Lumi’s eyes narrow. “He’s not a monster, Nazirah. People make mistakes.”
“I’d like to know how his family is handling this,” Taj says.
“The Chancellor has placed a huge bounty on his head,” Cato says. “So I’d say ‘not well.’”
“But to leave his mother like that,” Taj says, uncharacteristically bitter, “in her condition. If I still had a mother, I would never do that.” He shakes his head.
Victoria Morgen’s battle with disease is no small matter of gossip throughout Renatus. Rumors have circulated for years that Victoria struggles with an obscure lifelong illness. She has apparently taken a turn for the worse in the past few months. It’s said the Chancellor is desperately seeking a cure.
Nazirah often questions if it’s all a ploy to get Adamek back into Mediah. Nazirah wonders if that’s why Adamek is teaching Bairs’s class – because he relates to her circumstances.
Nazirah remains quiet for the rest of the bonfire. She mulls over the future, wonders if she has one. She thinks about the final assignments they will receive in a few weeks’ time. What territory will she be assigned to? What will they ask her to do there?
Nazirah thinks about Adamek. He said he has secrets and she wonders for the millionth time what they are. Why does Niko trust him? Why did Adamek request amnesty to begin with? What if he’s a spy for Mediah, sent here to bring down the rebellion from within? The recruits are even training with Medi technology now … who knows how else they’ll be brainwashed? Who knows where it will all lead, how it will all end?
Nazirah sure doesn’t.
#
Nazirah enters the small abandoned classroom, prepared to use the Iluxor for a second time. The recruits haven’t trained with Adamek in over a week, since he has been away on recon with Aldrik and Lord Grigori. Nazirah doesn’t have the faintest idea what the rebels hope to accomplish on these missions, and she knows it’s pointless to ask. That’s Niko’s style, trying to protect Nazirah by not telling her anything. Until, of course, he has to tell her everything all at once.
Adamek is there already, amnesty pendant glinting in the sunlight, snarky expression in place. He has injured his shoulder again. There’s a thick bandage under his shirt. Nazirah’s eyes linger on the injury as she shoulders off her bag and drops into her normal seat by the window.
“It’s rude to stare, Nation.”
Please! He’s always staring at her, trying to make her uncomfortable, trying to get a rise out of her. “If it’s rude to stare,” she argues, “then you wrote the book, Morgen.”
Adamek smirks and sits down across from her. “Exactly,” he says. “So I know it when I see it.”
Nazirah crosses her arms, watching him fill the two syringes. Adamek places the syringes on the desk beside them. “What happened to your shoulder?” she asks.
“Oh honey,” he says, “I didn’t realize you cared.”
Nazirah uncrosses her arms. “I don’t,” she answers honestly, resting her hands on her exposed knees. It’s hot out today. She’s wearing a white oxford shirt and a plaid skirt. Cato teased her at breakfast, telling her she looked like a Median schoolgirl. All she needed to complete the look were some pigtails. Nazirah spilled coffee on him.
“That’s what I thought,” Adamek says.
“Let’s get this over with,” she sighs.
Adamek ties the elastic around her arm. It unnerves Nazirah, being this close to him, memorizing the angles of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the deep green of his eyes. It bothers her that she wants to do these things. She liked it better when he still had bruises all over his face. She felt safer that way.
He gently tugs up the cuff of her sleeve, fingers slightly calloused. Nazirah feels tingles shoot through her at his touch. She tells herself to get a grip. But in her mind, she wonders if this is what Lumi felt when she first gave in to him. Is this how every girl feels?
She stares at his hands, focusing on his scratch marks, on his kills. She’s seen them countless times before. But today it hits her again exactly who he is and what he’s done. There are so many scratches on each hand, hundreds. They crisscross and tally in completely irregular patterns. Some are bigger and some are smaller. Nazirah cannot keep track of them all. She wonders if he knows how many there are, how many lives he’s taken.
Nazirah is disgusted with it all, with him, but mostly with herself. Because she has inexcusably forgotten for a while.
Lumi is wrong.
He is a monster.
He hasn’t injected her yet. Nazirah looks up to find rage in his face. He knows exactly what she was looking at, exactly what she thinks of him. Adamek unstraps the elastic from her arm, dropping it next to the syringes. “Get out,” he says.
“Excuse me?” Nazirah asks, bewildered.
“You’re excused,” Adamek says coldly. “Now leave.”
“No way, Morgen!” she snaps, cheeks heating in anger. She reaches for a syringe, intent on injecting herself. “I need this!”
Adamek smacks the needles away. They fly against the wall, shattering. “Let’s get something straight,” he growls. He leans in close. “I don’t give a fuck about what you think you need. Or, for that matter, what you think at all, especially about me. I don’t give a fuck about you.”
Nazirah leans as far back in the chair as possible. Adamek Morgen is a loose cannon and she never has any idea what will set him off. “So what is your problem?” she asks.
He snatches her wrists, pulling her towards him. “My problem is very much you, a nosy, judgmental bitch who never knows when to quit. And I’m fucking sick of it.”
“Well, too bad! I’m not sorry I question you or your motives! And I’m not going to stop, either! I have no idea how you managed to brainwash my brother, Renatus. But I’m not fucking buying it.”
“I never asked for that name! I don’t want it!”
“You sure do embrace the role, though,” Nazirah fires back.
“This is life,” Adamek says. “We all have our parts to play … even you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he says, his voice a deadly whisper, “that when it comes to fakers, princess, you’re the biggest one here. And I’m not fucking buying it.”
Nazirah kicks him in the shin. Adamek hisses in pain, wrapping his foot around the base of her chair, rapidly dragging it forward. Nazirah opens her knees, spreading her legs out a second before their chairs collide. His grip on her wrists tightens and he takes in the full view up her skirt. “Aren’t we welcoming today,” he says.
Nazirah is burning this skirt later.
“Fuck you!” she snarls between gritted teeth. They are so close, their noses are practically touching. She can feel his hot breath in her face.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you, princess?”
Nazirah stops struggling, her entire body tensing. His grip on her wrists relaxes until it is light as a feather. He traces slow circles with his thumbs on her skin. “N-No,” she says. Even to Nazirah, her voice sounds shaky and unsure.
“It’s simple, Nation,” he begs softly. “Just let me.”
Nazirah wants to give in, but something smacks her back into reality. What is happening? Is she actually considering his proposition? Is this how he seduced Lumi and who knows how many others? Well not her.
Never her.
“Never,” she says. Her voice is louder this time, reassured. She rips her wrists away. He looks at her wordlessly. “I would never!” Nazirah repeats herself, more vehemently, standing up so quickly she almost knocks the chair over. Adamek watches her go. “You’re pathetic!” she says, grabbing her bag and walking backwards through the door. “You disgust me,” she whispers … long gone.
Chapter Eleven
Life goes on at headquarters until it doesn’t.
Soft knocking in the middle of the night awakens Nazirah from a restless sleep. She kicks off her clammy sheets and jumps out of bed, groggy and disoriented. Nazirah stumbles forward, pulling the door open to reveal Cato. He has dark blue circles under his eyes and his face is puffy. He has clearly been crying. Nazirah looks around the hallway, finding it otherwise empty.