“Don’t waste time thinking I’m here to kill you too,” Arlo drawled as he got back to his feet and flicked his knife, splattering Tarri’s blood on the metal seats framing the bus’s aisle. “My orders regarding you are different.”
Widening my stance, I beckoned the fissure in my heart to transform into a thread, to weave around my fist clutching my last knife.
If Arlo’s life was the cost I needed to offer to the gods to walk out of this bus and avenge my friend, I’d pay it. Twice. Thrice. A hundred times or more. He’d slaughtered my sister, and that…
That never went unpunished.
Digging my heels into the floor, I bent my knees, finding my balance. The tang of iron hung heavy in the air, and I invited it into my system, using it to saturate my vow with calmness. “You are going to die, Arlo.”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of Tarri’s blood on his brown skin. My fingertips tingled with the need to carve the streak of my friend from his face.
“Obviously.” His combat boot squeaked as he stepped over my friend’s lifeless form. “It’s just that my time to go won’t be today.”
Before fury could get the better of me, I exhaled. Counted to four, like Gedeon had taught me. Inhaled. One, two, three, four. Breathed again.
And smiled. “Not if I can help it.”
His sneer was as cold as the swirls of mist clouding the windows. “Cute.”
“Like your dick is going to be once I skewer it at the next barbecue.” Charred and tiny—much more appealing than it was now.
“That’s the best you can do?” He scratched his fuzzy eyebrow. “How disappointing.”
“How about this? I can make sure you’re still breathing when I cook your cock.”
Leaning against a vertical pole, he used his knife to clean the crusted blood from under his nails. “You can stop with the insults. They’re a bit…unsophisticated for my taste.”
“Fine.” The chill climbing through the bus’s open door boosted my dropping adrenaline levels. “I’d rather spend my time flaying your ugly face, anyway.”
Arlo sighed. “I see you haven’t been properly disciplined to get that nonsense out of your head. But it’s nothing a fist or two couldn’t fix.”
The casualness in his tone brought me back to my days in the city. To the purples and blues and greens and yellows I’d seen on the green-banded women passing me by in the streets. To their gazes fixed on the ground.
To the blows I’d willingly taken myself if it helped the men to get it up. My body had been a commodity, to be used and traded for what I’d required or wished for. Like the books telling the real story of our world.
“Oh, don’t give me that look.” He waved his knife at me. “I’m not the villain here.” A drop of crimson left the blade as hepointed it at the window displaying the battle outside. “You’re the one who's at fault for all the casualties.”
My muscles burned from lingering in the ready-to-deflect-and-parry position for too long. “We’re not forcing anyone to take a stand. It’s a choice they’re making.”
“As it is my choice to trample the insanity you’re causing and bring the city back to the proper order.”
“It’s not proper if it’s forced.”
“So you keep saying. But have you ever tried herding a crowd? If you don’t employ a whip, nothing is going to happen. You need strength and fear to impose control. Otherwise, we’re just animals on the brink of extinction.”
“And what’s so wrong with that?”
“It’s the end of everything, Kali.” The way he said my name caused my last meal to rise back up. “That aside, I’m pretty sure you’re aware of where I’m going with this.” Pushing off the pole, he stalked toward me, coming to a halt ten feet away. “My higher-ups informed me of the situation with your health records.”
The documentation stating I was a non-fertile citizen. The records Ilasall had reviewed last autumn, after they’d realized the data had been falsified.
Arlo rubbed his forehead, spreading the evidence of his victory against Tarri. “I know you cheated the system. That you were supposed to wear a green wristband instead of the black one.” At the red film on his fingers, his lip curled. “So, as you can guess, my orders are to capture you, not get rid of you. I’m not even allowed to get my own fill of you.” He smiled, his canines yellowed from the nutritional bars all black-banded citizens consumed as a substitute for actual food. “We could’ve had so much fun together. I would’ve broken yougently.” A black band gleamed on his wrist as he shook it. “Unfortunately, this prevents me from having access to you.”
Disregarding his displeasure, I spat out, “You can’t break what’s already fractured.” I’d split into two when I’d betrayed Alora, and nothing,no onecould ever heal that. Not even Gedeon or Zion. Or the two of them combined.
Condemning the only friend you had at thirteen, your first love, to the worst life imaginable, to becoming a property of a green-banded man, a baby machine and not a drop more, would change anyone irrevocably.
Inching closer to me, Arlo left a trail of scarlet footprints behind him. “No, but you can glue the pieces back together into any shape you want.”
