In this little pocket of darkness, shadows snake around him, desperate to reclaim the space and eat through the light.
My eyes narrow on him. And they stay narrowed as I shift around to sit on my folded legs.
But there’s patience on his face. His pale eyes are haunted by the shadows of the dark. No snarl, no hatred, no frost climbing along his cheekbone—
He looks down at me, and waits.
Waits for what, I don’t know.
Then he echoes his earlier words, “What is your trouble, Tesni?”
I stare at him with a mixture of shock and outrage. Then I blink—and it all comes tumbling out.
“You talk to them.” It’s an accusation that comes with too much force, too much strength in my voice. “On the radio,myradio, you talk to them. And you never let me speak to her, and you never tell me if she’s ok—”
“Why should I share with you?” Samick’s tone is ice, sheeted in it. “You are a human. A ward. You are nothing. Who are you to demand I tell you anything?”
Green runs through his eyes, like faint brushstrokes of jade through pale quartz.
That gives him away.
And it spurs me on.
I scramble to my feet, my middle aching from the pressure of his shoulder.
“Who are you,” I start, my voice shaking—both with rising rage… and the instinct sparking through me, the reality that I’m this little speck of life standing in front of a towering, muscle-packed beast, “to keep that from me? You have no right,no right,” I seethe, my face reddening, “to decide what I know about her.”
His lashes lower, casting shadows down his face, but the light still reveals the faint strokes of green.
“It is my right,” he says, and he says it with too much conviction, like it’s an absolute. “As it is my right to kill you now.”
I can feel my face hardening, muscle by muscle, and my grip on the torch tightening. “You can’t.”
Samick takes a step closer.
Just one.
Foliage cracks under his boot, and I feel suddenly smaller than I ever have before.
“I cannot?” His face is unchanging, pure stone. “I cannot rip your throat out here where you stand, or touch you with frost and watch you freeze at my boots, unable to gasp for air to feed your sickly lungs?”
My resolve falters.
My boots slides back a step, but the rage stops me from running.
My face twists with nothing short of hatred. “You have a bargain. And that is to keep me alive.”
His smile is small—and cruel.
It sends a chill down my spine.
“I am not dokkalf. I am not litalf. I could kill you now and tell your friend you died from the elements, from the earth cracking, from the morke, from the forsaken—there are many tales I could tell of your death,human.”
He spits the word like it’s the greatest insult.
My hand betrays me.
It shakes.
