Chapter 21 #2
Cecilia shrugged. “Maybe. I like them. They’re the best of us, and I know what it feels like to be an overlooked kid. Helping them be happy and healthy and prepared for the world is— I’m sure you get it.”
She peered closely at his helmet. “Why did you decide to join Patrol?”
Sloane’s big hand crawled across the mattress to find the curve of her waist. Settling it there like he worried she’d tell him no, he answered, “I did not.”
“You didn’t what?”
“I didn’t choose,” he clarified.
Mimicking her pose, Sloane turned on his side. Apparently emboldened by the fact that she didn’t push him away, he slipped his hand around her back to begin dragging her closer.
Her breath caught as he tucked her against him.
His warmth blazed through the thin material of her pajamas, stoking that ever-burning fire of desire in her belly.
Not being able to see his face squished on the pillow bothered her, but when she slung her arm over his middle to hug him back…
It was all right. Maybe even more than all right.
Maybe it was even something awfully close to perfect.
In a softer voice, she asked, “What do you mean you didn’t choose?”
“I was taken from my parents by the former sovereign when I was six years old and conscripted into service.” Sloane played with the tips of her hair.
He rubbed the strands between his fingers in a slow, repetitive way that made her heart ache.
“My parents were killed when they rebelled and tried to take me back. This life is all I’ve ever known. ”
“Sloane…”
“I wasn’t raised like you,” he continued, like he had to get the words out before he lost courage.
“I was trained to fight and kill and serve. We weren’t given luxuries or comforts.
All the good things in my life were taken from me or used as weapons against me.
If you are a mess, then I’m something far worse. I’m Thaddeus’s discarded weapon.”
Cecilia’s eyes stung. Blinking quickly, she tried to push down the horror of what he’d so casually shared with her in order to speak. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m so sorry that happened to you. I…”
Kidnapped as a child. Too dangerous to be allowed to live a normal life. The strange uniforms and the pack mentality and the way he killed so easily.
She’d heard the stories. Everyone had. Sloane and his team were literally the stuff of nightmares — faceless tools Mad Thad had used to inspire fear in his people until his daughter lopped his head off and punted it into the ocean.
She was certain of the answer, but Cecilia still had to ask, “The sovereign— Does he order you to…”
“No,” he grated. “We protect innocents now. We always did, as best we possibly could, but it was never enough. What we refused to do or got caught circumventing, the trainers and other shadow squads would finish for us. And if we disobeyed enough, then…”
Her skin crawled with horror. A man with a moral compass like Sloane would lose a piece of himself every day he had to hurt innocent people.
Maybe he’d been trained to no longer feel guilt. Maybe he’d even been trained out of feeling pain. But she was damn certain both were still there.
Petting his hair with shaking fingers, she forced herself to ask, “What did they control you with?”
“How—”
“There’s no fucking way you would hurt people who didn’t deserve it unless you had no other choice,” she hissed. “So what did they do to you, Sloane, besides kidnap and torture you as a defenseless child?”
“Our families,” he answered. “My parents were the example. They died… badly. Publicly. After that, they used everyone else’s family as collateral and vice versa.
Most of us came from prominent, openly rebellious families Thaddeus wanted to keep in line.
And when it was finally over, we were so fucked up that they wouldn’t even take us back. They’re terrified of us.”
It’s my duty to protect you, he’d said.
Because if he didn’t, he thought I’d be taken away from him just like his family, she realized. Oh, gods. My poor elf.
“Sloane,” she choked out, digging her fingers into his dense muscle, “I’m so sorry.”
“Cece—”
Pulling back to look him in the eye, she cut him off with a fierce hiss, “I’m sorry that happened to you, Sloane. I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you.”
She could almost feel his gaze searching her expression with disbelief. “You don’t… want to leave?”
“No,” she answered, “I want to kill everyone who hurt you. All of you.”
The old sovereign was a tyrant. She’d grown up hearing about him and living in a territory scarred by his desire for absolute control.
And yet she’d never truly hated him until then, when she imagined a terrified little boy being ripped from his parents and forced into a life of violence.
What did one say to an admission like that? There were no words to match the enormity of so much grief and pain, or even close to it. Her piddling little apology was nothing compared to what he’d been through.
In the end, she didn’t say anything more. Cecilia draped one leg over his hip and hugged him close, until she could feel his heart beat against hers.
Sloane hunched a little, his much bigger body, curling over hers until the underside of his helmet brushed her hair.
“I’m bad, Cece,” he whispered.
She exhaled slowly. “I don’t think so. I think you’re what you were made to be and what you’ve chosen to be in spite of that, just like everybody else.”
“I am,” he insisted. “I… I’ve done things that would give you nightmares. More things than I can even remember. And—” He cut himself off with a sharp growl.
She couldn’t say she was particularly shocked to hear he’d done awful things. The man had squashed Duke’s head like a teenager let loose on an over-ripe melon.
“What?” she asked, stroking his back. “And you like to stalk pretty waitresses? I know that already.”
The sound of his swallow was loud in her ear. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because you won’t want me anymore if I do. If I keep telling you horrible things, eventually it will scare you away,” he answered.
A deep, painful lurch in her chest made her stop and take a breath. “Sloane… part of figuring this thing out between us is building trust. We can’t have trust if you’re always afraid I’m going to run.”
With great reluctance, Sloane admitted, “I hunt people. Not for an assignment.”
It took her a moment to comprehend exactly what he was and wasn’t saying.
“Oh,” she dragged out. “So you… go off book, so to speak.”
Sloane held her like he thought she’d try to escape him at any moment. Helmet digging into the top of her head, he replied, “Patrol doesn’t catch everything. They don’t protect everyone — like you, and like the people who we— I was assigned to… I try to help the only way I know how.”
Cecilia took a moment to let his confession sink in. Again, she couldn’t say she was surprised. Thinking back to the night they met, it all seemed to click together. But it was one thing to suspect it and quite another to hear it plainly.
It felt a little dismissive of the seriousness of death for her to blurt out the first thing that came to her mind, but after several tense moments of silence, she decided that it was her true reaction.
Or rather, a lack of one.
Picking her words carefully, she began, “Listen, Sloane. I’m arrant.
I’m not like you. I’m not strong or fast or magical.
You said it yourself. I’m weak and defenseless.
We’re prey. We survive because we’re adaptable and smart, but everyone knows how easily we could be gobbled up by elves or orcs or dragons or even vampires.
We live with that knowledge from pretty much the moment we’re born, and a lot of us…
well, a lot of us learn to coexist with the fear that breathes down our necks every second of every day. ”
She stroked the tips of her fingers up his spine, tracing the strong muscles that bracketed either side, until she found the muscled wings of his shoulder blades.
In a quieter voice, she admitted, “So… as long as you’re protecting people, then I’m not going to condemn you. It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth.”
She felt more than heard his sharp inhale. “You don’t think I’m a monster?”
“I think that there are good monsters and there are bad monsters,” she answered, eyes fluttering shut. “And I happen to know you’re a good one.”
“You’re good, Cece,” he murmured. “I’m glad you teach young. Children deserve goodness.”
Heart breaking for him all over again, she told him, “So did you, Sloane.”
“You’re here now.” He let out a long exhale, like a great weight had finally lifted from his chest. “That’s all I need.”
“I’m here,” she repeated, arms tightening. “I’m here.”