Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne

Author:Alexa Donne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter Seventeen

I yelped, wholly undignified, and stumbled over the threshold. But a pair of strong arms caught me against a warm chest. I angled my head up to find familiar eyes glaring down. Hugo.

“Miss Ainsley, you should not be out at this time of night,” he said, confusing me with my proper name. He gently but firmly pushed me away.

“I’m sorry, but I thought I heard a scream.”

The patient opened his mouth to speak, but Hugo cut him off. “Don’t you dare speak to her.” He turned back to me, his voice lower, softer, but it was still obvious to me that he was wound tight like a spring. “Stella, you should go back to bed.”

Hanada cleared her throat. “Actually, it might be a good thing that she’s here. She can watch him while we . . .”

The patient snorted, then groaned as if in pain. Both Hugo and Hanada told him to shut up, in unison, before he could make a retort.

Hugo nodded, first to Hanada, then to me. “Stella, I need you to stay here while Mari and I go take care of something. Don’t talk to him, or let him talk to you, and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere, or do anything.”

It was both specific and vague at the same time, but I nodded my agreement. Mari grabbed a medical bag, and Hugo flashed me a sympathetic smile and our bloody guest a hard-eyed stare, before they both swept out the door. I followed Hugo’s directive, sitting in a swivel chair so I could watch my charge, but I did not talk. He wasn’t so obliging.

“A girl so young as you should not be wrapped up in such sinister dealings. How old are you? Fourteen?”

Once he spoke, it clicked: where I knew him from.

“You’re from the Olympus. You were at the memorial. Meyer?” I said, breaking the embargo on talking myself.

“Mason,” he corrected me. “You’ve come a long way from the Stalwart to this place.” His beady little eyes narrowed in on me, practically looked through me, and a shiver ran down my spine.

I crossed my arms over my chest and refused to say anything else, though Mason prattled on.

“Do you know the history of this ship?” He coughed, groaned again, but didn’t stop his questions. “And of the people on it? Surely you must be curious?”

I swiveled away, concentrating on the wall, running through upcoming lesson plans to keep myself distracted. I didn’t know how much time had passed—​twenty minutes? Thirty?—​but my eyes began to droop, my head to loll against my shoulder, when Mason spoke again.

“I know you’re an inquisitive sort of person, Miss Ainsley. You asked your friend Jonathan Karlson to look into the Rochester crew, but he didn’t find much.”

“How could you know that?” I took the bait, whipping around to face him. He grinned like a cat.

“I had you flagged soon after arriving on the Rochester. I’ve been reading your messages ever since.”

“How could you do that?”

Mason sighed. “No one reads the terms of service.

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