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leaving me to wonder if I’d only imagined it.
On the heels of his hyper-alert, battle-ready state came a distantly chilly look that settled down over his features like an enigmatic mask. Casually, he turned his back on me and walked to his bed, where he’d apparently been lying as he read a monstrously thick and old book.
“ What do you want?” he asked curtly, not even bothering to look back at me.
Once my airways returned to their normal, fully-functional state, I let out the breath I’d been holding, scrambling to remember why I’d come. I was slow to recover any thought that didn’t involve Jackson’s muscular shoulders and narrow waist, as they were so becomingly accentuated by his snug black tanktop.
“ Um, I, uh,” I paused to blink and take a deep breath, straining to focus on something other than Jackson. “I was wondering what the Seers discovered. You didn’t say and Commander Jessup assured me that he’d let me know.”
I added the last so that Jackson wouldn’t pull some kind of you don’t need to know crap.
“ I’m sure he’ll let you know as soon as they get their answers.”
“ So you don’t even know yet?”
Jackson faced me. I made a point of keeping my eyes focused sharply on his face, refusing to look below the cleft in his strong chin.
“ No. I’ve been here all night and haven’t heard a word.”
I nodded. I looked once more to the bed, to the book that lay there. I walked to it, flopping down on the rumpled bedspread and nudging the book with my knuckles.
“ What’s this you’re reading?”
Jackson swept the book from the covers.
“ Get off my bed,” he said, unwilling to meet my eyes. He held the book at the end of his stick-straight arm, as if to say Come and get it.
Stung a little by his abruptness and his obvious distaste for me, I tried to act casual even though I suddenly felt near tears for some reason.
Obligingly, I scooted off his bed and stepped forward to take the book, steeling myself against the urge to run back to my room and hide away to lick my wounds. Forever.
“ What is it?” I asked again.
“ The old law.”
“ Why are you reading this?”
“ Because, Princess, as the Sentinel assigned to you, it’s my job to know exactly what your role in returning the Lore to prison entails.”
“ Shouldn’t I be reading this, too? I mean, it sure sounds like something I should know. Why don’t I?”
“ This is all stuff that you would’ve been taught with your betrothed after your internship in Slumber. No one could’ve foreseen your need for the knowledge now. It’s not something they teach just anybody.”
Ignoring the scathing way he said betrothed, I added stiffly, “Well, maybe they should start.”
“ Oh, I assure you that will be taken care of once this crisis is averted.”
Thoughts of my parents and my sister, their safety, the security of Atlas, the wellbeing of all the descendants and humans on dry land—all of it started clamoring about inside my head, bringing with it the true weight of what responsibility had fallen to me.
Raising my eyes to Jackson’s, I couldn’t keep the emotion from spilling over.
“ Jackson, what if I fail?”
Cobalt eyes searched mine and I saw a softening—ever-so-slight though it was—in the glittering depths.
“ I won’t let you fail.”
My heart soared at all that those words seemed to convey, at what they said to me beyond what they meant at face value.
“ You would do that for me?” I whispered, caught up in the moment.
Jackson’s eyes bored deeply into mine. His lips parted as if he was about to say one thing, but I saw the change of his mind an instant before he looked away to answer with a very militaristic, “It’s my job.”
“ Of course. Of course it is,” I said automatically, though I felt inordinately crushed by his response.
Wounded, I turned back toward the door, reminding myself that it didn’t matter what Jackson thought or did or how he felt about me. We had a job to do. Period.
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