Page 31 of A Cruel Kindness

“Crafty,” I bit out, lest I use much stronger words for her father.

“Endlessly so,” Bellamy agreed. Her hands curled more firmly around her coffee mug, and I restrained the urge to hold them.

Just one, the Bond begged.

No, I snapped back.

ONE, it yelled.

I wrapped one of my hands around hers. The Bond quieted immediately, the grumpy asshole.

“I thought I had more time,” Bellamy said next. Her hand was warm against mine, if not actively pressing into it. “But I—it would have happened within the year.” She laughed then, a self-deprecating little chuckle. “He told me over breakfast like it was no different than commenting on the weather. Oh, and by the way, Bellamy, you will be getting married soon.”

I could hear her father’s voice clearly as she spoke, in all its perfectly sterile, regal glory. “What did you say to him?”

Bellamy’s smile fell an inch. “I just nodded. I expected myself to have a lot more fight. I don’t know why I just sat there, but I did.”

I shook my head before she was even finished speaking, neither me nor the Bond able to entertain a negative word about her, even from herself. “When did you decide to enlist?”

Bellamy’s grin turned back up. Thank God. “About ten minutes later.”

“What made you?” I prodded, unable to stop asking even if I wasn’t supposed to care. I should be glad her family was getting the same treatment as mine had. Revenge and all that.

Bellamy paused to take a slow sip of coffee. I certainly didn’t take note of how her throat bobbed with the move. Nor did I slide my gaze down to her exposed collarbones peeking out from under her tank. “I spent the next ten minutes in utter denial. I don’t really know how to describe it well, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of marrying someone. I sat there running through every alternative in my head. The only one that seemed to make any sense was to enlist. Hope I got a good Match that my father couldn’t fight.”

I felt no small swell of satisfaction at that statement. She did the right thing. She came to me. “A Soul Match was exactly what you were looking for, then?”

“The hardest to argue with.” I couldn’t tell by her expression if her father had. Her mask was on again, her emotions carefully sheltered.

“How did you sneak away to the priestesses?” There was a temple that housed the Goddess’s priestesses attached to the Florus Castle. Every single Saturday during my childhood, I was dragged down to that temple in our best clothing and forced to sit through hours of ceremony that celebrated the unity between our planet and Muli . Those ceremonies always ended with a thinly veiled attack at Muli’s selfishness for starting this war, disrespecting the God and Goddess that had given us life.

The priestesses were the ones with the power to pull out your Mark. It was torture, plain and simple. I woke up in a cold sweat every day for a year remembering how it felt to be ripped apart from the inside out. Not even Crossing was that painful.

They did it to Bellamy, too. She had to suffer, the Bond decided to point out, intruding into my thoughts. It was almost like it wanted me to get mad, to lose control.

My hands tightened around the coffee mug, though there was a brief moment where I envisioned it was the neck of the priestess that had caused Bellamy pain.

“In the middle of the night,” Bellamy answered, pulling me from my thoughts. “I snuck down around four and waited until they began their morning rituals. I lied and said I’d had a vision from the Goddess so they’d test me without my father’s permission.”

I snorted, knowing that the priestesses probably jumped at the fact to latch onto a story that furthered the Goddess’s mission on Vir. “It hurt?” I asked, knowing how it had felt when they’d done the very same to me, even through the numbness of realizing what my life looked like from now on.

Bellamy scoffed, her head tipping slightly to the side. “Oh, yes.”

I was torn between hating that she experienced pain at all and happy that she’d done it. That she’d come to me.

Underneath all that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t being completely honest with me. Sure, I didn’t know what her tells were, or how good of a liar she was, but I had a gut feeling. “There’s more to that story,” I said, testing the waters.

Bellamy’s eyes shot up to mine, going slightly wide.

Got her. The fact that she was evading me, even when we promised honesty was grating. Sure, I wasn’t necessarily entitled to anything.

It sure felt like I was. It felt like I was bound to her stronger than a hundred-year-old oak tree rooted in the soil.

“Are you going to tell me?” I asked, seeing if she would. We’d shared a type of honesty that was shocking, admitting to the Bond at all was far more intimate than a few petty secrets.

Bellamy blinked rapidly, carefully thinking of her response. Though it grated that she was pulling that move on me, I had to be at least glad that she was thinking it through, maybe enough to decide to give in. “Not right now. Maybe not ever.”

“Not a fan of that,” I said, my voice thin. It felt physically painful to consider a world where she kept things from me. Not that I expected minute by minute monitoring, but this was too far.