“Really?” I asked. “What’s a Kindle?”
“A bundle of sticks one uses for a fire. And it’s pronounced kindling,” he answered proudly.
“Right.” I sighed and turned away.
“What?” he said. “You can’t be mad at me for telling you how to say it correctly. Is this one of those times where you are pretending to be upset over nothing to distract me?”
“Look,” I said, laying a hand on his muscle-corded left arm. “I felt what she felt. I know what she went through that night with you. She was ashamed. She was afraid. She was embarrassed—more so than I’ve ever been in my life.” He tried to look away, but I traced his cheek with my fingers and held his attention. “I know what she did to you was wrong, and nothing could ever excuse that. But the healing has to start somewhere. And I know you can be the bigger person here.”
As he stared at me, I could see his resolve softening.
“My lips are curling again, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Every time,” he said, a smile breaking through his mask. “It’s uncanny.”
I knew I had him, so I nudged him toward the door. “So get in there, big boy.” I slapped his ass, surprised both at how firm it was and how this little gesture caused him to jump.
His eyes slid over to me. “I’m going to make you pay for that later.”
“So long as you make sure there is a later, I just might let you.” I winked. “Now go.”
I pushed the door open and felt a chill as the room revealed itself to us.
Satina sat in the corner, her chains reset from when she had broken one earlier. Her eyes darted toward us and, inexplicably, her tongue danced in and out of her mouth.
“I was wondering when you were finally going to come in.” Satina groaned, and her body twitched as though she was in pain.
My first instinct was to feel for her, but I quickly remembered who we were dealing with. This very well might have been a ploy to garner my sympathy. Satina was more than capable of that.
And I wanted to set her free.
“You heard us?” I asked, suddenly hyper-aware of all the flirting.
“I sensed you,” she answered. “A residual treat from your blood, Supplicant.” She smiled all wide and unearthly. “I wonder if you’d be so kind as to top me off.”
“We’re not here for that,” Abram started, moving through the doorway and toward Satina. “I need to talk to you, to give you something.”
“And what could you possibly have that would interest me, Beast?” she asked.
I kept my distance as he neared her. Nothing good would come from taunting Satina with my blood, not when she looked like one of those junkies on 9th Street, desperate for a high.
“My apology, Satina. That’s what,” he said, settling in front of her.
She looked up at him, her eyes licking over every inch of his body. Then, surprisingly, she cackled, shaking the entire room with her boisterous laugh.
“You’re desperate? Is that it?” She looked over at me, disdain flickering in her eyes. “You realize you’re out of your depth, and you think that some halfhearted apology will soften my heart.” She spit, literally spit, at him. “I’m not the weak-willed girl you knew, Beast, ready to spread her legs with little more incentive that a roguish brute telling her she’s pretty.”
“You were pretty,” he answered, wiping the spittle from his cheek. “And you’re right. I’m desperate. We won’t survive without your help, but that doesn’t change the fact that I wronged you once. And it’s past time that I take ownership for that.”
Her eyes went wide. For a second, I thought she was actually going to accept the apology. But then she scowled, twisting the dead girl’s mouth downward.
“This is about her.” She motioned toward me with her head. “About making yourself out to be the chivalrous hero to some chunky damsel in distress.”
She said that as if my curves were a bad thing, but I bit my tongue.
Abram’s posture stiffened. “That’s not what—”
“You still think you can trust him, don’t you?” she asked, looking past him to me. “I ask you, Supplicant, has he given himself to you entirely, the way I’m sure you’ve given yourself to him? Or are there still places he withholds from you, say a particular room in his Castle?”
I balked. She was talking about the strange marked door in the Castle, the one I still had never set foot in. But we hadn’t been back there yet, and I hadn’t asked him about it. There had been more pressing matters.
“And has he told you of the price he paid in order to bring me here?”
“Enough, Satina!” Abram yelled.
“You don’t think I see it?” Satina matched his yelling with her own. “The way she looks at you, the way you look back! It’s everything it should be—every required ingredient. But it would ruin everything, wouldn’t it?” She cackled again. “God, that is delicious.”
I stepped closer to them, eying Abram carefully. “What is she talking about?”