*Updates most Mondays*
Book Two in the Darien Grace Chronicles
"I couldn't hear the music. I knew that it was pulsing all around me, I could feel it vibrate through the air, but I couldn't hear it. I hadn't been able to hear it for a while now. I ju...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Harry Styles
My head throbbed from the pulsing beat knocking through the alcohol, smoke and sweat tainted air. I was only barely managing to ward off the encroaching sense of claustrophobia as I forced my way through the gyrating sea of people filling the beaten down pub. Inebriated patrons pressed in all around me, their outfits exposing far more than they covered. A fine sheen of sweat coated their skin and stained their clothes. All around me people committed acts better left in darkened corners and forgotten alleys than the night's chosen venue. The pub was a dive on the fringe of the foreign city; it attracted all of the unscrupulous folk who populated the town's impoverished tenements and minors wishing to rebel against society's rules. I had been frequenting pubs identical to this every night for the past three weeks. I searched every shadowed corner and objectionable venue for that familiar head of violet hair.
I would find her.
I would, and I would make everything right again.
I had to.
Darien had disappeared without a trace just over a month and a half ago. I had no idea what she had seen the night of the Gala. I didn't know how much of my indiscretion she had witnessed and I had no way of finding out. However, I did know that whatever she had seen had been enough; the guilt wracking my conscious told me that. It had been enough for her to disappear. We had no definite proof that she was even alive. For a while I'd sworn that I would know. I said that I would feel it because I loved her, but now I couldn't even be sure of that.
What was love? How could it be this godd.amn painful? If it was, then why did people want it? Why did they want their happiness, their lives to be ruled by the whim of another person? It made absolutely no sense.
I didn't want to feel pain. I couldn't handle any more. I wasn't Darien. I wasn't that strong. I knew that she hid more from me than she would ever tell me. She was stronger than any person that I'd ever met, and, somehow, I'd managed to break her. How could someone as strong as forged steel shatter like spun crystal touched by the tip of a pin?
I shook my head as the guilt threatened to pull me under. Five weeks. It had already been Five weeks. Leala had found me on my knees in the McKenney's drive long after the family had driven away. She had been the one to urge me to action. She had been the one to drag me on to the plane to London. For the first few days, I had tirelessly interrogated every man, woman, and child populating the London streets. I clutched her folded photo in my pocket, showing it to everyone who would listen to my story. That was where Leala stepped in. She had flown to London a week and a half after I left New York. She told me that Darien had disappeared, that the McKenneys couldn't find her. She had said she was here to help. She was here to help find her.
Leala forced me to focus. She took away the flask I nursed throughout the day, and propelled me into action.
"Think, Harry. You have to think. Where would she go?" Leala said. She shook me, not caring about the attention her shouted orders gained.
