That wasn’t the reaction I wanted. “Oh fuck.” A flush of terror moved through me when I realized what would be expected of me. I’d never had sex, and now I had to sleep with some guy I barely knew…and have his baby.
“You’re expected to participate, but it’s always a choice.”
“It is?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes and took a breath. “Good. Because I—I’ve never been with anyone, so…” I wasn’t sure why I’d told him that. Maybe another reason to spare me from a barbaric practice.
He didn’t react to that information.
“Why are you doing this? I mean, I understand the purpose, but…”
“It was the decision made by the Elders. I don’t support the idea.” He lowered his hands to the table, nothing between us now. Even seated, he was much taller than me. For someone who had to subsist on stew, he was able to maintain the mass of his muscles. This was the closest I’d been to him, so I could see the other details of his face, like the fact that he had shaved his jaw clean. The bones in his face were sharp, the front of his throat prominent, his features so rugged and distinctly masculine. Boys my age weren’t so seasoned. I wasn’t sure if hewas my age because he seemed older, but I didn’t know by how many years.
“But if you’re in charge, then can’t you dismantle it?”
“I could, but I believe in the wisdom of the Elders. They want their people to continue, and to them, that seems like the best way to accomplish that goal.”
“But you just said your people are hungry.”
“We are,” he said. “A problem I’m supposed to fix.”
I gave a slow nod like I understood, but I did not understand. “There are no fish in the lake?”
“Not enough to rely on.”
“What about root vegetables?”
“What are root vegetables?”
“They’re vegetables that don’t need sunlight to grow. They just need moisture.”
He continued to stare at me like he didn’t understand.
In that moment, I realized our differences—that I lived above and he lived below. “Have—have you always been down here? Or are you from above?”
“The Obsidians have been here for generations. We were exiled by a king long ago, but it’s been so many years that none remembers the tale. My mother and her mother and her mother before her have only known this darkness.”
So he’d never seen the sun. Felt the wind. Seen the ocean. Never looked up at the blue sky or felt the rain soak hisclothes in a storm. All he knew was this…and nothing else. If I were to describe any of those things to him, he would have no understanding. “How do you normally grow food?”
“Theapricum.”
“What is that?”
“Did you notice the bud of light after you fell?”
“Yes, it looks like a rosebud.”
He didn’t ask what a rose was, but he probably had no idea. “The root system here channels light from above. It’ll burn anapricumfor a time, but then the energy will transfer to another bulb and light another part of the Depths. There’s no way to predict how long the light will last or where it will move. That light used to grow our crops.”
“Why not anymore?”
“Because of the Knives—the creatures that chased us.”
The ones that climbed on top of wild wolves and came after us. I blinked several times as I processed what he’d shared, as I began to understand the circumstances of his people and the conflict below the surface.
“Apricumis life. Without it, you can barely survive. It’s theirs now, and when the light moves, they’ll move with it. They’ve killed us off to near extinction, so we have no chance to oppose them. All we can do is stay in the dark and hope theapricumdoesn’t come anywhere near us.”
