Asher was right.
Icouldn’tbe trusted.
I’d been allowed to taste true power—and now, nothing else would be enough.
If I was given even an instant of freedom… I’d do it again, no matter how sweet the ache, nor how devastating the consequences.
Because the empath wasstarving.
I glanced up, and found the captain perched on the sill of his bedroom window. Watching me, arms crossed. Hands balled into fists where they were tucked under and over. Posture closed off, he watched me through a suspicious scowl.
Between us, a mountain of clutter that hadn’t been straightened out or swept away in eight days.
Eight days, where secrets had been hidden in plain sight. Left to fester. Growing gangrenous and wretched enough that I couldn’t bear the thought of touching a single one, for fear of picking at a wound that might never heal.
Settling back against the sill, he hooked one ankle over the other. Brow quirked, he didn’t bother to voice the question scrawled across his face. Didn’t set my blood on fire with a tendril of curious magic, or make my chains sparkle in the gloom.
He merely waited for an answer to the panic he could surely feel coursing through my veins.
I swallowed, hard. Again and again. Throat dry as I was made to give a voice to pain I wasn’t ready to address, not even to myself.
“Marco,” I whispered at length, because I needed to say something. Eyes brimming with unexpected tears. “You were right. He…” I shrugged. “He definitely, absolutely hates me.”
Asher sighed. Unfolding from his perch, he tugged at the collar of his uniform. “There were shards of bone embedded in Marco’s knuckles,” he said, loosening the buttons at his throat with hooked, deft fingers. “Splinters of Dez’s skull I had to dig out with a blade before I could repair the damage to his hands.”
I nodded. Inspecting the carpet with eyes that could see only memories.
“When his body was found, it was clear Dez had been attacked,” he said, as his fingers moved down the line of buttons to reveal dips and valleys I couldn’t bring myself to glance at. “The corpse was damaged in a way not found on any of the other casualties of the riot.” He paused then, slipping out of his uniform. And instead of merely shucking it into the pile of soiled laundry taking over the room, he folded it in neat lines, and said, “Marco’s been assigned to the unit searching for his killer.”
Acid splashed at the back of my throat. My thin, undamaged fingers curling into fists at my sides as I listened. Unable to speak.
He took a step toward me. “We served three tours with Dez,” he murmured. An explanation absent excuses, it was the truth. Exactly as hideous as it was. No more, no less. “I’m not sure how they used to do things in Tritan, but beating a man to death with your bare hands is a pretty ugly way to end a friendship.”
Unleashing a shuddering breath, I tried to swallow and choked on the guilt. The fumes of righteous anger wafting off the man as he stalked closer with rolling, unhurried steps. And without lifting my burning eyes, I said, “You were both unconscious. He was going to kill us all.”
I watched his shadow shrug. Watched his feet move as he closed the gap between us, planted one hand on the wall beside my head, and leaned in to whisper, “Maybe, but who started the riot?” against my ear.
“What do want from me?” I hissed, turning to scowl through a mist of brine. Back pressed to the door, as far from his heat as I could get in a space he owned. “An apology?” A hysterical laugh bubbled up past the clotted shame. “This is war. It doesn’t matter how often you force me to beg. You”—I shook my head—“your peopleare my enemies. Nothing can change that.”
For a moment, as he stared into my eyes, nostrils pinched white with every shallow, furious breath he took, the captain was still. And then, moving with frigid restraint, he wrapped cruel fingers around my throat. One by one, pinky to index, his thumb notched behind the corner of my jaw, he made me look. Pinned me to the door and lined his body up against mine. “You want to go to war with me, little girl? Have I not made your position clear enough?”
But I did not blink. “I’m exactly what you made me,” I rasped and my tears spilled over, prickling against his fingers as they tracked down my neck. “Just another sleeve for your cock you’ll eventually grow tired of tormenting. And when you’ve used me up, you’ll toss me into the bathhouse with all the other whores—”
His grip silenced me before I could finish. “Careful, Mila,” he crooned, ebon eyes gleaming as something surfaced in the dark. Something ravenous and jealous at the mere suggestion of someone else’s hands on me.
I laughed, and it was a fragile, hopeless thing. “Why?!” I cried, trying to peel his fingers away from my throat. “What’s the point? What more could you possibly want that you haven’t taken already?”
Incredulous, as if he were staring down at a very simple child, he only adjusted his grip, and said, “All of it.”
A sob chattered through my lips. “There’s nothing left! You’ve already taken everything—”
Teeth bared, he thumped his fist into the doorframe. Making the wood shudder and groan in protest. His temper frayed at the edges, enough that he slipped, losing control. Just for an instant. Just long enough to let me really feel it, the depth of his feeling toward me.
Bottomless contempt for my wretched sorrow, that I would dare to feel sorry for myself in the face of all he’d revealed. Infuriated by my inability to control myselforthe empath, he was disgusted by my impulsive, reckless nature that was the opposite of his steely discipline.
It washatred.
For all that I was.
