Like now. He’s talking about the death of his people—a city of souls he traded his own soul to save. Whereas what did he really do to me that day on the mountain? Scare the fuck out of me? Yes. Definitely. But he never actually intended to kill me. That much is clear from how he’s been protecting me from the possession’s side effects this whole time.
“Still, you named your terms,” Syrus continues. “Terms I fully intend to uphold, and I thought we agreed to work together. Yet the first opportunity you get, you run off and refuse to tell me anything about what you’re up to. Are you deliberately trying to sabotage this?”
I could lie, of course, pretend I never made any plans to try to break the possession link. But he must already suspect something, given his question. It’s the natural conclusion after I’ve proven I can block him out, after all.
“That’s not what today was about,” I say, because that’s truthful enough. I drop my arms so there’s no barrier between us. There still a cautiousness in his eyes. Despite the fact that he towers over me, his powerful arms caging me against the desk, he looks at me like I’m a snake about to strike.
“And if I said you can walk away now?” he says. “If I offered to call off the deal, break the bond between us, and send you back to Strata?”
My eyes widen.Ishe offering that?
I’ve avoided thinking even a few weeks ahead of now. After years of planning, my life was totally turned upside down in a matter of days, and since then, I’ve known better than to try to imagine what comes after I’ve gotten Syrus what he wanted—because that future was too unstable.
Maybe if Syrus made me this offer just a few hours ago, I would’ve known my answer. But seeing Evie in her safe, secure life has knocked something loose in me.
If I did go back now, what would I be going back to? My scavenging money is gone, and I don’t regret that one bit. I’m glad Evie had it and that it was able to help her. But without something to keep me off the streets, I’d always be a fugitive, hiding from the wardens—and that’s assuming I never see Hathwell again, wherever he is.
I know one thing for certain. I won’t ever go and beg Ada and my father for help. I can’t go back to that house—that life—again. Once upon a time, I could stomach it, knowing it was for a greater good in the long term. Not anymore. There are some things I can’t tolerate.
And maybe it’s crazy, but it took me getting a taste of life in Infernum to change that.
Syrus is right, I did name my terms, and I need the gold he’s promised to build a new life. Getting out of this deal might give me one type of freedom, but I’ve learned how easy it can be to trade one prison for another, and if I go back to Strata with even less than I had before, that’s what I’ll be doing.
“If you offered that, I wouldn’t take it,” I say slowly. “We made a deal, and I won’t leave Infernum until we’ve seen it through.”
He takes a sudden step back, making a frustrated scoff and turning his back on me. It seems that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, which I don’t understand at all.
“Don’t tell me you’repissedabout that?” I ask, bewildered.
He crosses to the window as if he needs time—a moment when he’s not looking at me—to collect his thoughts.
“Sometimes you make it very hard to trust you,” he says at last.
Well,thathardly seems fair. “Me? What aboutyou? Forget all the ways you’ve manipulated me, you’ve not even been honest about the stuff it doesn’tmatterif I know. I only found out you’re mireborn because Asterim told me. I still don’t even know what you really look like!”
He turns around, surprise written on his handsome features. Sometimes he’s so infuriating that I manage to forget how beautiful he is, and then all it takes is a moment—an unexpected expression, a graceful movement—and it hits me all over again like a battering ram. This is one of those times, as he tilts his head, thinking about what I’ve said.
“You know I’ve been drinking from the lake?” he asks, confirming my suspicions.
“I guessed,” I say. “I noticed no one in Malice recognized you right away, and a couple of times people have made…comments.” I can’t help but wonder if his beauty is just a mask created by the Morphos’s magic. But he couldn’t lookthatdifferent, could he? It’s not like people couldn’t identify him at all.
“I should’ve known you’d catch that,” he says, but he doesn’t sound angry. “Would it help? Do you think you’d trust me more, if I showed you my real form?”
I don’t know why he cares so much if I trust him, but my curiosity is too strong to fight the suggestion.
“It would be a step in the right direction,” I say. “Or you could at least tell me why you’re hiding it in the first place.”
“It’s because of you,” he says quietly. “At first it was, anyway. The snares talk about humans being less willing to make deals when we wear our true faces. It’s too much of a reminder that we’re foreign and unknown—monsters not to be trusted.”
“Right. You wanted topersuademe,” I say sarcastically, using his own phrasing. “So when you came to find me on the mountain to make the deal?—”
“I wanted to look…palatable,” he says. He drops his gaze for a moment, like he’s working up to something. A self-conscious smile plays on his lips, and when he looks back at me, the red shines bright in his eyes. “Then I realized I quite liked looking human again, being able to look in the mirror without being reminded of…certain choices I’ve made.”
I exhale. The admission is so damnvulnerableI feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.
“Can you show me now?” I ask softly, afraid to scare the moment away.
He nods and closes his eyes.
