“You came to the woods when I called,” he reminded. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know what was in store for you. You’re smarter than that,Professor.”
“I assumed we would have a discussion,” Bay lied through his teeth, “Like adults!”
Sila watched a particularly large drop slip free from the corner and roll its way down the rise of Bay’s cheek, trailing over toward the bottom of his right earlobe. He licked his lips and leaned in to lap at it and, for whatever reason, that seemed to set Bay off all over again.
He bucked beneath him, desperately trying to free himself, even attempting to roll to the side, but there was very little room for him to do so. His heels kicked at the ground, and he tugged on his arms, clearly with everything he had in him.
Sila merely waited, watching as his prey tired himself out. Every uptick of Bay’s chest as he panicked, all the little desperate sounds he was making…It all called to him, spurred him on. He rewrote the plan as he pressed down harder into the professor, excitement returning full force.
It didn’t dissipate when Bay finally went limp beneath him, on the contrary, it grew and drew up inside of him instead.
“Please,” Bay’s voice was low, husky from his struggles. “Please, let me go. I promise I won’t touch him.”
“You weren’t going to touch him to begin with,” Sila stated matter-of-factly. “But since you’ve asked so sweetly, how about this. I’ll allow you one last fantasy. If you do as instructed, I’ll let you go. If you don’t, I’ll satisfy a different curiosity of mine. I’ve been wondering since I came to this planet if Vitals hearts are the same size as a Tiberans.”
Bay’s eyes went wide.
“What do you say?” Sila asked.
“A54.”
He stilled over him. “What?”
“A54,” Bay repeated. “At the library on campus. That’s where you’ll find medical books on Vital anatomy.”
Sila Varun spent three hours two days a week in that library, but then, Bay thought he was Rin from the Academy.
“You’re telling me to go research?” Sila asked. “Now? In this situation?”
“The best way to learn something and have it stick is by seeking the answer out yourself,” Bay said, and then seemed to realize the way those words could be taken. He shook his head vehemently, sending sticky tendrils of his powder blue hair flying around his flushed face. “That’s not what I meant! You can’t just murder someone out of curiosity, Rin.”
“Can’t I?”
“No,” he insisted. “For one it’s illegal. It also happens to be morally—”
“Ah,” Sila clicked his tongue. “Allow me to stop you there. It seems you haven’t yet caught on. I wonder how much of that is due to your blind devotion to my brother. Could it be the shock instead? Is it making it hard for you to think clearly, Kitten?”
When Bay merely frowned up at him, he sighed.
“How exasperating. You teach this for a living and you live on a planet where you can find someone like me around nearly every corner—Not exactly like me, to be clear. I’m above the rest of course, know how to keep my mask firmly in place no matter who may or may not be around to try and check beneath it. Unlike that wild prince of yours. If my brother didn’t like playing with him so much, maybe it’d be Kelevra Diar lying beneath me right now instead of you. Of course, he’d already have a knife through his gut, but I’ve been taking it easy on you for a while now. Treating you better than I’ve ever treated anyone.”
Sila moved his left hand, the one still gripping the knife, and used the tips of his fingers to brush strands of Bay’s hair off his forehead. “Admittedly, the Imperial Prince would be giving me more fight. Look at you, already frozen with fear. Are you sure you don’t want to give it another go?”
“You want me to fight you?” Bay swallowed and Sila’s eyes tracked the movement of his throat.
“It’s preferable,” he said. “But not necessary. I can feed myself many ways. Cooperation can be fun too, so long as you commit to the part. Can you do that for me, Bay?”
“And if I don’t?” He didn’t wait for Sila to answer. “You’ll hurt me.”
“I’ll cut you open and get firsthand experience what a Vital heart feels like in the palm of my hand,” he explained. “It will hurt for a while.” He turned the tip of the blade downward and tapped it lightly over Bay’s breastbone. “Your ribcage is made out of stronger stuff than a Tiberan’s. We’re faster and can breathe underwater longer, but you lot are tough.”
“It’s star crystal,” Bay told him. His voice trembled but he somehow managed to keep steady otherwise. “All of the species born on Vitality have particles of it in our bones. We’ve found skeletons of our ancestors that show, at one time, we were made entirely of the stuff. The extinction of our largest predators must have meant we no longer needed to be hard as crystal, since it no doubt restricted movement. Evolution slowly phased most of it out, leaving us as we are today.”
Sila stared down at him for a long time, but when Bay merely stared back, he felt a laugh burst out of him. “Did you just give me a history lesson, Professor?” He tilted his head, curious. “Were you trying to distract me?”
“No,” he said. “I may have been slow on the uptake, but I’ve caught up now.”
“Have you?”
