Page 173
Not because youth makes him innocent, but because it makes this entire thing feel beneath me, as if I have been dragged into a fight with a starving farm boy whose greatest weapon is the fact that Alessia once loved him before she knew the world was larger than Purgatory.
His gaze lifts when I enter.
No fear.
Only anger.
“Here to kill me now Alessia isn’t here?” he asks, his voice rough.
I close the door behind me.
“If I came to kill you, you’d be dead long before you had a chance to ask that question.”
His mouth tightens.
I walk farther into the room slowly and stop near the hearth, close enough that he has to tilt his head back to meet my eyes.
“The only reason you are alive is because I have permitted it,” I say.
Arlo’s fingers tighten around the edge of the blanket.
“I didn’t ask to be here.”
“No,” I reply. “And I would prefer it if you weren’t.”
His jaw flexes. “You really do talk like everything is yours.”
“Not everything. Just her.” The silence between us grows heavier.
The fire snaps softly in the hearth, throwing light over his bruised face, and I watch him decide whether his pride is worth provoking me.
Apparently, it is.
“You don’t own her,” he says.
“No,” I agree, and his eyes narrow because he expected a fight. “I do not own her.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you do not seem to understand that being spared is not the same as being welcome.”
He scoffs. I take the folded papers from inside my coat and toss them onto the small table beside him.
He glances at them but does not reach. “What is that?”
“Your contract records,” I say. “Your mother’s, yours, and your sister’s.”
His expression changes, but it isn’t even close to gratitude. “You went through my family’s papers?”
“I went through everything that concerns a man my bond was so desperate to save, and as far as I’m concerned, you belong to me.”
“Your bond has a name.” The word rolls off his tongue with disgust.
“She has a crown now as well,” I say. “You would be wise to remember both.”
Arlo stands too quickly and pays for it. His face tightens as pain drags a breath through his teeth, but he remains upright because pride is apparently the only part of him untouched by injury.
“You want me to leave?” he asks.
