“Then let’s hope you’ve learned that nippy dogs get put down.”
Luka spared me a look, which was painful without any words to break the intensity. Those auburn eyes were so deep, I remembered the fear of falling for them. I couldn’t tell how my words made him feel, but I hoped they made him feel something. “Well, at least when you don’t dwell on the past, you can look to the future. You may be wise after all.”
Heat rose in my neck, a sickening rage steadily overflowing.
“Now you may spend more time planning on how to expand with the new resources that you have.”
“New resources?”
“Yes. I have ideas,” he started, “though I would like to let you hear them sometime if you will stop being so grim. I could help you with certain things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I could poke around and see if we can sort out thiscorruptedissue.”
“Why?”
“Because your problems are my problems now.”
I turned my head to look at him, considering his words carefully. “What is it you want in return?”
“The return is that I get to be part of something new, and I get to be at the top of the chain.”
“I don’t know if I trust you to be anywhere near the top.”
“Get used to it, because it will come naturally with my close proximity to you,” he practically purred.
“You are foolish to think I would let that happen again.”
“A lot of talk from the girl who has barely made it through her first life?—”
My foot was crossing the threshold before he could finish, the door slamming snug into its frame before I tucked myself against the wall. I didn’t have to let him get to me, but lord knows he could. The stress of alternating threats persisted around me, and I had no way of stopping it. A proper conundrum. My chest would cave in if I kept it all bottled up, yet the glass of my body was heating fast, threatening to blow with every throttle. The headaches of the past few weeks were enough to make my eyes feel like they were popping from my skull.
Even so, it must be kept tucked away as an interior struggle. It would only be for a bit longer; the dust had to settle soon. I just had to breathe, because being alive was enough resistance, and I had to find a way to tie all the fraying strings together.
32
THE POISONER
“Ladies! Pick a paper before you run off!” Phoebe held a chatelaine purse open as we gathered around.
One by one, hands dipped into the purse and pulled out small strips of paper.
Phoebe insisted that we choose our secret gift exchange recipients while we were at the market, so we could potentially pick some small gifts for each other.
The sun was bright today, reflecting harshly off the ground and nearly blinding me as I wandered past the maze of tents. Unfolding my paper, I read the name.
Silas.
Of course I had picked his name. Fate taunts me every day; today it had a sense of humor. I wouldn’t know what to get for someone like him, if not my boot up his?—
“Who did you get?” Edith chirped by my side.
“No one.” I crumpled the paper and stuck it in the pocket of my coat.
“Oh.” Her face held some sort of dejection, like I had shot down an advance.
“Have you seen anything you like at the vendors?” I asked her. “Did you want to bring anything to work for your coworkers?”
