Chapter Six #2
“You spoiled, disgusting, core bastard!” I blinked, and then she closed the distance, shadow walking to the space just in front of me and then shoving her icy hands into my chest. I stumbled, my legs sinking into the fresh snow.
My fingers wrapped tighter around her boots, my chest tingling where she touched it.
She was so maddening and strange and stars damned infuriating.
“If you’d stop following me and pretending like you gave a shit then my dramatics wouldn’t matter! ”
“What are you talking about right now?” Pretending to what? She wasn’t making any sense.
She shoved me again, and this time I dropped her boots in favor of wrapping my fingers around her wrists, securing her hands against my chest. Quickly, almost desperately, I tossed one of the hooded cloaks onto her unruly head of curls, using her surprise to tug the other over my own head. Stars above, it was cold.
“Let me go!”
“No!”
“Yes!” She shook her arms, trying to fight against me with very little success.
“Put those fucking boots on, Little Void.”
“No! Let go of me and stop acting like you’ve changed! You’re still the same purist psychopath just waiting for a chance to kill me!”
“Odd, seeing as I’m literally trying to stop you from getting frostbite right now!
” Great, now she had me pissed too. She finally wrangled her hands free, using my lack of balance to shove me to the ground.
Her body crashed on top of mine, forcing my back to smash into the snow.
Instinctively, I grabbed her hips, my mouth, nose, and eyes filling with tiny flakes of snow.
“You’re everything you’ve always been!” She began beating her fists against my chest, the movements half-hearted as tears suddenly started streaming down her face. Her legs straddled me, my cloak barely on her.
“Why are you so angry all of a sudden?” I asked, bewildered. Was this really just about me mentioning that I saw she brewed something? What did that matter? And why was she acting like I hadn’t changed?
I was different now. I could feel the shift, the internal war. Every day, I was fighting to not be my father. Why couldn’t she fucking see that? And why was it so much harder to act better in her presence?
Tershetta’s fists stilled, hands relaxing as they flattened against my chest. Suddenly, I realized exactly where her body pressed to mine.
The way her ass was firmly planted just above my hips, how her palms dug into the space below my collarbones, the faint weight of her bare feet on top of my thighs.
For the first time in months, the feel of a woman on top of me didn’t make my skin crawl.
In fact, it felt as if everywhere Tershetta touched, Benadell Zade’s memory faded.
Like my Little Void was wiping me clean.
Like the emptiness and darkness I once called her was actually the one place I was finally safe.
“Tell me you don’t think exactly as you did before. That you don’t think you’re better than everyone else. Say you no longer believe that eadi are worthless and of eadi are mistakes. Tell me you’ve changed.” Her words were softer, but still just as forceful, as if she was daring me.
I thought of how annoyingly persistent Desi was.
The way she’d come to my cottage weekly, dragging Celeste with her.
Of each moment in their presence and how they proved to me that everything I had once known was false.
That the world wasn’t black and white like we’d been told.
I thought of the days in Elite Academy when Tershetta would outshine me, how it forced me to acknowledge that she couldn’t possibly be as brainless as the stories said.
I thought of Martha—of her tight hugs and gentle voice.
I had changed. I had learned. I had grown.
That was enough, right?
“I’ve—I don’t—” It felt like I couldn’t find the words.
Like my tongue was too heavy and my brain was too foggy.
The cold bit into my back and burned my eyes.
It clogged my nose and filled my ears. Everywhere the snow wasn’t, Tershetta was.
She leaned lower, her forearms pressing into me, elbows sharp against my abdomen.
My hands reflexively gripped her hips tighter, a gasp escaping her lips before she jutted out her jaw.
Her breath fanned across my face, smelling like her foul stew just as mine probably did.
Yet, it didn’t bother me, if anything it kept me rooted to reality—to Dajahim itself—as I stared into her star-flecked eyes.
“Come on, Snake. Say it. Tell me you’re not the same.
Tell me your time alone has somehow morphed you into a new man.
That you aren’t the desperate, hateful, disgusting person you were before.
Then maybe I’ll believe this bullshit nice guy act.
” Her lips were so close to mine, spewing venom like the snake she thought I was.
My hands released her, reaching up and tugging at my hair as if I could claw out the truth. Because maybe I had changed a little, but did I suddenly believe that purity didn’t matter? Did I think myself equal to the eadi or even the other shaytan? Did I truly have better intentions?
“You were right, Altair.” Tershetta didn’t back away, though I feared she would soon.
So much so that I released my hair and latched back onto her hips.
She didn’t flinch this time, and I watched as the fight left her face and the light seeped from her eyes.
“I’m eadi. I was never going to be anything else.
Just as you will never be anything other than a core.
Maybe if we’d just accepted that, if we’d fallen into line, then you’d have the stars and I’d have my family. ”
I blinked rapidly, my lips parting slightly as I tried to understand what she meant. She looked otherworldly above me, her chocolate curls littered with perfectly defined snowflakes and her olive skin pinkening.
“You were born shaytan, even if you had no magic. You were always meant to be this. To rule and conquer. There was never a question of whether or not you people belonged or if you even fucking deserved your place. They claimed I’d be general, but they never would have allowed that.
Not even if I wasn’t of eadi, because I had the audacity to be born a woman.
I could work ten times as hard as you, but I’d still deserve half as much as you in your eyes.
You’ll never think differently, Altair, because this is who you are at your core. ”
“That’s not true—”
“Don’t pretend like Priya Otarn will ever be allowed to be a colonel or the head of her family.
She’ll be a captain and forced to breed children and exist in a shadow.
How could you ever think eadi and of eadi are worth anything when you can’t even convince yourself that the women born with blood as pure as yours deserve more than scraps? ”
Tershetta shook her head, pushing off my chest and attempting to stand, but I held firm, tugging her down so fast she crashed into my chest. A violent jolt of…
of something shot through me, making me gasp for air.
I couldn’t keep her there, not without doing what she always expected of me, and even knowing that didn’t stop me from being exactly who I was.
I flipped us, this time straddling her. She lay there, not bothering to fight back, her eyes on mine. And I thought then that I realized exactly why Tershetta had fled. Why she was so angry. She’d lost everything, and it had all been for nothing.
Celeste is alive. I wanted to say it, if only to stop the emptiness that was slowly overtaking her eyes, muting them.
Instead, I reached back and grabbed her boots, twisting so far that my joints let out a loud series of cracks as I shoved the shoes onto her feet.
When I was done, the laces untied, I turned to face her again.
“You haven’t changed, Altair.” No, I hadn’t.
Not really. I wasn’t sure why that bothered me so badly.
Why I cared to change at all. “So why are you pretending to be kind? What is it that you want from me? I know you don’t care about me, which means you stand to gain something.
What are you actually doing here? What are you hiding from me? ”
I couldn’t help it. I snapped.
“I’m trying to fucking survive!” I screamed it barely a foot from her face, my body shaking. From the cold, but also from the weight of the truth. Of something I didn’t want to admit or even acknowledge.
Perhaps I’d been the villain all along.
“Why?” she asked in a faint whisper.
“Why what?” Our eyes remained locked, chests almost touching as I sank lower.
“Why are you trying to survive?”
I startled, sitting back up and practically leaping off of her. She didn’t bother to get up, her body still as a statue as she stared up at the gloomy sky and falling snow. Stars, if she didn’t look like the most hopeless thing in all of existence.