Chapter forty
Spiritually Disharmonious Uses of a Mirror
Riot
“Putawayyourshitwith Honey,” Riot whispered to Sage as they left the commissary. “Right now she needs to agree to leave and you’re the only person who is going to be with her all day. Tighten the fuck up.”
Sage pursed her lips. “She doesn’t know about the scars—”
“No. And you don’t tell her. The scars are Cass’s. You do not take that from him.”
She glared.
“You have until this evening,” Riot said. “Make it count.”
On the walk back to the house, Riot tried to talk. Once, twice, a third time. Cass said nothing. He looked at Riot, kept walking, kept checking his robes at the collar, looking at the gardens, breathing the scrubbed air like everything was fine.
The gold crept in. The greens got too bright. The whites went sharp. His peripheral vision expanded until he could see his own pulse in his temples and Cass’s braids caught the light and hurt to look at. He was getting mad. The pressure valve inside him was beginning to lose its integrity and he needed it to stop, but Cass wouldn’t fucking talk to him.
Mine. Ours. He’s going to touch ours. That man is going to come to the house and—
Shut up. SHUT UP.
—and we’re going to STAND there—
Control. You are in control.
The moment they stepped inside the house, he stopped trying to control it. It came out of him like a cough. “You can’t!”
Cass turned from the door, his eyes wide as he played with the beads in his hair.
“You can’t ask me to do this, Cass!”
“I already—”
“I know what you already did. I was right fucking there holding your hand!” The volume was wrong. He could hear it—too loud for the room, too loud for the man standing six feet away in white robes looking scared. “I was holding your hand while you looked that man in the face andvolunteeredto let him—while you just—like it was fucking nothing—”
“It’s not noth—”
“DON’T.” His hand came up, not toward Cass, but the motion was sharp and the room was small and Cass flinched with his whole body, ducking his head and looking at the ground as he kept turning a bead in his hair.
You did that. You. Congratulations.
“I’m sorry—” Riot started.
“Don’t stop.” Cass’s voice was thick and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand in a rough, fast motion like someone who was used to crying and resented the inconvenience of it. “If you stop now you’ll just…it’ll sit in you. Say it. Whatever it is. Say it.”
“You’re asking me to do nothing while he comes in here with his—his fucking torture tools and his voice and hisI’m proud of you Cassiopeiaand I just—what? Count fucking ceiling panels? Listen to it? Pretend I’m—”
He paced. Four steps and turn. Four steps and turn. The gold made the walls swim.
“I have been a monster for ten years. That’s—that’s the job. That’s what they built. A thing that kills. A thing that people cross the street to get away from. And I was—I’d made my peace with that, I’d figured out how to be that and still—to still get through the day without—”
Four steps. Turn.
“And then you’re there. In a fucking alley and you don’t know me and you don’t know who I am and you just took my hands and you bandaged them like I’m a—like I’m a person and not a—”
His voice cracked with the sound a structure made when a load-bearing wall gave out.
