Maria's Point of View
It was as if the room shrank, walls closing in on me with every ticking of a second. Fredrick stood there, pale with white eyes that threw at me something I couldn't place-regret, fear, guilt? Maybe all these, mixed into one. My heart began pounding in my chest, but even this drumming could only be heard in my head as I tried to make sense of what was happening to us.
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Everything I thought I knew about Fredrick, everything I believed he stood for, was leaking out like grains of sand between my fingers.
Kairo's fist clenched at his side, his knuckles white as a ghostly beacon. "You've been working with her?" His voice was deadly quiet, a calm that preceded the storm. "You've been working with *Reina*?"
Fredrick recoiled in horror at
