She was quiet.
My eyes found where hers should be, waiting for her a reply to the details she’d demanded.
Her features remained calm and composed, and then her mouth gave a slight twitch. “You burn for her.”
I felt a flush I didn’t like, an accusation I didn’t appreciate. “I said no such thing.”
“But your detailed description suggests it.”
“My description was detailed because you…” I clenched my eyes shut and stopped myself from releasing the sigh of frustration I felt.
“Because what, Morco?”
“Because you can’t see her…” Because her sight had been carved from her face while she screamed for it to stop. Because she’d been damned to eternal night that noapricumcould ever illuminate. “Not once did I say she was beautiful or describe the feminine characteristics of her body.”
“Alright,” she said simply. “Is she beautiful?”
I closed my eyes again. “Why do you provoke me? What is the purpose?” I never shared my private life with her. Because she was blind, I never had to hide a woman I didn’t want her to see.
“Because attraction destroys objectivity, Morco.”
“My objectivity remains intact. I witnessed her actions firsthand. They are not exaggerated or inaccurate. It sounds like your objectivity is the one in question since you’ve chosen to distrust her, regardless of her contribution to this tribe, simply because she’s from the surface.”
If my mother had eyes, they would burn white-hot into mine right now. “Answer the question, Morco.”
“My preferences in women are none of your business.” It took all my strength not to raise my voice, to treat my mother with constant respect when I questioned whether she deserved it.
“Allegra came to me while you were gone.”
Now my anger shifted from one person to another.
“She said you don’t want children. Is that true?” She cocked her head slightly, utilizing all the mannerisms she’d had when she’d had her sight. Despite the anger I detected in her voice, she restrained herself like I did.
I took a heavy breath. “This matter doesn’t involve you.”
“The continuation of my bloodline does involve me, Morco. Our population has been decimated, and the only way to rebuild is to have new life. Boys to grow into men. Girls to have more children. That’s how it has to be.”
“For what reason?”
“I just said?—”
“So we can continue this dark, painful, and hungry existence? We have no chance to defeat the Knives—and you know it. We hide in the shadows and learn to live in the dark because someone else has stolen our light. I was brought into this world to fight a war I didn’t ask for, so why would I do the same to my child?”
She gave a slight flinch, like my words had done as much damage as a sharp dagger.
“I’ve never known joy or peace. All I’ve known is survive, survive, survive. I’m tired of fucking surviving. Aren’t you?”
“What…what are you saying? That you wish you hadn’t been born?—”
“Yes. All the time. Every fucking day.”
Her breathing changed, made her chest move up and down, made her body tighten and her arms come closer to her core.
“We defeat the Knives in my lifetime—or we perish.”
Drops started to form in her sockets, tears that she could still shed. It was a strange phenomenon to witness, to see the water drip into an empty socket, build up in the basin, and then slip over the edge.
“I lead these people every day, but I only lead them to their graves. I’m responsible for you and everyone else in this fucking tribe, and now I’m supposed to be responsible for a defenseless creature whose only purpose is to grow up and fight and die? It sounds like I’m raising livestock to slaughter.”
