Cold blue sparks leapt at me. “You think you can judge me, child?” she whispered, deadly soft. And then, turning her wrists and setting her grip to my forearms, she abandoned all pretense at soothing the beast. Provoked to show her temper for what it really was. “You’ve been a slave for days. This has been my life for five years.”
“What program do they need Tritans for?” I asked. Soft, so she’d have to strain to hear me. So I could watch when her cheeks went sallow and her pupils dilated.
Her lips parted, but nothing came out.
Then, once more, she glanced at the door—and I knew. Who she was waiting for, who was coming to check on his priestess after working so hard to separate me from the captain’s delicate sphere of protection.
An admission of guilt I could see and feel.
Despite the familiar pain of betrayal, a grin spread over my lips. “I should have wondered,” I said, “when you called me a plaything for an elite. Should have wondered how you knew.” A froth of seething wrath bubbled up, reaching for the pretty pure energy swirling before me, meager though it was. “That I’m just another tool—a hole to be used and filled.Soiled. Pretty words from like recognizing like.”
Cheeks beating hot, she reeled back and slapped me full across the face. “Mila! Pull yourself together,” she snarled, fending off the barbs of wicked hunger probing through her modest defenses. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
I paid the sting less attention than the warning. “What you don’t see, Sasha, what you don’t understand?” I hummed, and tongued a bit of coppery warmth spilling over my lip. “I don’t have to bend. I don’t have to break. All I have to do isbecome.”
At my back, the door opened without the courtesy of a knock.
16
General Harper Tilcot.
Broad shoulders filling the entire doorway, he blocked the light. The exit. Any and all hope of an escape that didn’t go through him, first.
Despite the chaotic blizzard thrashing behind my ribs, I let my eyes fall. Affecting the demure gaze of a slave—and felt Sasha’s entire frame sag in relief.
But still, her grip did not loosen.
She was poised to counter any move I might make against her beloved master. To wrap the empath in chains before I could be unleashed, for what she really wanted wasn’t to foster a rebellion using my unpredictable gifts.
She wanted obliteration of the empath.
For me to be submissive and compliant. To follow along in her perfect, dainty footsteps, never setting a hair out of line lest I disturb the careful balance she had achieved here.
Asher wanted to take. To control all that I was and use me for his own ends. A power source, an obedient sleeve for his cock, he wanted topossess.
But General Tilcot?
I blinked, watching the large man move from beneath a coy fan of my lashes.
He wanted a weapon.
“How goes the training of my wildcat?” he asked, slipping the door closed behind us with a firm snap. “I’m here for good news, Sasha.”
The Head Priestess swallowed. “It’s an… adjustment,” she replied, careful with her words. Artful. “Training an empath is going to be a difficult journey, but I’m confident—”
Snapping his fingers, the general took an impatient step toward us. “What is she capable of? What are her limits? Her strengths?”
“I—” Sasha cleared her throat, fingers growing tight and slick around my wrist. “I haven’t had the chance to fully assess her, sir.”
A condescending sound bubbled up from deep inside the general’s deep chest.
“I needed to make sure she was grounded, first. That she could handle the strain of being tested without irritating her empathetic nature.”
Humming, the general said, “Ah, yes. An empath. Such a rare creature.” He closed the distance between us in only two steps. “Tell me more. Everything that makes her an exception to the rule.”
“I—I don’t understand, sir,” Sasha stammered, and tried to pull me back.
But I did.
