Page 80 of The Flame Game

“I’m good with that. Does she need a doctor or anything like that?”

“Well, if she does, I suspect we’ll be neck deep in making sure she gets the treatments she needs. I never asked if her problems needed to be treated, honestly. I didn’t want Audrey to get the wrong idea.”

What a bitch. “She would get upset if you inquired about someone’s mental health?”

“Then, and even for a while after our divorce, I really thought she wasn’t a terrible person—just incapable of loyalty. I was wrong about a lot of things.”

“Don’t feel too badly about it, Sam. I was convinced you utterly hate me.”

“I never did understand that.”

“Well, I had ruined your marriage.”

“I literally hired you to ruin my marriage because it was an awful marriage and I wanted out of it.”

“I was the reason you divorced.”

“Bailey, you’re being ridiculous again. When you had brought those pictures to me, I wanted to hug you, spin you around, and take you home with me. You far exceeded my expectations. I never hated you. You drove me insane because you always and relentlessly put others in front of yourself, and that was terrifying for me. Once I’d started loving everything about you, I worried that your tendencies would get you killed.”

Those tendencies almost had. “Why had you gotten a little yellow dress and those lacy black panties, anyway?”

My husband’s face flushed. “Yale had told me to go make myself useful, sent me off to get clothing for you after giving me your sizes, and had me go home after I’d done my share of the work. I saw the yellow dress, and it looked sweet and innocent. And then, well, I’m your gorgon-incubus doohickey, and the black lace gave me a lot of ideas. To be honest, they were bad ideas, but I was desperate at that point.”

“Sundresses kind of do imply they’re to be worn by a girl when in the midst of childhood innocence, don’t they?”

My husband’s chuckle promised sexy things on the horizon. “Your innocence in that dress lasted all of an hour at most.”

“Innocence is overrated. Like, according to society, not having my virginity should have been this really big deal! But it wasn’t. Like, life went on absolutely as normal. Well, as normal as my life gets. And why do men have no real care for their virginity?”

“It couldn’t possibly be because virginity is a pointless societal construct… and it’s easier to convince half the population her virginity is somehow valuable than it is to convince an entire society and hold everyone to the same standard. That, at least, is what my mother likes to say. Also, as this is now important, virginity is not a concept most gorgons really understand.”

“Your cousin understood. Sort of.”

“My cousin is an idiot. The only use virginity is to a gorgon is for making sure there won’t be any jilted lovers in the wings to cause hives trouble later. No gorgon cares about who his wives or bride was or wasn’t with before they entered the relationship. They just don’t care.”

“I’m still torturing your cousin for all eternity.”

“And I am here to enjoy the show.”

I smiled at that, as my husband loved when I stood up for myself, even over ridiculous things—like my hatred of cheap coffee makers named Suzy. “Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Well, it’s less of a question and more of a statement. I just don’t understand Morrison,” I admitted. “Or Audrey. I don’t understand why they’d do this.”

“One of the hardest things I had to learn as a chief is that I will never understand why. It’s just not possible for me to understand why anyone would do as many criminals do. Logically, I can comprehend greed can drive people into theft, and so on… but this sort of sin against others is beyond my comprehension. It’s just not my nature, and once I figured that out, I decided it was for the best that I didn’t truly understand why. What matters is securing justice for the victims, and I don’t need to understand their motivations beyond linking them with the crimes and working to make sure the guilty are the ones who pay for those crimes. That’s not as easy as it seems at times.”

“Because the guilty don’t want to be caught, and they’ll do everything they can to make sure someone else takes the fall for what they’ve done.”

“Precisely. And we’re not infallible. We’ll never be. We will make mistakes. The best we can do is try to undo the damage from the mistakes we make.”

“Do you think Annie will be all right?”

“Her father and his hive will do most of the magic on that front. What they don’t accomplish, we will.”

“You’re confident. Why are you so confident?”

“Gorgons are, in many ways, much easier to understand than humans. Their lives are harsher, but their society is far more black and white and easy to understand when you’re a part of it. It’s not like with humans. Her father won’t care about what happened to her while in Morrison’s hands, nor will her mothers or sisters. It just doesn’t matter to them. All they care about is the fact she came home. There are crimes gorgons can’t abide by, but the victims are victims. They are not blamed or devalued for having been a victim.”