“I became a ward of Dorcha to be raised in a loyalist house. Those who dedicate their lives to fostering the youth with promise.”
I sigh and drop onto the edge of the tub. The tiled ledge is too firm to be comfortable.
“Your, uh,promise,” I start, delicate, “is all the things you can do that they can’t, right?”
I think I’ve figured out more than he has.
He just looks at me blankly, like he doesn’t fully understand what I’m insinuating.
But it sounds a lot like he was stolen from another land—and being this powerful fae baby with an empty mind, he was placed with what he calls loyalists… but are always extremists, usually overly religious, too.
I can’t keep the grimace off my face.
He was groomed.
He was crafted into what Dorcha wanted him to be.
Bet the whalers even killed his mum, because she had a mind full of life and opinions, so he was the prize, not her.
But thankfully, Samick can’t read minds. At most, he can sense my doubt and suspicion.
“What about your adoptive mum?” I ask, and there’s derision in my tone. “Not everyone is lucky enough to get a replacement.”
‘The mother I remember is no mother at all’, he said. And he doesn’t remember his birth mum—so there’s pain there with the adoptive one.
I want to press that pain. Push it.
I want to hurt him for what he said about cancer and wallowing.
“I was raised to be both what I am and nothing close to what I am.” He lifts his chin, offended by my question. “I was raised to perfect my senses, whether it be the feelings of others or incoming storms. I was raised to kill with a touch… but I was raised to feel, also. And this is unnatural to me.” He watches me, dark lashes low over moody eyes. “The fae of the ice do not feel as the dokkalves do. We live in echoes. That is how I can kill those in sorrow,” he says, cold. “I feel it as a mere echo.”
A chill runs down my spine.
The swallow I give is loud, too loud for the softness of the bathroom and the trickling of water.
Samick’s gaze drops to my mouth before I turn my lips inwards and bite down on them.
I have no idea why he tells me any of this so openly, if it’s the absence of the unit that frees his tongue and loosens his lips. Orif it’s the way he stares at me sometimes, like now, watching my mouth spring back from my teeth, plumping, and it lurches me back to the pharmacy, when he said my name, and I know now just as I did then that there was something stirring in him when he spoke it.
Samick lingers his stare over my lips before travelling my face, every freckle, every blemish, a pimple I scratched in the dark that hurt my chin, the rawness of my face after I scrubbed it—
Too much is in that stare.
Like he doesn’t only observe me, he devours me.
“It was theory and lessons—”
His words jolt me back.
I frown at him.
But still, his gaze wanders, now down to my clavicle, just above the wrapped towel.
“I was taught to care for the feelings of others by rule, even if it went against my nature. The time came for the teachings to be practiced. I heard the screams of children. Humans.”
I feel the colour drain from my face.
Samick considers the folded towel over my breasts, like he’s counting my freckles just above the fabric.
