“Have you even thought once about any of the blade slaves that you left behind? Do you care at all about what happened to them, or only thatyougot out?” he questions, his face alight with accusation as he steps closer. “One of them nearly killed you, and you don’t even seem to be upset by that.”
Fury moves my feet toward him, but I stop myself before I close the distance completely. “That’s because—”
“Because you knew that’s how it would always be?” he interjects. “You’ve already accepted that life is every fae for themselves. You don’t begrudge that fucker who shoved a chakram through your gut for choosing himself over you, but you begrudge us for doing the best we could with whatwewere handed?” he demands.
The fiery words sitting on my tongue crumble to ash in my mouth, and I stand there, gaping at Curio, with no idea how to respond to that.
“What happened to you was unfortunate, but you survived it. That’s more than many can say. No fae in their right mind would condemn you for doing what you had to do; all we ask is for that same courtesy,” Curio insists.
His words peck at me relentlessly, and what’s worse is they’re getting through. He pushes his hair back, the light strands in his otherwise inky locks catching the light of the fire in a captivating way. His hickory stare hunts around in mine, like he’s looking for the part of me that sees the truth in what he’s saying. I wish he wasn’t going to find it, but he will.
I want to shut him down. Bark at him about how wrong he is and how he can take his words and shove them up his round and entirely too firm-looking ass, but I can’t. I search through his statements, looking for cracks and fractures that will help me pull them apart, but too much veracity fortifies what he’s saying.
It’s infuriating.
I haven’t been here long, and the day so far has been packed full of revelations and adjustments and coming to terms with my new reality. I can pretend that all of this is the reason I haven’t given any thought to what happened to the other blade slaves, but I’d be lying. The truth is I don’t care…and neither did they. We couldn’t. Like Curio pointed out, we were just trying to survive. If that meant someone else fell so that you could climb, so be it. I’ve stood unapologetically on others’ backs without a second thought, because it meant another day, one less beating, one more chance…for me. It felt necessary at the time, but was it?
Like a curtain has just been pulled back to reveal what’s on the other side, I can’t yank my eyes or thoughts away from the inescapable truth that Curio just shoved my face through. Shame coats my insides, tainting everything with its touch. I don’t know if I’m ashamed that I’m understanding this brute’s perspective or that I’m looking at the truth of who I am and realizing I’m not as different as I thought. I kill without compunction. I was willing to buy my freedom and future with the aurems I would make endinganylife for the right price. I chose myself over all else, and even though I see the flaw in that, see how that mentality leads to the faulty broken world we live in, I know I won’t stop.
If I don’t look out for myself, no one else will.
I expect Curio to see the wound his argument has cut into me and go for the kill. I wait for him to hammer in more evidence of my hypocrisy, to chisel away at what I think about him and his brothers until I don’t recognize my convictions anymore. But he does none of that. Instead, he leaves me to stew in my uncertainty while he rips open one of the bags he slammed onto the table earlier and adds it to the water in the tub-sized bucket. He turns off the faucet, and with a large metal-wired bar, he begins to stir the mixture.
“What are you doing?” I ask, moving closer to the fire as though the hot flames will burn up the doubt and confusion now blanketing me and making everything feel heavier and more burdensome.
“Like I said, I need to make a mold of your form so I can start on your kit.”
“And what am I going to have to do to pay for that?” I ask warily.
His brown eyes snap from the mixture he’s stirring to mine. “Not a fucking thing you don’t want to do,” he growls, and his words and tone sink deep in my stomach like fluttering, falling feathers. “We’re not monsters…I mean, we are, but at the end of three months, if you choose to leave, you can take everything you’ve been given, because it’s yours. You can do nothing more than eat, sleep, heal, train, and hate us while you’re here, and it will all still be yours no matter what. We’re not trading, Auset, we’re giving.”
A million thoughts and accusations and concerns flare in my mind, but I shut it all down and focus on one thing instead.
“If ?” I press, picking at the tiny, seemingly insignificant word that screams out at me over everything else he just said.
He stares at me, his face slowly slipping from frustrated to radiantly confident. His hooded eyes narrow slightly, but not from anger, they’re heavy with promise and heat. He searches my face for a moment, and when his dazzling gaze once again locks onto mine, it’s as though I’m pulled from my axis and sucked right into his.
“Yes,if,” he confirms, his large body squaring up to mine. “Because even though we won’t demand anything from you, we’re still going to do everything in our power to make youwantto stay.”
An inferno quickly blazes to life and tries to consume every inch of me. I feel it wanting to jump from me to Curio and back again, eager to incinerate all reservations and misgivings between us. I breathe through the rushing need, knowing it will pass, and reason and logic will come flooding in at any moment. My eyes bounce back and forth between his scorching stare, and I refuse to look at his mouth, or anywhere else, regardless of how much I suddenly want to drink every part of him in.
“Why?” I ask, my throat suddenly dry and my voice reedy and brittle.
He studies me for what feels like forever before his grin grows slightly. Just when I think he might show me instead of telling me, he shakes his head, breaking whatever spell is thick between us, and steps back. I’m both relieved and bothered by the distance he puts between us. His eyes drop from mine, and he returns his focus to the mixture he was stirring.
“You’re not ready for that answer yet, Moonling,” he finally replies. “But don’t worry, I think you will be soon.”
I watch his arms flex as he resumes his efforts to stir the thickening concoction in the huge bucket. Strands of long black and sandy-blond hair fall toward his face, and I don’t miss the knowing smirk still painted on his lips as he works. I try to fortify my defenses around the holes this exchange has left behind, but it’s difficult. Parts of me I’ve never looked at too closely are peaking through, and I’m hesitant to brick everything back up and pretend this never happened.
I’m still fighting for survival here amidst these Scorpions, but the rules have somehow changed and the stakes are even higher than they were before. It’s not just life that’s hanging in the balance here, it’s as though they’re coming for my soul. No one ever taught me how to defend against that, and I worry I’m already losing the most important battle I may ever fight.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
CURIO
“I’m supposed to lie in this?” Auset warily asks, her silver gaze watching me with both interest and hesitancy as I lift the heavy bucket of thick paste and start pouring half of it into the large wood frame I’ve laid out on my work table.
Auset walks further into the workshop from the washroom in the back, where she just took off my tunic and replaced it with the skintight rind top I gave her. She’s now decked top to bottom in the protective material, and I know if I look at her, the black, clinging coverings will show off every curve and line of her body.
