I’m familiar with the feeling.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Death,” the inquisitor states plainly. “You like it, don’t you?”
I shrug.
“I’ve grown indifferent to it,” I say.
“And are you indifferent to lifelong imprisonment?”
He asks the question as if it should scare me, but I’ve been in a cage my whole life.
“Oh, I thought that’s what this was,” I say, fingering the fucking collar around my neck.
The inquisitor rolls his eyes, and the rickety old chair creaks as he leans back, folding his arms.
“Mr. Cross, you may want to take this more seriously. You were witnessed docking Deacon Anderson Friday night at Beta at approximately 1:45 AM by at least fifty people.”
“He challenged me,” I remind him. “As his beta, I was well within my rights.”
“To dock him, yes. To maim him so mercilessly that he would succumb to those injuries forty-eight hours later, no.”
I sit up in my chair.
“Maim him? I barely touched him. He was still talking when I left.”
“Wastalking andistalking, are two very different things.”
“I didn’t kill Deacon,” I say, fists clenching beneath the table.
“Just tell me what happened,” he says. “And we’ll see about commuting your sentence.”
He produces a series of photos, tapping at the image as he lays them face up in front of me.
“Was it an accident?” he asks. “Did you take your dampener off? With a curse like yours, I’m sure it’s easy to go overboard.”
I shake my head as I stare at the images of Deacon lying stiff in an infirmary bed, pale and covered in familiar black markings. The same ones I’d seen on Grey.
It occurs to me that I could confess here and now. If they’re going to pin Deacon on me without so much as a second thought, what’s one more body on the way out? I could absolve Iris in the process, and our new friend would have nothing to hang over her head anymore.
But there’s one thing keeping me from opening my mouth.
Who would feed her if I died?
“What are these markings?” I ask. “And what about the truth serum?”
“What truth serum?”
I shake my head.
“You mean to tell me that you’re all so dead set on proving me a monster that you didn’t run a potions panel on him? Maybe if you stop harassing me, I can just go do your job for you? How does that sound?”
The inquisitor quiets, and I can almost see the wheels in his brain turning as he thinks about reaching across the table to strike me. They must be rusty, though; it takes him a while to make up his mind.
I wish he would. I could use an excuse to rip his head off.
For a second, I think he might, but his plotting is interrupted as the metal door clangs, and someone knocks from the other side.
