Alek continued to be dragged along by Volger. This was not how an heir should behave but he couldn't help it.
"Pick up your feet! I can't just drag you along forever!" Volger yelled over the howl of hydrogen sniffers. That was what Deryn had said.
"Alek!" she fumed, "I've told you, you can't even like me and now you LOVE me? What is wrong with your head?"
"Well it's true!" he shouted back, though it hurt his side. "I love you and I don't want to leave you here, in this god-for-saken war, alone!" wrong thing to say. Her mouth dropped and her face changed from a pissed pink to a raging red.
"You're just like everyone else, aren't you?" she wasn't yelling, she was whispering. It was worse then the lightning that had come just the day before. You knew the storm was coming and there was no way out of it.
Alek could remember reading about the Titanic in the papers. How the ship had sunk slowly and there were many many men that were forced to just stand there, and waiting for their fate, watching all the women and children they loved leave, and knowing they would never see them again. This is how he assumed they must have felt. Alek knew at that moment that he would never see Deryn's smile again.
"You think that I'm just a little girl that shouldn't be meddling in a man's war. That I should be at home sewing and cooking and cleaning in skirts and dresses and corsets like a good little women. If you say you love me I should just melt into your arms and be whisked off to a happily ever after. Is that right? Is that how it works for your princesses?"
"No, Deryn. That's not what I mean."
"Save it, your highness." And there it was. No more jaunting. No more Alek. He was a stranger. "You can't expect me to be alright with you just dragging me along with what ever your highness wants to do or where ever you highness wants to go. I'm done, Alek. Done with you." And she was done. She left, he stood there. He had nothing to say. She was done with him. So he sulked to the floor and cried.
"I said pick up your feet boy!" Count Volger yelled. They had reached a fence. The Darwinists were catching up. Bauer pulled out the wire cutters they'd stolen and begun to cut open the gate. "Go on Alek."
"What? No, not with out you." Losing Deryn and Volger all in one day was too much.
"Hoffman and I will stay behind." Volger looked miserable. He wanted to leave the Leviathan more then Alek. He didn't even LIKE the ship. If he got captured he would have to see 'Dylan' every day. That would be awkward. Thought all these things were true all Alek thought at the time was how lucky Volger was to be going back to the Leviathan. "Go on now." And he pushed Alek through the whole in the fence as the hydrogen- sniffers took away the last father Alek had.