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Hard.
“And you’re looking for some kind of reason for it that sets the blame squarely at my feet, rather than at yours!”
“No, Princess,” Jason says in that fatherly tone he gets with me when he thinks I’m being ridiculous. I don’t hear this kind of voice from him very often, and in the past, it filled me with shame.
Now it makes me want to roar back, loud and fierce, with all my might.
So I do.
“No, Jason, you don’t get to tell me what to do here. You treat me like a prisoner!”
He looks like I slapped him, his face flinching as if my words drew a harder blow than my palm ever could.
“Princess,” he says.
“My name is PAIGELYNN! Call me by my name. Soon you will call me queen, but right now, it’s clear you do not see me as a person. I am a person with needs, Jason. A person who will bleed if you break my skin. A person who has cravings and wishes, dreams and hopes. And like all people, I imagine, I also want to be left utterly alone sometimes. Why can you and Malcolm not respect that!”
“We do,” he said in a soothing voice. Then he presses something against the tragus of his ear, and frowns, eyes jumping to Malcolm.
“What’s going on?” Malcolm asks.
Jason rolls his tongue between his teeth and his cheek, a quirk I’ve seen in him for years. It means he is thinking. Trying to find a way out of a mess.
Buying time.
Time’s up.
All I want is Cam. Not just his physical presence, and not simply his body. What Cam said to me about my life has created thousands of questions, all of them singing through my mind like a sad, sonorous symphony. How does he know so much about me? Does he feel the same? Can I find him again? Will he find me?
I hope he finds me.
And I hope he takes me away.
That last thought makes me gasp, for it is treason. Violation. Desecration. I am not allowed to even think such things.
And I am required to confess them.
“Why the surprise?” Jason asks me, suddenly suspicious.
Words fail me.
Something rises up in me, more than anger, bigger than want. It is a resolute sense that I am on the precipice of change, teetering on the brink, about to tip over into danger.
All that I do now could save me.
Danger blooms in my heart.
“Princess-Paigelynn,” Jason says, correcting himself. “I have worked with you for many years. Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“No.”
“I killed Rudy for you.”
Did he, though? Did he really kill Rudy for me? Or because he was ordered by my masters.
There is a difference. An enormous one.
“I thank you for preserving the prophecy’s fulfillment,” I say automatically.
