Page 79 of Dream Reaper

“What?” He threw her a mocking look, his hand trembling against Roar’s mother’s throat. “What will you do, Ava? You can’t even light a candle. You’re nothing. You hear me? Nothing.”

That wasn’t anything she didn’t already know.

“You might kill her, yes. And then you’ll probably kill me. But do you really think you can take on the whole camp in your condition?”

He barked a laugh. “A camp of helpless women?”

Something inside Ava snorted.

To Ava’s right, one of the helpless women rose to her feet, clutching a fire poker. Another took a step forward with her garden hoe, and behind her stood two more girls holding makeshift spears.

“Not so helpless,” Ava said wryly as Talos shifted, his gaze skittering around the camp as if he were assessing the danger.

He had seen it too.

“That’s the problem with bullies,” she continued as she took a cautious step forward.

Talos watched her with glittering eyes as she approached the fire and stooped slowly to pick up a cooking pot someone had left to cool in the ashes at the edge of the fire. A little stew still filled the bottom.

She gave it a stir with the wooden spoon, but her gaze remained fastened on Talos, her focus on this dangerous game they played.

“And what problem is that?”

She straightened, holding the handle of the pot in a fistful of her skirt so that she wouldn’t scald her fingers. “You think everyone is too scared to stand up to you. And by themselves, they might be.”

His attention shifted again to the women and girls slowly standing around them, their expressions determined, tense.

“But together? Well, that’s a real threat, isn’t it?” She ignored Jerrid’s muttered growl and walked toward Talos so that she could hold out the pot of leftover stew. “Why don’t you eat something and think this over. Maybe we can come up with some kind of compromise.”

“I don’t compromise.” But his gaze had fallen to the pot and lingered.

If he had been any other living soul in Rhuin, she would have felt sorry for the poor, starving creature. But it was hard to feel sorry for someone like Talos.

“Let’s start with something small.” She offered a tight smile. “The woman for a pot of soup. Personally, I know which one I would choose.”

Talos’s eyes glittered, his mouth twisting in a way that looked a little on the petulant side. But his hand began to lower from the woman’s throat. Ava held her breath as the blade eased away from the sensitive skin around the woman’s neck. At last, he shoved her away from him as Ava set the pot on the ground at his feet.

“No, none of that,” he said, his gaze moving furiously as if trying to watch everyone at once. “You’re going to feed me.”

Ava’s stomach clenched, but she said nothing as she used the stirring spoon to lift a mouthful toward him, watching out of the corner of her eye as the mother ran back to her family, to safety. Talos glared at her before lightly blowing on the stew and slipping it off the end of the spoon.

If only she kept poison in her pocket, it would have been so easy to put an end to this. He was too hungry to even consider the chance that someone had doctored the food.

The entire camp held its collective breath as Ava scraped every drop of soup from the pot and fed it to Talos.

When he finished, he demanded water. Brynja brought a waterskin, her expression murderous as she handed it to Ava and then backed slowly away. Talos watched her intently, probably recognizing a threat when he saw one.

He was too devious and too good at being devious not to notice the most dangerous threats in his environment.

He’d probably pegged them all in order of their threat-assessment scores. She wondered briefly where she fell in the ranks. Probably at the very bottom with the still-unconscious Ponytail Girl. Even Roar ranked higher than she did.

As Talos tipped the waterskin back, Brynja took a step forward. But Talos snapped his fingers, and a spark of fire ignited in his palm.

The human girl froze, eyes glittering, before she slowly backed away. Ava stared at the careless flame of fire with more than a little envy. He had made it look so easy, so natural. Why did everything have to come so hard for her?

Once again, life had proven that it didn’t believe in fairness.

Sometimes she didn’t even think that life cared about rightness.