“I don’t make a habit of it, no,” I said through thickened vocal cords and the desire to vomit.
“So this display of idiocy is special for me then?”
I scowled at the door. My gaze dropped to the brass knob as his long-fingered hand entered my field of vision to insert the key into the lock. With a twist of his wrist, the door swung open. Teeth gritted, I stepped into the dark interior.
Once the door was shut, I spun to face him. He crossed the room to the coffee table and lit the single candle with a lighter he’d left lying beside it. “You have the reflexes of a sloth,” he said, all testy like this fact profoundly annoyed him. “You didn’t even hear me.”
I crossed my arms. “In my defense, you make no noise when you walk. I think you might be a ghost.”
He rolled his eyes. “You don’t flaunt yourself out in the open, looking like you do, waiting for someone to grab you.”
My attention snapped to his face. “Looking like I do?”
“You’re an attractive woman in the tightest pants I’ve ever seen. Do you have any idea what they’d do if they caught you?”
I glanced at my leggings and loose T-shirt—not remotely risqué—and tried to drive away the memory of Daniela’s death that wanted to break the surface. “I have a fair idea.”
He threw the lighter onto the table. “Wear a fucking hoodie.”
If my glare could scorch the earth, it would have.“Excuse me?”
“You can’t be this stupid.”
Uh, this motherfucker said that to my face?
“Wow, look at that glare,” he said with a humorless smirk. “Did I hurt your precious feelings?”
“Shut up?—”
“You have to know how Hunters are by now. If you’re picked up, you’ll be raped before they bring you in. Possibly by multiple men. Does that sound appealing to you? Then they’ll bring you to me to determine what to do with you. Do you think you could realistically pretend we’ve never met? And if you don’t somehow give us both away as spies, then I’ll have to decide whether you’re imprisoned or you die. So tell me, Sophia. Is your current outfit worth it?”
My glare deepened. “You’rethe one who sentences the prisoners?”
“Yes.”
This man had decided Tekqua’s fate. Barbed claws in my stomach sliced deep as the overwhelming urge to ask him rose. I swallowed the words before they fell from my mouth. He wouldn’t remember her—one face in hundreds he’d sent to a cruel fate without any sort of trial or due process. But Iwouldask him. Eventually. One way or another, I’d uncover what happened to her.
“You’re a bastard.”
His face was all stone and fury. “Wear. A. Fucking. Hoodie.”
“What the hell is a hoodie going to do?” I yelled.
“Oh, I don’t know. Hide your breasts and face and long, curly hair?”
My voice dropped low, turned deadly. “I shouldn’t have to hide that I’m a woman.”
Some of the tension eased from his limbs. “No. You shouldn’t. But you have to protect yourself in this world where your gender makes you unsafe. Do you even have a weapon on you?”
Of course I did. I lived in this violent place the same as he did. No one went outside without a weapon. I extracted the small switchblade from my bra and showed it to him.
He stared at it blank-faced, then squeezed the bridge of his nose. After one slow breath, like he’d never come across a more senseless creature than me, he murmured, “How are you not dead?”
Good question.
He wouldn’t like the answer.
I’d survived merely by the grace of luck. My impulsiveness and clumsiness had landed me in dangerous situations, but I’d always been in exactly the right spot, protected by the right people.
