I ignore his question, working hard to void my emotions—stuffing them away like pushing junk beneath my pallet. But it doesn’t stop my hands from trembling as I refold the lark precisely down the lines already pressed into it. Taking care to move slow enough that my shakes don’t rip the parchment or bend it in any unnatural places.
Coming to the stage where the lark is flat—only a few folds away from the opening stage that gives it life—I hold it out. “Can you be gentle with this, please?”
Silence endures for a long while before the Scavenger King takes it and tucks it into his pocket.
He doesn’t move or show any signs of leaving until, slowly, he extends his hand toward me.
My heart plummets, gaze dropping to his open palm, all the blood leaving my head so fast I’m struck with a dizziness that threatens to plunge me into oblivion.
Assume he doesn’t know!
I place my hand in his.
He drops it. Flicks his palm up again. Open.
Waiting.
My soul droops in unison with my shoulders.
Sighing, I reach beneath my bum, grab the picks, and hand them over.
He inspects them long and hard, then tucks them away. “You have more fight than I believed possible,” he murmurs, his words slow-flowing. His head tilts to the side. “Seems we’re more similar than I thought.”
I don’t fucking think so.
“Though I respect that,” he continues, “my miskunn has foreseen your escape even without the picks. Forgive me, Princess, but hope is a powerful weapon in the wrong hands. And I can’t afford mistakes.”
I frown, wondering what he’s talking about.
Again, he reaches out a hand.
Every cell in my body stills, then begins to shudder so violently I’m surprised I can’t hear my bones rattling against each other.
“No—” I tighten. Curl instinctively around Nee wriggling against me, like she senses my welling distress. “Please don’t take her.Please.She’s not hurting anyone. Her return fold is already spent.I beg you—”
“Or I’ll destroy the one in my pocket.”
Shards of ice spear through my veins, my breaths coming hard and fast despite the sense that a hand is wrapped around my throat—squeezing.
Choking me.
I almost shove Nee through the bars and scream for her to go. To fly. To forget about me and flutter free of this fucking place.But there’s a very high chance that the life of another one of my maids, or the well-being of my beautiful Surí, is tied to that lark in the Scavenger King’s pocket.
I drop my gaze to his hand, up again. Stare at those bloodstone eyes. “What if I—”
“The answer is no.”
I whimper, tightening.
Nee somehow flutters free, darts straight for my neck, and nuzzles in.
Sucking a choked breath, I bring my hands up and scoop her into my grasp. Her wings thrash against my palms like a captured sowmoth.
My face crumbles, eyes burning with tears I can’t plug. “You won’t hurt her, will you?Please. She’s all I have of my mah—”
“Now, Kyzari.”
His voice is brutally cold. Unwavering. The voice of someone who seems more dead than alive.
