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HER EARS WERE RINGING. Why were her ears ringing? It's as if everything went blank in her mind, like every thought she had just suddenly vanished. Because her ears were ringing.
The feeling was akin to tinnitus. Like she'd been too close to a flash bomb or a gunshot. But she was sure that none of those things had happened. Surely not? She must have at least some of her wits about her.
Except she was drawing a blank.
Was she going senile? Was she going deaf? Mad? Old? Either one of those things could be bad. Because they'd all lead to one thing, the end of her career. She was too young to lose it all now! At the age of seventeen, she still had a good few years. Right? This couldn't be how it ended. Being a listener was all she had, if her ears went she'd have nothing.
Fortunately, someone interrupted her moment of self-deprecation. Pulling her away from that darkness.
"Persie." Someone said. But it surprised her. Mostly because she hadn't heard that voice say that in a long time. Instead preferring to disassociate from her and refer to her last name - with rare occurrences of him calling her Persephone.
Obviously, the voice was Lockwood's.
Whose hand she was highly sure was the one she was currently squeezing with all her might. And a thought came back to her, a thought that opened a floodgate of others.
She was holding Anthony Lockwood's hand. He'd just saved her life. He wouldn't have needed to save her if he hadn't forced her hand and made her come along out of duty. They were inside Combe Carey Hall.
They were all going to die.
As if that was enough for her, she unclenched her clamped hand off of Lockwood's and slipped away. Giving herself at least a two-metre distance before she smacked him on the shoulder.
Satisfied when she heard him let out a wince. "Ow. What was that for?" He asked, the two ex-friends having a staring match with each other. Unbeknownst to them, they had an audience. George kept glancing up from the thermometer, hoping they would quit this little spat early so that they could go home. While Lucy looked at them with curiosity. The two acted like an old married couple but weren't together. At least she was sure they weren't. Lockwood would have told her, wouldn't he?
Although, the Carlyle girl was starting to realise that Anthony Lockwood kept more secrets than friends for company. And she wasn't quite sure of anything about him.
