I stumble but peer back to see Tuscany—my queen— standing, angry, and waving her little finger at his broad chest, but Rome glares at me. She reaches up and, with one finger, she directs his cheek back to her.
My heart hammers.
I spin to face forward.
“Better not to look back,” Kong advises smoothly as he ushers me inside, almost protective, but that wouldn’t make sense at all.
Shame nests in my stomach.
It finds company with naivety.
Kong directs me like a towering guard to my small significant self, past the wide-eyed Silk Girls and Paisley, who cups her mouth in shock, all the way through the various halls until we stop outside The Circle.
“The first time I saw the effect you had over him, I thought you were a spy,” Kong says, “the entire raid a setup. But seeing you feed Odio changed my mind. That bird can see the truth inside everything. You’re too naïve to be a spy.”
Too naïve to be a Silk Girl.
I look at the door. Blink. “Do I leave now? Who—”
“Stay in your room,” Kong states, and I turn to look up at him— basically a wall of muscles in dark leather armour. “Sleep. Tomorrow you will know what is next for you.”
I grip my shoulder as a dull throb circles the joint. Kong notices and frowns. He has a distinctive stance, as though the plates in his back are made of pure indestructible metal, never bending.
I feel numb. Everything escalated so quickly to a place I didn’t realise was possible.
I have been so wrong, for so long. Daisy was right. Rules are there for a reason. Iris was right. There is something wrong with me.
“Will I be executed?”
“That is unlikely.” Kong’s voice is the deepest note I have ever heard. “The Trade has invested in your womb.”
My eyes burn; I barely ever cry. “You saw me. You let me speak to her.” I clear my throat. “To the Queen. You could have stopped me.”
“I was thinking about what she would have wanted,” he says, roughly. “Not him or you. I was thinking about her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. And if you know what is good for you, you will stop trying to understand.”
Chapter Nine
Aster
Silk Girl Vows:
For The Cradle, I will guard my seal of purity.
A voice stirs me.
The Endigo’s snarl coils around me. “Your tongue can’t be trusted, little girl. Let’s take it off for you. It gets you in so much trouble.”
I wake up to those words and a rumbling stomach. I cover my face, breathing into my palms.
Panic and anguish coil together in my mind, growing in size with each new thought.
‘You will never speak again.’ ‘No more questions from you.’ ‘Your tongue can’t be trusted.’ What about my Meaningful Purpose? What about all I have endured to get here? The nights I convince myself it would be better here, the split toes from ballet training, the hope of being a Sired Mother. The loneliness and optimism and perseverance.
The ball in my head pops.
Jolting upright, I fist my pillow and toss it across the room, knocking a small fertility statue over, the thing falling, shattering across a black boot.
Wait.
My eyes shoot up from the steel-capped boot to see Rome sitting in the dark corner of the room on the large red leather sofa I’ve yet to sit on.
Radiating confidence, he is leaning back, his thick arm draped over the high rest. His chest is bare—shirtless— and shadows dance across the deep grooves of his abdomen.
I swallow.
He stares at me. “You dream.”
Shit.
I’m not ready to see him.
My pulse thumps so hard the thin column of my throat seems to protest.
I have so many things I want to say, ‘get out’, ‘why?’, ‘you’re a monster’, ‘I trusted you’, ‘I liked you’, but my mouth only peeps open before closing on a thought: ‘You will never speak again.’
Never speak again…
The image of my tiny hand scooping that small bird up comes to mind. I seem to always seek meaning from my oldest memory. After all, it must be there for a reason.
Maybe the useless little thing didn’t try to escape, wasn’t brave or determined to spread its wings. It simply hit the glass because it was ignorant and confused about its situation and place in the world.
I feel ignorant and confused about mine.
Upside-down bird.
Upside-down bird.
“Are you hurt?”
I turn my face from him and roll my shoulder. There is the dullest of aches, but nothing new to me, given I have been bullied and shoved around my entire life.
“Answer me.”
All the contradictory messages suddenly pull me in every direction. This way—'you’re weak.’
And that way—‘I am enamoured with you.’
This way—'get out.’
And that way—'are you hurt?’
I can usually roll with the punches; I always have. Iris. The Endigo. A life of servitude. No questions. No answers. But lately the punches have been soothed and kissed and I don’t know how to adapt to kindness after cruelty.
I suddenly let a quick, pathetic little sob break from between my lips. Then, wipe a single defiant tear away.
He rises to his feet.
“Aster. You’re in pain.”
He walks toward me, and I shuffle backward along the bed, not wanting him to touch me—melt me.
“Don’t do that, little creature.” Darkness barely conceals the regret in his gaze. “I lost my temper. I’m here to make amends, dammit.”
He could slide on and stalk me across the mattress, but he doesn’t. He circles the post and comes to the side, sitting down, facing away from where I huddle.
Outside of the shadows now, his muscular back is completely visible, a landscape of stories written with angry scars and tattoos.
“Fuck,” he mutters, thrusting his hands through his hair and dragging them down his face as if to tear at his thoughts. “You missed dinner, too.”
That is what he has to say?
I missed dinner?
I sit in confused silence, and my soul is not as content with him as it was with the queen.
Nope.
It is on fire.
When he finally turns to stare at me, my shoulders fall to behold the regret in his blue gaze.
I don’t care.
I will not forgive him.
But… But I want to hold him. My hand twitches with need. The need to run my fingers down his thick neck again. He liked that. He practically purred as if the beast inside him was being stroked and tamed.
“Say something. That is a direct order. Did I hurt you?”
“Yes,” I admit, but not the kind of pain he means. “I’m Fur. Did you know that?” I want him to know. So he can send me away to a new catchment, once and for all. I can be a Silk Girl to another lord.
Never see him…
Never see him again.
Stop this whiplash.
For good.