He'll have to break all the rules to keep her, but first she has to break just one and let him in...
It's taken four years, but Anna Fray has finally put the past behind her. Mostly. She fills her days working in a bar and her nights watching bad ro...
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The air around us filled with electricity. I could almost feel it tickling against my skin as Atticus asked in a low deadly voice, "What do you mean?"
"She wanted to turn me," I murmured, each syllable was a nail in Olivia's coffin. I could almost see myself swinging the hammer with a gleeful grin on my face as the echoes bounced off my ears. Except, that image didn't come, because the blue fire in Atticus' eyes kept it at bay. I knew I should have wanted her to suffer, for what she did to Nightmare at the very least, but there was something about Atticus' expression that made the gleeful revenge halt in its tracks.
If Olivia saw the depth of his rage, sizzling under the surface, she didn't let on as she continued to poke and prod.
"Playing with mummy and daddy's memory was easy enough and turning her friends against her was child's play."
Her words washed over me. They couldn't hurt me now. Without what she'd done, there would be no Nightmare, with her weird little chirps and mad moments of tearing around the flat. No Callum, or Emma, or Kelly, and the endless hours of banter and laughter and comfortable silence. I wouldn't have the flat, or my freedom, instead I'd likely be trapped in the vapid world my parents had unwittingly built around me. One with a social hierarchy I never understood and conservative rules that dictated how I should feel, think, act. Now I had a life that I had built and the future ahead of me is mine entirely.
And more than all of that, without her, there would be no him: the man standing between us with power roiling around him. The person who had snuck through every defence and sparked something in me that had long since died. He had been a ray of sunshine at the dawn of an endless night, and it was unnerving to see Olivia's darkness taking hold of him.
Her eyes twinkled with delight as she watched Atticus come undone before her. "Setting the teacher on her..." she uttered with cool precision. "That was some of my best work yet."
Atticus' gaze snapped to mine, and I gaped as I saw the lightning racing in his irises, like cracks showing the pure energy beneath his surface. His expression, once open and warm, was now as cold and hard as ice.
"Is this true?" he asked in a voice that was as sharp as a blade and equally deadly.
A panic gripped my heart. It felt like I was losing him, like when she was done with him, that light I loved would be snuffed out.
"Atticus it's OK," I reasoned as I reached for his hand. The electricity around him snapped as my fingertips like a scared dog.
Olivia's maniacal grin continued to goad him, despite the way Aslo's grasp tightened around her throat.
"Let her go," Atticus hissed in a deadly whisper. Lightning jumped from his clenched fists into the ground beneath, slithering across the floor like snakes.
Aslo raised an eyebrow as he watched his friend unleashing lightning into the earth. Coming undone in front of him. Slowly, his grasp loosened on Olivia, and she slumped forward out of his hold.
