18. The Kata #3
“It’s interesting that you think that,” he says simply before pushing himself up and floating across the pool, his arms propping him up on the edge. “Or perhaps it’s a blessing. I’m not easily impressed.”
I try to look anywhere but at him, but the torchlight keeps finding him through the mist. The steam rolls up his arms, catching the faint silver scars meandering like tree roots and veins across his body and up his neck.
“Why are you even out here?” I ask, aiming for irritation lest he sense the strange heat coiling under my ribs.
His mouth curves, the faintest hint of amusement. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Sure.”
“It’s the truth,” he says. “Care to afford me a truth of your own?”
When I neither agree nor disagree, he asks anyway.
“Why show up claiming you are an assassin and then pretend to be weak? You’re here to live through what’s coming. And hiding what you are won’t get you there.”
“You think I should flaunt it?” I scoff. “Let them see what I can do and paint a target on my back?” I laugh. I already have a target there in the form of ugly thick scar tissue, I don’t need another. “Pretending is what will keep me alive.”
“No,” he says slowly. “It’s what will get you killed.
If you were smart, you would stop pretending weakness is the same as safety.
It keeps you small. Insignificant. A liability on the battlefield.
The weak die first, Scarvo, but not always because they failed the game.
Fail to gain the cadets respect now and they will sooner see you dead than risk you one day being responsible for covering their backs on the battlefield later. ”
The steam between us shimmers with heat.
For a moment, neither of us speak.
He breaks the silence first, his voice is quieter now. “You fight like you were born to burn, Little Nephilim. Stop smothering the flames.”
I don’t answer.
The flicker of the torchlight catches in his eyes as he stares at me, making them swirl between gray and silver and gold. For a moment, it feels like he can see every piece of me I try to bury. Every sin that has ever crossed my mind.
I look away first. “You’re wrong.”
“Maybe.” His voice softens, but only slightly. “But if you keep holding back when it matters, the others will tear you apart the moment the games start to get more difficult, and I remind them the no killing rule only applies outside of Hell.”
“You would do that?”
“Of course. I want a weak army as much as your competitors do.”
I shudder at the callous disregard for life.
“I had better get some sleep then, before you give those sharing a dorm with me permission to stab me in the back tomorrow.”
I turn, heading toward the closest set of doors that lead back inside.
“Scarvo,” he calls and I pause. “You think we are monsters, yes?”
I turn to him and swallow, which is apparently enough of an answer for him.
“Then don’t make the mistake of hiding what you are. Monsters will only respect you if you show them you can bite.”
I start moving toward the doors again but make the mistake of looking back over my shoulder before I’ve cleared them.
He’s on his feet now, and very naked. Although the water and shadows conceal him from the waist down, I still have an imagination that doesn’t seem to care that he’s more monster than man.
Gorgeous, tall, chiseled monster.
“What?” he asks, not making any effort to turn away or cover himself.
I bite my lip and swallow again. “I’m not afraid of monsters.”
He studies me for a long moment, his patterns shifting from muted gray to the molten silver they become when he’s channeling fire or opening a hellgate.
Then his mouth curves into a smirk that I am pretty confident is capable of melting clothes off lesser females as easily as the flames that pulse beneath his veins now.
“Good. Then stop acting like one of them made you.”
Phantom pains shoot across my back and I hiss, my shoulders tensing.
If only he knew the half of it.
The day I flew down from the turret’s window to join Castiel on the citadel’s front lawn is suddenly in the front of my mind.
Fire shoots down my spine, making old scars twist and snag at the memory of what monsters like him are capable of.
The pain had struck hard and fast that night too, like the memory does now.
It came from out of nowhere. One moment I was floating down from my turret, asking Castiel if I could play with him. The next, I was screaming.
The look on my half-brother’s face as I passed out will be forever imprinted onto the backs of my eyelids.
“Then stop acting like one of them made you.”
I’m not sure whether I want to fight Silver on it or prove him wrong. But the words sink in deeper than I’m comfortable with all the same.
“I’m not weak.”
“Then prove it,” he challenges. “Tomorrow in the game, next time you're in the training halls or sparring with Khali’s lot as if I don’t know, don’t pretend to be something smaller than you are.”
I nod. Of course he knows about our private training sessions. Khali probably told him herself.
“Let the fire out, Little Nephilim, before someone else teaches you what it feels like to burn.”