His face pales. “Now?” The soldier, who’s a head taller than her and heavyset with muscles chiseled from stone, shrinks in on himself. Echo does not like being questioned. Working his lips, he swallows hard, then squeaks, “Yes, Captain.”
“And Dish?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Do it without ending up on your ass, and I’ll reduce your latrine duty by two days.”
He sags. “Yes, Captain.”
His lack of enthusiasm makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. When Jace and I were under Echo’s tutelage, we would have done anything to get out of latrine duty. Her recruits barely have the energy tomake itto the loo. Shit and piss is always everywhere, including on the fucking ceiling.
Jace snickers. “Is she really that awful to wake?”
Holding her right arm out, Echo rolls up her sleeve. An ugly bruise discolours her skin. “I got this blocking a rock she threw at my head.” She rolls up the other one. “Right hook when I dragged her out of bed.”
“Damn, I feel sorry for Nicholas.” Jace laughs, shaking his head.
Forgetting all about whether Fabia sleeps with rocks or if she just happened to find one, I glance at him. “Are they together?”
He snorts. “He wishes.” His eyes drop to Echo’s arms as she rolls her sleeves back down. “Or maybe not.”
Turning on her heels, Echo heads for her office.
“Nicholas said that to you?” I ask as we follow her.
“Not in words, but watch them together, and you’ll see.” Jace snickers, shaking his head once more.
Approving of Fabia as my sister, I smile. Nicholas could use a little fire to show him a way out of the darkness he’s been clinging to these last few years. Although it hasn’t been longsince his divorce with Stephanie went through – the fucking Court having dragged it out, she disfigured him two years ago. I was busy fighting the Okahi, and we did not see each other for a long time. But once word reached me through one of Evangeline’s ants, I came back to Kholar to find Stephanie still living in the fucking castle.
I would have killed her if Nicholas hadn’t intervened. But for some fucking reason, he made me promise not to hurt her. Domestic violence isn’t a crime in Raza. Once married, a man becomes the property of his wife. If he dies, it carries the same penalty as a robbery. We need the soldiers, and we will not kill the women who can birth the next generation unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, getting them to simply stop being violent is too damn hard; it’s almost as if sending children to war gives them lifelong trauma that they then take out on the weak.
But one of these days, my brother is going to learn what real love is and realise that whatever power Stephanie has over him, it isnotlove.
Love…
What do I know about love when I can’t even say it back to my queen?
Irritated, I look at Jace. “You know tonight was a one-off?”
“More like a two-off.”
I glare at him, but the bastard smiles. Laughing, he slaps me on the back, above my wings. “Yeah, I figured. She’s not really my type anyway.”
I slug him in the arm. “What the fuck does that mean? She’s perfect.”
He grins. “For you. Not for me.”
A teenage girl slams into the ground at the edge of the training area as we walk down the other side of it. She rolls back onto her feet, only to instantly get punched in the face.
“I like mine feistier, a bit scarier. Where I don’t quite know if they’re going to fuck me or try to kill me.”
Like Aurelia.
Flexing my left hand, I don’t say another word on the way to Echo’s office.
Neither does Jace.
The silence, uncomfortable and heavy, pierces me from all sides. In twenty-eight days, it will be the anniversary of my sister’s death. The scar Jace gave me will have faded until it’s nearly gone, trying to rob me of the last memento I have of her. I’ll stop sleeping a few days before, and being near Jace will become unbearable – for the both of us, our guilt feeding on each other’s until it’s a festering pit of pain neither of us can ignore.
