AUSET
“Iknow you’re one of us! Declare yourself and your clan, or lose all honor!” he barks at me, the words ringing around me, but there’s something off about them I can’t place.
It’s like the pitch is wrong somehow.
“Piss on your honor. You’re owed nothing! Earn the answers to those questions or shut the fuck up,” I snarl back, slamming the iron dagger into the wooden arm of the chair Verus is bound to.
The blade misses his skin, but just barely.
It isn’t until I hear my voice echoing off the stone walls, that I comprehend what just happened. It isn’t Common that ricochets around me like some winged pest. It’s a different set of strange off-key words that I hear and understand as clear as day.
I’ve slipped into another language without even realizing it.
It’s like all the times in the ludere when I could read something on a healer’s desk or scan the parchment or book that a guard was looking at. I shouldn’t have been able to read anything, and yet I could, regardless of what language it was in or what realm it came from. I overheard many conversations I thought were in Common because I could understand them, only to realize later that there was something off about the words because they were a different language.
It took me longer to figure out that I could speak different languages in addition to understanding them. It happened by accident at first when a fellow blade slave was having a nightmare and talking in her sleep. I thought it was Common, but the next day when I spoke to her while we were washing up, it was in whatever native tongue she spoke. She was washed from the ludere a handful of months after that, but I knew I had a unique ability that I needed to keep to myself. It’s as though my mind absorbs everything, reconfigures it in a way I can understand, and then lets me spit it all back out in whatever language was spoken in the first place.
Verus’s silver eyes grow wide with surprise at my response, like he suspected but didn’t actuallyknowif I’d understand him. All too quickly, satisfaction settles in his stare like he’s caught me, just like he’d hoped he would.
Fuck.
I already knew that Verus and I come from the same people. The match of his unique coloring to mine is all I really need to know. However, he didn’t know that…until now. I just confirmed his suspicions, and I don’t know if that’s going to fuck me over or help me in getting answers from him.
Verus looks around the room and then at the Scorpions as though he’s seeing things differently. I watch him try to piece together what it all means with what he just learned. His silver eyes snap back to mine, fresh desperation tinting his gaze.
“I don’t know who you are exactly or why you’re here with them, but one Igeeyin to another, you have to release me. My clan will offer a life debt. It’s for The Cause.”
I keep my face neutral as he pleads with me in a tongue I speak and understand but don’t know the name of. Inside, my mind is rioting with all the clues that just came spilling out. I want to examine each and every word thoroughly right here and now, but I know that I can’t. I rein in my emotions and focus on what to do.
The termIgeeyinstands out to me as significant, but I can’t exactly ask him why. I need a new angle to make this work, to keep him talking. MaybeThe Cause—whatever the fuck that is? It sounds vague enough and possibly big enough that I can work within its parameters. Whatever it happens to be, he thinks I should not only know it, but that it would motivate me—a perfect stranger—to help him on its behalf.
We’re getting somewhere, but if I don’t play this right, I have a feeling it will take a turn to nowhere fast, and there might not be any coming back from that.
“We’re here on behalf of The Cause, and yet you attacked us. I won’t be tricked,” I retort, doing my best to look incensed instead of clueless and hoping this actually works.
I turn from Verus and stride over to the chair next to Tarek. His gaze meets mine, and it’s brimming with questions, but I shake my head slightly as I take a seat. In a blink, he’s once again looking bored, like he understands everything going on here but has more important things to do. I want to kiss the shit out of him, out of all of them, for being so good at this subterfuge shit and for trusting me to handle things.
I settle in next to Tarek, and I fix my gaze on Verus, leveling him with a haughty look that feels appropriate to the pretend affront I’m putting on.
His face is wary as he assesses me. He doesn’t know what to make of this, but that makes two of us. My claim is absurd, but he saw me heal my hand in the moonlight, and I’m speaking a language that I suspect not many fae know. I’m hoping that’s enough to push what I’m saying across the line from ridiculous to plausible.
“Show me who you are,” he orders again, reverting back to Common and once again tapping into whatever arrogance has convinced him that he’s in any place to be dictating what happens here.
It seems Verus is a fan of going in circles.
“Prove you’re worthy to know,” I counter, crossing my legs and leaning back in my chair as though I’m more than happy to sit here all day making myself dizzy on this never-ending loop of sarkar shit.
Each of the Scorpions watches our exchange as though they haven’t a care in the world. They’re relaxed, playing with daggers absently, gazes missing nothing but not trained on any one thing that might tip the scales we’re precariously balancing on. We’re all lakes in the forest, still and glassy on the surface while terrifying monsters lurk in our depths ready to breach the calm to snatch our prey at any given moment.
“Would you remove these?”
Verus uses his chin to gesture to the small yellow scorpion that’s lazily crawling toward the iron burn on his neck, while the other bolt looks as though it’s trying to get comfortable in his belly button. There’s a hint of timidity in his question that doesn’t register as authentic. Perhaps he’s probing to see if a plea for mercy gets him anywhere, or maybe he’s subtly saying that a little goodwill toward him would earn me some in return.
Curio looks at me, the casual unassuming tilt of his head in my direction a small gesture, but it means so much. He’s transferring the power he’s held in this room to me, strengthening my position in Verus’s eyes and trusting me to take this where it needs to go.
Like the first time in the duke’s house, when they followed without question and unwavering support, I’m struck by their steadfast and resolute devotion. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. Simply accepting them and caring about them doesn’t seem like enough in comparison to the sacrosanct veneration they offer me time and time again.
I was once so worried that I would lose myself in them before I ever knew who I really was, but that worry is laughable now. I could never be buried under the weight of who they are, because they treat me like the tether that pullsthemfrom the onslaught.
