Tandem by Anna Jarzab

Author:Anna Jarzab
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780307977250
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2013-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

I wasn’t stupid; I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape or avoid Thomas. He was my captor and my protector, and like it or not, I was stuck with him. But I didn’t have to talk to him. It was one thing for him to pose as Grant to get me to Aurora—sure, it was screwed up and wrong, but at least it had a point. Telling me his parents were dead when they weren’t, and hiding from me the fact that the General was his actual father, alive and well, was more than wrong—it was sick.

It took Thomas a while to notice I was giving him the cold shoulder. In fact, if I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought he wasn’t speaking to me. He was entirely wrapped up in his own thoughts and barely even seemed to notice I was there. We walked the whole way in silence, me fuming, him totally zoned out.

There was no way around it: the king scared me. I hated his suite, with the paraphernalia of illness that crowded his bed and the choking medicinal smell of hospital that filled the room, but it was the king himself that unsettled me most. The nonsense he’d spouted the day before and the aggressive way in which he’d grabbed my wrist had frightened me more than it probably should have. He’s a harmless, bedridden old man, I reminded myself. But that didn’t keep my stomach from sinking when we approached the door to the king’s bedroom.

The king appeared to be asleep when we entered the room; at least, his hand wasn’t kneading the air in its endless pattern. Not knowing what else to do, I started The Odyssey from where I’d left off the day before, while Thomas hovered near the door, still in his own little world. I glanced up every once in a while as I read, my gaze leaping from the king, who remained motionless in slumber, to Thomas, but only when he wasn’t looking at me.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to make me guess?”

I didn’t answer him, keeping my eyes trained on the page. He sighed and crossed the room, pulling a chair over from up against the wall and sitting down.

“Come on, Sasha, let’s hear it,” he pressed. “I won’t stop asking until you tell me, so you might as well quit giving me the silent treatment and say what you need to say.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to use my real name,” I pointed out, still refusing to look at him. He put his hand on mine and used it to close the book. My breath caught in my throat. He’d touched me before, out of necessity, mostly, but something about the way he wrapped his fingers around mine felt … intimate. I jerked away, wanting no part of it. I hated him. He was a liar and a coward and … and … he had the most expressive green eyes I’d ever seen.

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