She certainly could protect me, if I had any idea how to submit to being protected—but it’s clear that isn’t what she’s built for. Again, the knowledge slithers through me that nightfolk, their new queen not exempted, have evolved to take and break and kill. It’s the only way to survive in the dark. So why, as I told her by the preternatural light of the planet’s mutant heart, am I not afraid of her?
“Every adult in the Daylands whom I’m actually allowed to interact with has surrendered their lives to the simple task of protecting me. And I’m stillhere—trespassing on the planet’s dark side, nearly injuring myself on alien weaponry, presided over by a seven-foot mutant who could condemn me to death, or kill me herself, with an idle finger twitch.” I hope she can feel the challenge in my gaze, even behind my mask. “How do you think that’s working out for them?”
“Eight,” Adria says, inflectionless.
“What?”
“I’m eight feet tall.”
“Only farther for your pride to fall.”
Adria manages a dry laugh at that. “It’s important to size up your opponent accurately. If I were to lose control around you …”
The sentence inexplicably trails off.
But I’m looking at the regal arch of her jaw, framed by the royal sprawl of her wings, and those piercing violet eyes with all the depth of galaxies, and I’m sweaty and shivering and this anti-radiation suit is too tight, and it’s so much more than not being afraid of her.
I recognize it in a flash of useless intuition in the same instant that I realize she was most definitely just referring to her capacity for murder. And when she lunges for me, to make her point, it only underscores the severity of my first epiphany. When my back hits the stone floor, and I’m pinned horizontal beneath someone who, by all accounts, is the planet’s most lethal beast, my heart beats through every soft and breakable part of me—my fragile collarbone and my thinly armored throat and the sweaty palms of my gloved hands. She could rip my carefully assembled suit of armor off with her teeth.
And, instead of being terrified, instead of recognizing the inherent danger of the Shadowlands and its people that she’s so severely struggling to impress on me, I’m wondering if her hands would feel as cold as her blue-white skin looks, wondering where she might like to put her palms if the whole planet weren’t a plague, if she could leash the power in her claws enough to just pull me close, pin me in place, unable to escape, like I’d even want to.
Well, Kori, I somehow think through the head rush.It’s not like you weren’t already breaking all the rules.
CHAPTER
18
ADRIA
I’m still adjusting to the elevated power of this body, now blessed by the Diakópsei itself. I deliberately order every muscle to seize, to cease, before I collide full force with Kori and squash her into a bloodstain into the stone floor, which would thoroughly make my point but also end her existence. Even I’m surprised by the power in my launch, the rattle of her helmet when she hits the floor. I need to stop and steady my heavy breathing behind gritted teeth before I can continue the lesson at all.
By the Beyond, I only meant to imply any one of my people could kill her. Not to feel that newly constant bloodlust rise to the occasion like an overeager volunteer.
I mean every word that shudders out of me. “I could kill you like this.”
She says nothing, hardly even breathes, and it only fuels my rage. She needs to understand, if she’s going to spend any amount of time on this side of the planet, how dire that situation will always be, no matter how we deflect the tension into friendly verbal sparring.
“Any one of us could, without even trying.”
Are her eyes wide, behind that ever-present mask? Is her heart finally beating an overdue warning? It’s impossible to tell, and it only stokes my frustration. Every time I’ve tried to scare some common sense into this girl—up to and including bringing her to behold the very source of the radiation that could kill her—she’s deflected the attempt entirely.
“If I were to curl my hands into fists, I’d break your wrists,” I say, just barely testing the joints with my claws, quivering along the gloves’ thick fabric.
Even now, she says nothing. Witless, brainless girl. Braver than sense, kinder than the dark could ever deserve. She doesn’t belong here.
“If I were to lean my full weight on you, even just increase the pressure to make you talk …”
I can’t risk pressing my knee into her rib cage. Not unless I want to put the entire ransom at risk. But the tension in my limbs perched above her is nearly unbearable. I force my right knee back, like a drawn bowstring, and press the tension into the floor instead of her heart.
A light, warm brush of fabric, and I freeze. Presumably to hold herself still, Kori has managed to lock her thighs around my knee, holding us both in place. I don’t think about how close my knee is to where her legs meet. I don’t think about how warm and soft her skin might feel beneath the suit.
“I’m speaking to you now,” I nearly snarl, conflicting tensions warring through me, “because I’m trying to teach you a lesson before you learn it with your life. But if I wanted to …”
I bare my teeth, just enough to remind her my lips conceal fangs.Be afraid, I plead silently.Be afraid.If she never learns fear, she won’t last long here.
If I can’t instill it, I’ll never be the monster this kingdom demands of a queen.
“You’ve made your point,” Kori breathes, barely audible, voice balanced on a freezeblade’s edge and wavering.
