Ettore glared at him, obviously not thrilled with that side of the history. They were all too calm, too chill. I stuffed my emotions down, but knew that I would explode with them soon.
“Other than strength, resilience to poisons and toxins, lung capacity, and memory skills, what makes you different from the rest of us? How many of you are there?”
Jin Woo answered this time.
“Basically, we are of above average height, strength, brain capacity, we have a higher level of cognitive function, and a higher than average level of competitiveness.”
Bartosz once again interjected, “Higher than average level of aggression, pride, and territorialism, and a bad tendency to go batshit when some of our blood is spilled.”
Jin Woo didn’t even acknowledge him.
“Other than some tech companies, most of the major Fortune 500 companies are run by us; the majority of us have some type of family money. However, there are some drawbacks, the aforementioned…competitiveness, and there are also fertility issues, for every birth of a female Renai, six or seven male Renai are born. When Renai marry out there are always fertility issues. Henry the 8th, honestly, all of the Tudors, they were Renai and tried to marry non-Renai. We have adapted; most Renai families are one mother and several husbands or two women, each with a set of six or seven husbands who raise their children together.”
My eye was twitching, my brain in an information overdrive, but there was something off, something that, despite the firehose of information, that they were holding back.
“Spit. It. Out.” I growled, tensing my muscles underneath their hands. They each held me differently. Bartosz held my ankle as if caressing, grip iron tight, but his fingers spread out in an adoring splay. Ettore held me as if we were on a stroll, his hands around my wrist, sure, but his arm twined in mine. It reminded me of older chic couples walking around a fancy park on a Sunday afternoon. Jin Woo held me as if I were porcelain, so precious that a wrong move could break me, and that his hands and only his hands were the things holding me together.
Oskar pursed his lips and took a deep breath as if to prepare himself.
“We are very strict about not telling people about us. There are only around 100,000 of us in the whole world, and we could easily be snuffed out, so we, even children, are not allowed to speak about what we are, or show what we can do.”
The rate at which my eye twitched became staccato. Oskar saw it, I could tell in the minute increase in the pursed nature of his mouth, in his answering eye twitch. When I was younger, whenhe would get a stomachache, so would I. When I broke my wrist when I was nine, he had complained of wrist pain for days. That was part of the reason that it had been so painful when we were separated; it felt like part of me had been removed, or more accurately, like part of me had decided that it no longer wanted to belong to me and taken shears to itself and me.
“We try to be part of the world, but we don’t want to get too close, firstly, so that normal humans don’t realize that we’re different, secondly, so we don’t fall in love with normal men and women and cause doomed relationships, and finally,” Oskar’s cadence stuttered slightly. Still, he carried on, “because being around a Renai too often can harm normal humans, they are not built for the level of obsession that being with a Renai comes with, they have phantom sensations of what Renai feel, even a faux mating feeling— it can lead to depression and death.”
I was not stupid. I knew what Oskar was telling me, even though I wanted him to spell it out for me. I knew that my obsession with him was an artificial result of us becoming too close as children, but I needed all of my facts straight.
“So this mating?” I asked with my last shred of calmness.
Ettore answered.
“It’s not truly understood, mated male Renai are stronger and more mentally stable. There is, of course, some flexibility for sexual orientation; some male-female Renai relationships are platonic. It’s basically the settling of a Renai into a family group, which makes every person in the group better. Children are raised by all or most of the adult members of the family.”
I didn’t ask for a fucking anthropological study of them.
“Ok, so you all are not going to die of poison mushrooms tonight?” I asked finally.
They all looked at each other, as if suddenly worried that my puny human brain had melted inside of my skull,”
“Mina,” Jin Woo started, but I cut him off, my anger breaking through the weakening bonds of my control.
“Don’t fucking patronize me, any of you!”
I jerked hard against their restraining hands.
“Are you done?”
After another one of those deeply annoying looks between them, they reluctantly let me go. I stood up, the fury that had been burning finally rising up from my chest, into my throat, and spilling out onto my lips.
You all are assholes for letting me think you could be dying of poison, you all are assholes lying to my face that you all didn’t know each other, while we wereliterallydying on a deserted island. Oskar, you arestilla fucking asshole for pretending that you didn’t know me on the ferry!” At this point, I was yelling, swaying slightly as my arms wrapped around my body, protecting me from these people who had lied to me, who had led to my suffering.
“I’m going to scream outside, and then I’m going to sleep. Don’tfuckingtalk to me, none of you.”
Fury had melted my heart into iron because, despite the ravaged devastation on Oskar’s face, the wet glint in Jin Woo’s eyes, the pleading in Ettore’s, and bubbling disappointment in Bartosz’s, I left the cabin and slammed the door as I left, my heart not softening a bit.
Chapter Ten
Dawn broke red and bloody, the crimson light pooling out over the sea like it was liquid itself. I saw it break and then continued to observe the world. I watched from my position on the boulder in the pasture, the smelly but warm sheepskin clasped around me, the island coming to life below me.
