Somewhere along the way, I lost my hair tie. I don’t really care.
“Will you tell me what you’re thinking?” he asks gently.
Not a demand. Not even a request. Just a question. A musing.
I pull my knees up to my chin. “I don’t know.”
“Hm.” He turns and looks out over the cliff. The wind catches his dark hair and that white streak I want to run my hands through.
I turn so I’m also staring out over the cliff.
He asks quietly, “Your parents died in the cataclysm, didn’t they?”
My brow furrows as old grief rings in my chest. “Yeah. I was fifteen… How’d you know?”
“Ten percent of humans did. It’s not rare, statistically speaking. And… I could tell. From how you talked about them.”
I settle my chin on my knees. “Everyone thinks the ICSS is so great. But… they wanted me toforgetthem… forget myparents… and I couldn’t…” Grief chokes in my throat. I wipe my eyes. “Sorry.”
Sylvus offers me a silk handkerchief, though his gaze remains on the horizon. Spared the weight of his eight eyes, I take a deep breath.
“Of course you couldn’t forget them,” Sylvus murmurs. “It was cruel to ask you to.”
I bark a wry laugh. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re part of some sappy criminal enterprise that nobly rebels against the cruelty of the ICSS.”
He turns and flashes a wicked, fanged smile at me. “Not quite.”
I smile and return my chin to my knees.
Sylvus sighs, as if searching for words. “I do what I do because… people have desires that the ICSS can’t meet. Supplying those desires… is incredibly lucrative. It gets me money. Money is leverage.”
I glance over at him. “What do you do with leverage?”
He slowly shakes his head, then shrugs. “Nothing of consequence. I just… like to have it. It’smyunsanctioned desire.”
“Is that what you like about bullying me? The leverage?”
He glances over at me with a laugh. “Bullyingyou?”
“You’re quite cruel,” I pout.
“Careful what you wish for.”
The words shudder down my spine.
He chuckles, then returns his gaze to the horizon, expression thoughtful. “Yes, that’s what I enjoy about bullying you. The leverage. I like… impossible challenges.”
“And I’m an impossible challenge?”
“You have to ask that?”
I hide my smile behind my folded arms as they wrap my knees. “I want to hear you say it.”
He turns to me, affection in his dark, eight-eyed gaze. “Andromeda. You areutterlyimpossible.”
Pride bubbles in my chest.
Peace settles between us again.
