Maybe Stone Odega was her friend, after all.
“We should go,” she said, moving to stand. “It would be theresponsible thing to do.”
“You’re right.” He stood, dusting dirt from his pants, straightening his shirt. “I know how much being responsible pleases you.”
Twenty-Two
Stone
The question was on the tip of Stone’s tongue as he and Aesira joined Birdie and Bee around the fire.
Why me that night?
So often he’d wondered what brought Aesira’s attention to him at the Phoenix. In a room full of suitors, she could have easily gone home with anyone. Not only because of her name but because she was beautiful.
He flicked his eyes to her as she settled in around the fire. Her dark hair was looser than she normally wore in Vargah. Curls hanging down her back and framing her face.
Then there was the matter of her eyes. One green. One hazel. Both mesmerizing. Freckles danced across her broad nose and dark, full brows that seemed to permanently be furrowed but itdidn’t take away from the unique beauty of her. Bee said something and Aesira smiled and Stone’s heart leaped to his throat.
No, Aesira Zeliath was not just beautiful. She was unholy.
He stole a drink from Birdie’s canteen and savored the coolness as it reached his belly.
He doubted Aesira even realized how beautiful she was. Otherwise, there was no logical reason for her to approach him that nightortonight. Maybe she thought it would be casual. Wild and fevered and thoughtless.
He could be those things, if that’s what she needed.
But truthfully, Stone had never done anything casually in his life. When he met Vic and became a drug runner, he had to be the best in the Outpost. Even at twelve years old, he was bringing in more coin and regular business than some of the most seasoned smugglers.
Not because the drugs he was running were better, but because Stone had figured out the best routes. Had studied the corners and knew just the right time to hit them. Figured out what customers wanted and catered to them.
Then, when Vic realized Stone had more brains than an average runner, he became a chemist, finding solutions for their drugs' weak potency and introducing new forms of it.
So, no, Stone Odega did not possess a casual bone in his body. He tried, when he was younger, to be like the other runners in the Outpost. To meet a woman, sleep with them and move on.
He got good at pretending because even with something he hated, he couldn’t fathom doing it half-heartedly. So he learned to be someone else when he needed to be. He’d figured out a wayto switch off his brain. He learned he could do this not just with women, but with work. With anything.
That’s when his reputation began to precede him. He would make more potent products. Would demand they be sold for double, triple, what they were used to. He carved out new routes for his own pack of runners, establishing connections with the eastern kingdom of Novaria, bringing them new drugs, expanding his region ten-fold.
Building his own empire right under Vic’s nose.
The boy with a heart of stone, they’d called him when he made these demands. When he began edging Vic out. The name stuck and he didn’t care. He forgot who he was before he became Stone, because whoever he was before, wasn’t thebest.
He could be cold, if that’s what he excelled at. He could be empty and ruthless, if that was what others needed from him.
Living a lie was easier than living with the truth that when he took away all the faces he wore, he wasn’t sure who he really was. Wasn’t sure what his birth name even meant, if it meant anything at all.
He was Stone the viper and now, Stone Odega, and he was the best at being nothing and being everything and even when he got caught, even when everything he’d built crumbled around him, he didn’t bat an eye because he knew if a criminal was what he’d be branded, he’d find a way to be the best at it.
Which is how he got here, flying a ship with the queen’s money and his crew huddled around a fire.
Bee was singing, an old tune from the Outpost that made Birdie laugh. Aesira smiled, sipping quietly from her canteen, her bronze skin lit up from the light of the flames. He traced the ridge of hernose, the shape of her lips. Envied the freckles inked on her skin because they were close to her and he was not.
When Aesira approached him that night in the Phoenix he figured he would do what he did for so many years in the Outpost.
Switch off the part of his brain that held any kind of empathy or attachment and switch on the part that knew how to make a calculated decision despite any risk.
Then her lips met his, stalling his heart, pulling his skin taut, and he knew that even though hecouldpretend with her, he didn’t want to, which is why he walked away.
