her way back if she started off,
and swimming was out of the question.  She could wait here until more thugs
came along, or she could go with him.  She already knew which was safer.
    Aren’t you
forgetting something?
    “Wait!’ she
said, remembering suddenly.  “Where are my brothers?”
    “I left them
behind,” Rifter said with an easy shrug.  Wren felt her skin grow hot with
fury.  Hadn’t she told him that the whole reason she’d wanted to come here was
so that she and her brothers could escape their life?
    “The point was
that they could come with me !”
    “I looked them
over, but I wasn’t interested in them.  I’m interested in you .  You’re
the one who found this place.  They didn’t.  Besides, I already brought you all
this way—”
    “Well go back
and get them!” she insisted.
    He gave her a
hard stare, but her expression was just as firm as his was.  He must have seen
that, because he gave up first – to her surprise.
    “I’ll think
about it,” he said firmly as if that was to be the end of the argument. 
“First, you come with me.”
    He snatched up
her hand, and she was thankful that it was not the one with blood on it.  Somehow
– despite her revulsion toward what she had seen him do – she felt calmer at
his touch, and found herself wondering if he was holding her hand because he
wanted to flirt with her, or simply to keep her from escaping.  She had never
held hands with any boy aside from her brothers, and she had to admit that it
made her feel a bit mushy inside.
    Wren relented on
the issue for now, consoling herself that there was still time to convince him
to go back after Henry and Max.  There were a few days – perhaps weeks – before
either of her brothers were to be sent away from the Home, considering that
Henry didn’t decide to run away first.
    If I had only
woken them up before, maybe they would be here with me now.
    Or maybe I
wouldn’t be here either.
    That thought
brought her around to consider how she had come to be here now – how she had
been grabbed and blinded, spirited away without a warning.
    “You know,” she
started, “you didn’t have to kidnap me like you did.  I would have come
willingly.”
    “Do you ever
stop complaining?” he sighed for his own amusement.  “That’s the way I always
do it.”
    “Well it was
really very rude.  You can’t just take what you want all the time.”
    He stopped and
turned on her so abruptly that she almost ran into him.  He peered down at her
with cool blue eyes, and her heart leapt into her throat.
    “What’d you say
your name was again?” he asked, his eyes narrowing to slits.
    “Wren,” she told
him, annoyed that he hadn’t cared to remember.
    “ Wren ,”
he addressed her, and she tried to pretend that she didn’t like the way he said
it.  “It’s my world.  I can do as I please.”
    She could see
that he was serious.  Initially, she wasn’t sure how she should feel about the
way he looked at her, but then he changed his demeanor and smiled.
    “I don’t like
anyone to know the way here,” he explained.  “That’s the reason I took you as I
did.  Can’t have just anyone knowing how to find this place.”
    Wren swallowed
hard, but she believed that made sense.  She was sufficiently humbled, and once
he had seen that, he allowed them to continue on – but he let go of her hand,
and Wren felt a