Forewarned was forearmed.She knew where the knife was coming from.There was still time to change her fate if she was brave and clever enough to figure out a way out of this.
Caius was the key.
The uncharacteristic impulse that had led her to intervene on his behalf may have just become Gus’s saving grace.From this moment on, he was the most important person on Titan.Her survival depended on his.
First, though, she needed information.
Gus scrubbed at her cheeks, feeling steadier now that she had a plan of attack.She might not have her siblings’ appetite for destruction, but she was no slouch.She wasn’t going to just roll over and let the mastermind destroy her life.Not after everything she’d endured.
A search of the other two bodies uncovered tattoos in various stages of completion.The second Gus revealed was the most finished and belonged to the man she’d pegged as their leader.It had a skull whose eye socket the belladonna was growing through.Several clusters of berries decorated the stalk.
The last was only half finished.It lacked a skull, and there was only a single cluster of berries resting beneath the purple bell shaped flowers.
Gus wondered if the number of berry clusters was their way of determining rank.The fewer clusters, the lower they were in the hierarchy.
Not that it mattered.They were all going to die.By her hand or someone else’s.
The sight of the tattoos extinguished the small hope Gus held that this might all be a mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake.Here was the evidence.
“I told you to wait in the garden,” Gus said, folding the arm she’d been examining back against the man’s chest.There hadn’t been enough time for rigor mortis to set, so it went fairly easily.
“Would you have waited just because someone told you to?”Anandra asked.
Gus pushed herself to her feet.“Probably.”
In her experience, disobedience invited punishment.Gus wasn’t a fan of pain.If there was a way to avoid it, she would.Even if that made others call her a coward.
Her response seemed to take Anandra off guard.His gaze flitted from Gus to the bodies behind her.“You’re really not with them?”
Gus followed his gaze, barely restraining her sneer.“Oh no, I am their death.”
A little dramatic but accurate.
“Come—I promised you food,” Gus ordered, trusting Anandra to follow as she glided past on whisper silent feet.
Unsurprisingly, the boy did.His hunger—or curiosity—compelling him to trail in her wake.
For the second time that day, Gus prepared two mugs of masala chai.The first she set in front of Anandra.Along with a plate of food.
The second she kept for herself as she claimed a seat across from the boy.
She took a sip, the knots in her stomach settling as she stared at the boy over the rim of her mug.
For someone who’d likely been fed swill for who knew how long, he was being awfully picky.Not touching the food or drink Gus had made him.
Gus lowered her mug.“Problem?”
Reluctantly, Anandra reached for the drink.Unable to hide his suspicion, he took an experimental sniff.
Gus was gratified by his look of surprise upon his first sip.
Anandra held the mug away, tilting it so he could examine its contents more closely.“This tastes likelaug.”
Of course it did.That’s why Gus had made it.To give Anandra a taste of home.A gift in circumstances as trying as these.
She had a feeling this boy had walked through a hell she knew all too well.The fact that something familiar was also likely to loosen his tongue was neither here nor there.
