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“Like fucking hell!” I whip my head to him, bones shivering under my skin with a cold, silent rage. My boy is out there, and God knows what the Vexamen Breed is doing to him. I won’t sit back any longer like a helpless doll. I want to fight. I want to be strong too.
The table stiffens, shoulders back, trying not to look at us as Dessin and I stare each other down. His face is unreadable, yet his dark-mahogany eyes flicker, like something buried deep in his subconscious is trying to claw its way out.
“I’ll train! I’ll strengthen my body. I’ll do whatever you want. But I won’t sit here and wait. You’ll have to chain me up and knock me out.” My voice is trembling along with my hands, breaking into thin shards of glass, announcing that at any given moment, I might burst into tears.
Dessin doesn’t say a word. He lets his eyes fall closed, taking a shallow, uneven breath.
“Dessin… you know how the Vexamen breed treats their animals. We don’t have time to argue. We just have to get him back.” Warrose’s jaw sets as if the knowledge behind his words has turned his stomach.
“What do they do to their animals?” I ask him, unsure if I want to know. But I need to hear it.Turning a blind eye won’t help anyone.
Warrose opens his mouth to speak, but Dessin holds up a hand. “Don’t you fucking dare.” His face says it all. It tells us that he’s teetering over the edge. That at any moment, he’ll combust, burst into a fiery vehemence. The pressure on his shoulders is a sharp dagger to his heart. Despite my pain, I want to hold him, tell him that we’ll be okay, tell him that it’s not his fault. But I can’t. I still cannot get past how much he’s hurt me with his omission of truth.
The table sits in uncomfortable silence for several minutes before Dessin finally speaks again.
“You’ll keep training until we’re ready to leave. Then we’ll free DaiSzek together.”
I sneak into Warrose and Ruth’s room, twisting the crystal knob quietly, and slipping inside without making a sound. The only light splashing across the glossy wooden walls is from the fireplace. Ruth is sitting on the carpet, flat on her tummy, reading. Warrose is two steps out of the washroom, running a towel through his long, wet hair.
He looks at me with an eyebrow raised. Without a shirt, he’s covered in raised tattoos. Gray-and-black markings, like a calligraphy pen drawn over his muscles in a foreign language. He tightens the towel around his hips.
“I have a question,” I ask him, closing the door behind me.
“Okay.” He finishes wringing his hair out. Pauses. “Can I put pants on first?”
“That would be best.”
He disappears into the washroom, and Ruth peeks at me over her book.
“He wouldn’t let me do my lady-doll regimen,” she whispers.
“That’s probably best too.”
“No, it’s not. I feel all dry and lifeless without it.” She folds a page over to mark her place. “Remember how much we enjoyed taking our baths together? Sneaking Aurick’s food and wine?”
His name is a sword puncturing through my chest, snapping my bones, and filling my lungs with blood. Too many emotions jolt through me. I could cry, scream, throw a tantrum, or sit emptily in silence. I don’t know which to feel.
“It’s a disgusting rule to control women.” Warrose bristles past me, wearing black-as-night pants and no shirt. I look over at Ruth, who is gawking at his arms.
I sit on the twin bed next to his. “What were you talking about when you said the Vexamen Breed doesn’t treat their animals well? How do they treat them?”
He shakes his head quickly, warding off the question. “Dessin was right. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Well, you did. Now tell me. I deserve to know.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Tell her, coward!” Ruth is sitting up now, looking rather adorable in her white nightgown and furrowed brow.
“Coward?” Warrose cocks his head to her. “So now I’m cowardly?”
My mind buzzes with the fear of the unknown. How will DaiSzek be treated? Would it hurt me to know? Would it only make me feel more powerless?
“Yes. You’re too chicken to do something Dessin won’t like. That makes you a chicken coward.”
“I am not.” Warrose looks both amused and annoyed as he gazes down at Ruth like she’s a pest he can’t get rid of. “And wow, you’re really gearing up with your insults.Chicken coward.”
“Prove it. Tell her.”
