Rabbit? I peek around him and laid out on a bed of leaves is a fully skinned and skewered rabbit. “I was right over there,” I say, pointing at the woods. “For ten minutes. How could you possibly have done all of that in such a short amount of time?”
He just shrugs and gives me that cocky smirk that makes me want to jam those twigs in his obnoxiously blue eyes. “I have many skills,” he says with a bob of his eyebrows.
Son of a—
I whirl around and stomp back the way I came to get him his stupid wood. This time, I go after the biggest, fattest branches I can find. They’re so massive, I have to jump up and down on them just to break them into manageable pieces, ripping my dress and leaving my calves scratched and bleeding. I haul as much of the pile as I can manage into my arms and slog my way back to the campsite.
My arms ache and tremble from the weight, and I barely make it inside the clearing before I dump the pile onto the ground. “You wanted wood,” I say, triumphantly. “There’s your wood.” I step away from the pile, lungs stinging from heaving the cold night air, but overall, I’m feeling pretty smug.
“That’s alright. I already got some,” he says, and I look up from my proud little pile to see him standing beside a massive stack of logs, grinning just as happy as he can be.
It’s like he struck a match to my blood, and I’m boiling on the inside. The pressure in my veins is building too near bursting and any minute I’m going to explode into tiny Katya bits all over hisridiculously beautiful face. I squeeze my hands into fists at my side, nails biting into the already ravaged flesh. “You… You…” I’m so angry I can’t even get the words out of my mouth.
He puts a hand on his chest. “Me: Aemon. You: Katya.” He chuckles, and I explode.
“You did that on purpose.” I reach down and grab the biggest branch, I can find and hurl it at his face.
He bats it away easily.
So, I throw another and another and another, and he just keeps blocking them. “Stop doing that,” I shout, reaching for another stick, and whatever I’d been standing on goes out from under me and I careen face-first into my own damn pile.
Ouch.
Aemon curses and races over to me. “Shit. Are you okay?” He grabs me under the arms and lifts me off, but right now I’d rather those sticks jabbing me all over than have his hands on me.
“Stop.” I tug at his fingers and attempt to pull them off of me, but he just sees the blood on my palms and starts cursing again.
“You’re hurt. Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?” He’s half pushing, half dragging me to the center of the clearing where all of our things are stacked.
“Stop it,” I shout again, but he just ignores me and keeps pushing. “I said stop it, gods dammit.” I wrench myself free from his grasp, stumbling forward a few steps before I catch myself.
“I’m trying to help you.”
I whirl on him. “I don't need your help. And stop trying to play the nice guy when we both know you're taking me back to Ranook to either be killed, tortured, or made into a sex slave.”
“That last one’s my favorite.” He smirks.
“This isn’t funny.” I say, stepping up to him like I could be a threat to this male who's twice my size. “This is my life, and I’m terrified.” Tears sting my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I will not give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
His smile fades, and he looks at me seriously, for once, and says, “I told you I won't let that happen.”
I scoff. “Even if I believed you, you’re delusional if you think you have that kind of control over the king.”
He folds his arms across his chest and looks down his nose at me. “And who do you think controls him?”
“Does he not have free will?”
Aemon just sort of blinks at that. Obviously, free will is a foreign concept to him. He doesn’t respond, and after a few seconds, he turns around and starts arranging the logs for the fire. “How’d you get away?” he asks, without turning to look at me, like he’s afraid.
Right, because he thinks I have some power I’m hiding from him. Good. I can work with that. I sweep the hair back from one shoulder and give him a sassy look. “A lady doesn't tell.”
24
We break camp in the morning and set out in silence, only speaking when it’s absolutely necessary. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. I usually prefer my own company to others’ anyway, but right now, that’s the last thing I want. She’s right. I’m bringing her back, expecting Troi to forgive both of us, but what if he doesn’t? I can coerce and manipulate him however I want, but in the end, he’s the one with all the power. What if he tries to torture her again? It doesn’t matter that he knows she’s innocent or even that she might be somehow useful to him. Logic doesn’t always work with him. So, what would I do then?
You’d have to kill him.
An elbow to the ribcage breaks me from my thoughts. “Will you stop huffing back there?” Katya says. “You’re getting spittle on my neck.”
