The Nightingale: Wings of Ink

Warren

"Night," he says, finally catching up to me.

"What? What more could you possibly say that would make me believe you?" I stop walking and glare into his eyes. I never realized before just how intense they were. Piercing--piercing and revealing. My fear of exposing my secrets and my tendency to conceal them get the best of me, and I turn my eyes away.

"You're crazy. The guy is going to hurt you, I can feel it. My intuition is practically screaming that he's bad news."

"The Candor don't believe in intuition," I say dryly.

"I left them, Night. I left them for a reason, and now I'm Dauntless. I'm just warning you that Eric seems majorly unstable."

"Yeah? Well, I didn't leave Amity for "stable". And I know that he would never do anything to hurt me," I say defiantly, overcoming my fear and meeting Warren's eyes again. "And why are you so worried about it, anyway?"

I look at him suspiciously. That's when he tenses up, and his gaze drops. He stares at the floor. Just as I thought.

"I see," is all I say. Then I turn and walk out of the corridor. For a minute I think--with relief--that he's not going to follow, but soon I hear his footsteps behind me again.

He grabs my shoulder roughly and spins me around to face him. For a second I'm not sure if he's going to strangle me, punch me in the face, or both. He does neither.

He quickly puts one hand behind my neck and one on my waist, touching the skin under my tank top. He pulls me close to his body, and smashes his lips into mine. For a moment I am stunned, and I can't breathe or move. Then I come to my senses. I bite down on his lip, and he screams and retracts his hands. I vault into the air and wrap my legs around his neck at the shoulders, cutting off his balance and bringing him down to the ground. Before he lands on top of me, I release my hold on him and slip out from under his shadow. He hits the ground with a thud, his chin making a loud cracking sound on the stone floor.

I press my foot to the small of his back and laugh. "And you say I'm crazy." With that, I walk away.

Sure, I'm behaving very Dauntless at this moment.

But I can't help my body from shaking.

* * *

I go back to the dorm where I see Tyrone lying on his bunk, staring at the bottom of the one above him, not noticing my entrance. Mia and Victor sit on the floor, deep in quiet discussion. Eric is nowhere to be found. I climb the rusty metal ladder to my bunk and collapse onto the mattress. After ten minutes, I fall asleep.

I wake up about ten minutes later to the dorm being empty, and I hear the heavy door opening and then it closes. I hear creaking below my bunk on Eric's bed, and I sit up.

"Eric?" I whisper hopefully.

"Nope," comes a voice out of the near darkness. I see a head pop up, and I notice that whoever is there is standing on the bottom bunk to get to mine. I recognize the strawberry blonde ponytail after it passes under a shaft of light from a crack in the wall.

"Hey, Liz," I sigh.

"Oh. I'm sorry, princess. Not good enough for you, I see. Expecting your scary boyfriend or something?" She rolls her eyes and I laugh.

"Nah. But have you seen him around? I haven't seen him all day."

"Oh, yeah. I've seen him alright. He knows, girl. He got Warren bad," she says, drawing out the word "bad" and shaking her head. I sit up straighter.

"How does he know? It only happened..what? Twenty minutes ago?"

"Nobody's seen you in five hours, Night." She climbs up onto my bunk and sits down on the top rung of the ladder. Five hours? I didn't even know I was that tired. I bite my lip.

"Anyway, there's a party going on in the cafeteria. They moved tables and benches to clear a dance floor," Liz says with a nudge. "Let's go!"

I groan. "Let me guess, Jeff wants us to sing for the party."

Liz chuckles. "He did. But I told him to get someone else tonight."

* * *