“No, Captain.” But I’m not about to kick her out of her own office.
“Good.” She stands with her bottle of tea. “I’m going to bed.”
Fabia curses even more colourfully than she has so far. Stepping out of Echo’s way, she skewers me alive with her eyes. As soon as the door shuts behind her, Jace snickers. “You called her Captain.”
“Sorry, uh, I… Do you want me to get it myself?” I deadpan.
“Fuck off, the two of you, and tell me why the fuck I’m out of bed. I just fell asleep.”
Marching across the room, Fabia sits in Echo’s chair. Her eyes drop to the photo and soften a bit. Then they rise to glare again at me.
I really want to ask her to turn the photo around.
But knowing Echo will notice it being a smidgen out of place, I don’t. Besides, that’s not why I’m here.
Sitting back down in my chair, I hold Fabia’s gaze. “I want to thank you for protecting Arienna all this time. She told me what you did to her grandfather.”
“Fuck.” Her anger draining into exhaustion, she runs a hand down her face. “The protection was mutual. She’s the only reason I’m ah… sane,” she says, then clears her throat. “So does this mean we’re also good on the whole poison thing?”
I smile coldly. “You know I can’t execute you.”
“No, but you can make Echo give me extra laps.” Her anger back, she scowls at me.
“I thought you wanted to fast track your training?” A smile twitches at my lips, but I’m not stupid enough to let it show.
Her eyes narrowing, she shoves to her feet. “Fuck. This isn’t just going to be a ‘thank you and go back to sleep’ convo, is it? It’s going to take all night.” Bending to open the mini fridge, she pulls out an iced coffee. I shiver in fear as I glance at the door behind me.
“Uh… I wouldn’t do –” Jace starts as he takes a step from the wall.
Glaring at him, Fabia uncorks the top, then glugs the whole thing down. Glancing at me, she re-corks the bottle, then puts it back in the fridge before grabbing another one.
Jace whistles. “You have a death wish.”
“She woke me up.” Dropping back into Echo’s chair, she snaps, “Get on with it then. I want to try to at least get a little sleep tonight. My squadron’s to be up at dawn.”
I lean forwards. “Tell me about life in Brownston.”
“Why?”
“Do you want this to take all night or not?”
Glaring at me, she uncorks her bottle and takes a drink. “It’s a cult. Follow all three hundred and eighty rules and don’t ever break them, or you’ll ‘be asked to come down to the station’,where you’ll then be ‘held’ until you apologise and promise not to do it again.” She snorts.
“That’s your punishment?”
She sneers, “How do you not know anything about us? Your trees literally surround us on all sides.” That’s not quite accurate. We surround roughly half of the Brownstons. The other Brownstons (for some dumbass reason, every town of theirs shares the same name, as does their kingdom) are to the south of us, well inside Alcara.
I deadpan, “Like you know all about us having slug dick gang bangs and pegging fetishes?”
“I researched that.”
“From what? The fiction section?”
She scowls. “Brownies don’t have a fiction section. We’re not allowed to lie.”
“Fiction isn’t lying.”
“Tell that to them.”
