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“I’m…” I tread carefully, “glad. Things were different last time I was here.”
She stares at me, almost glaring, before her eyes drop. “Yeah, well. He and I came to an… understanding.”
I feel my eyebrows go up. I’ve never known Vlad to be understanding about anything.
She obviously sees my skepticism. “As in, I made him understand some things after you left.”
After I left.
“Phoenix,” I start to say. “We never talked about it, but I want to apologize for how I was back then—”
But she holds up a hand before I can finish.
“Please don’t,” she says with a pained smile. “You were fine.”
My chest clenches tight. I wasn’t. I know I wasn’t. She’d clouded all my senses, and I hadn’t been conscience enough of what she was dealing with. “I’m sorry I cut off all contact. Sabra told me you’d asked about me months later. But I just—”
“It’s fine,” she says, still with that plastic smile she gives the rest of the world. Not the real one that touches her eyes. “If you’d stayed, Vlad would just have found a way to use you against me.”
Another shot fired. Like he did the second I came back. She doesn’t have to say it, but it lands all the same. I get it now. How doomed any of this always was. She’ll always resent me. She stood up to Vlad and found a way to break his hold on her. But then I came back and now she’s under his thumb again, which she hates more than anything in this world.
I nod, my eyes dropping. I can’t look at her right now. Not with the cold, empty, familiar ache that’s seeping into my chest. “I know you always dreamed of going back to school. I’m so proud of you.”
When I look back up, she’s turned away from me again, her back moving up and down like she’s heaving for breath.
“Phoenix?” I take a step forward. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she says, but her voice comes out a little strangled. She stomps toward the door. “Let’s go. Breakfast will be ready.”
Chapter Four
PHEONIX
10 Years Ago
I feel his eyes on me as he crouches, shivering in his towel on the bed while I eat the stew after reheating it on the woodfire stove.
“It’s rude to stare,” I say.
“You’re eating.” He sounds surprised.
I just stare back at him. Does he think it’s rude of me to eat in front of him? “You said you didn’t want any more yet.”
He waves a hand warily as if that’s not what he meant. “Humans don’t.”
“What?” I shove another spoonful of stew into my mouth. It’s a little bland, but the potatoes, carrots, and bit of gamey meat are still hearty and fill my belly nicely.
“Eat when I’m around.”
“I never said I was human.”
His eyebrows go up. “What are you?”
“Well, that’s also rude to ask a girl on a first date, don’t you think?”
His eyes narrow, and I roll mine.
“You really need to learn to take a joke. Lighten up, man. You don’t have to be so goddamn serious all the time.”
