“Why?” I demand. “Because I am female or a faerie?”
“Because I am your mistress.” She reaches for a robe draped over a hook on the wall. “I’m sorry. I should not—will not take you like this.”
As Kassandra ties the robe around her, I stand naked in the water, my entire body burning with hatred and unspent pleasure.
“So now you care how you touch me,” I mutter.
She glares at me. “You’re still covered in bruises from Maxian.”
“And now a scar from the brother you offered me to.”
Kassandra crosses her arms, standing on the ledge above me, the light glinting off her silver features like a glittering statue. She is incandescent and horrid—and she is silent. She knows I’m right, and this knowledge only propels my rage.
“Where were your morals when you spit on me and called me names and insulted me every day for two years?”
“I know!” she cries. “I know you’ve experienced the worst ofme.”
“So forgive me if I don’t believe that you’ve suddenly changed.”
“I’m trying to be better. I’m…trying.”
A small voice in me screams to stop as her eyes fill. But her tears, her guilt, are nothing in the face of the pain and servitude and grief my people have suffered, and my desire curdles to disgust, but if I were to look too closely, I would know it is disgust in myself. So I don’t look this time. I point.
“You’re just like Eli,” I say.
“Explain.”
“Never mind.”
“Go on, say it. It’s what I always liked about you, after all.”
“That I’m a bitch?”
“That you’re not a coward, even if you are foolish enough to let your feelings slip along the plane.”
“You fae dangle dignity in front of those you deem fuckable. Then you rip it away once you’re done with us. But we all deserve rights and respect—whether it serves you or not.”
“Eli is a good fae.”
“Would he have taken Lila in if he didn’t love her?”
“I do not know.” After a moment of silence, she speaks again. “I will not report you for your insults or send you to the executioner, if that’s what you desire.”
“I do not desire it.”
“Then why say such dangerous things if you do not have a death wish? Most fae would harm you and I tell you this, and still, you are insolent.”
“Because,” I snap. “Because—”
Because it’s you.
She watches me with her sharp, feline eyes, and somehow this makes me wilt, covering my bruises and blushing with the hot pool.
“A part of you trusts me,” she states. “And you hate that about yourself.”
I say nothing.
“Well, there are parts of me I hate, too. Most of me, actually,” she says. “I am sorry for everything I have done to you and to the other faeries. My own pain clouded my privilege. I do not expect forgiveness or kindness. You can stop serving in my apartments, too, if you’d like. I only ask one thing.”
