Eyes harder than the stone they bore through, his silence is broken only by the breath that comes a little quicker in his chest.
“Where are you from?”
No ‘fuck you’ this time. Only that tense and unbroken refusal.
“Have they fed you?”
The slightest line creases his carefully schooled brow, and not for the first time, I hear his stomach growl.
He’s starving. Of course he is.
“What would you give me for a taste?” I pluck another grape, the largest and juiciest he will ever have seen in his entire life if he’s from the same place as me.
If anything can convince a man to give up a name, or his people, it’s starvation followed swiftly by the offer of food.
I bring it to the hard seam of his mouth, trailing the wet fruit across his stubborn lower lip. He pulls his head back with that same wrinkle of disgust he showed when I inspected him in the lineup. That’s fine. He can be as disgusted as he likes, so long as I get the truth out of him. “Tell me where you’re from.”
A muscle sparks beneath his left eye.
“Do what I tell you, and you can eat as much as you like.”
There’s a taut moment of hesitation, then finally, his head lowers. For the first time, I have the sinking feeling he’s going to tell me. And that, therefore, he’s not really from Atrea.
He can’t be.
He’s splendid in every shift of muscle, every line of his form. I could swear I sense the sunshine of home in his hair.
But an Atrean would never give in so easily—never be so desperate, so lacking in pride, or so stupid as to give up their people for a piece of fruit.
His mouth slides open, and I let him have the grape anyway, my dreams vanishing as fast as the fruit disappears into his mouth with the push of my finger, a lifeline closing like his pretty white teeth—
“Motherfucker!”
As quickly as the pain of the bite shoots through me, the resounding crack of the back of my hand meeting his jaw claps off the stone walls around us. Hands restrained, he stumbles against the table. I’m behind him in a second, smashing his head down against the wood. “You want to bite the hand that feeds you? I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”
“You will never touch me!” he screams, face red, spit flying from his clenched teeth, hard against the table. “You try it, and I’ll fucking kill you!”
Try what?
It takes a moment for his words to sink in, to realize what he’s saying. I release him the second the revulsion hits, stepping away as sick laughter rips out of me. “Is that what you think?”
I can’t help it. It’s verging on hysteria, the laughter pouring out, the memories of it all, one piled on top of another—my first day standing here just like him, presented not to the captain, but to the Emperor himself. “You’d be lucky if I were the one who claimed you first.”
He regains his balance, spitting blood from his mouth onto the stone ground—his or mine, I’m not sure.
I guess my face is too far away this time.
The memory of that, the disrespect, the fear of my first day in this city coming back upon me in full—the ground I’m about to lose in front of him—shoots anger through my arm. In a second I’ve got him by the throat, that hard slap of his back against stone filling my ears, the mass of him pinned against the wall. My fingers sink deep into his flesh, controlling every breath of air above the hard curve of his gilt collar. “Look at me.”
He does, breathing hard but unflinching, furious gray eyes, fathomless, violent seas like the shores of Atrea.
“Do you think I need to take you by force?”
I try to stare him down, but he never yields, not for a heartbeat.
“Do you really believe there isn’t a man in that dungeon who wouldn’t get down on his knees for me then say thank you with his next breath?”
His eyelashes waver. I feel his neck work beneath my hand. Still, he says nothing.
