“You soon will,” he snapped, his face twisting into a scowl. “And you’re going to help me.”
I thought, suddenly, of Akos thanking me for the way I arranged his room, when we got to the sojourn ship. His calm expression as he took in my marked arm. The way he laughed when we chased each other through the blue sojourn rain. Those were the first moments of relief I had experienced since my mother died. And I wanted more of them. And less of . . . this.
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
His old threat—that if I didn’t do as he said, he would tell the Shotet what I had done to my beloved mother—no longer frightened me. This time, he had made a mistake: he had confessed to needing my help.
I crossed one leg over another, and folded my hands over my knee.
“Before you threaten me, let me say this: I don’t think that you would risk losing me right now,” I said. “Not after trying so hard to make sure that they are terrified of me.”
That was what the challenge with Lety had been, after all: a demonstration of power. His power.
But that power actually belonged to me.
Ryzek had been learning to imitate our father ever since he was a child, and my father had been excellent at hiding his reactions. He had believed that any uncontrolled expression made him vulnerable; he had been aware that he was always being watched, no matter where he was. Ryzek had gotten better at this skill since his youth, but he was still not a master of it. As I stared at him, unblinking, his face contorted. Angry. And afraid.
“I don’t need you, Cyra,” he said, quiet.
“That isn’t true,” I said, coming to my feet. “But even if it was true . . . you should remember what would happen if I decided to lay a hand on you.”
I showed him my palm, willing my currentgift to surface. For once, it came at my call, rippling across my body and—for a moment—wrapping around each of my fingers like black threads. Ryzek’s eyes were drawn to it, seemingly without permission.
“I will continue to play the part of your loyal sister, of this fearsome thing,” I said. “But I will not cause pain for you anymore.”
With that, I turned. I moved toward the door, my heart pounding, hard.
“Careful,” Ryzek said as I walked away. “You may regret this moment.”
“I doubt it,” I said, without turning around. “After all, I’m not the one who’s afraid of pain.”
“I am not,” he said tersely, “afraid of pain.”
“Oh?” I turned back. “Come over here and take my hand, then.”
I offered it to him, palm up and shadow-stained, my face twitching from the pain that still lingered. Ryzek didn’t budge.
“Thought so,” I said, and I left.
When I returned to my room, Akos sat on the bed with the book on elmetahak on his lap, the translator glowing over one of the pages. He looked up at me with furrowed eyebrows. The scar along his jaw was still dark in color, its line perfectly straight as it followed his jaw. It would pale, in time, fading into his skin.
I walked into the bathroom to splash water on my face.
“What did he do to you?” Akos said as he slumped against the bathroom wall, next to the sink.
I splashed my face again, then leaned over the sink. Water rolled down my cheeks and over my eyelids and dripped into the basin beneath me. I stared at my reflection, eyes wild, jaw tensed.
“He didn’t do anything,” I said, grabbing a cloth from the rack next to the sink and dragging it over my face. My smile was almost a grimace of fear. “He didn’t do anything, because I didn’t let him. He threatened me, and I . . . I threatened him back.”
The webs of dark color were dense on my hands and arms, like splatters of black paint. I sat in one of the kitchen chairs and laughed. I laughed from my belly, laughed until I felt warm all over. I had never stood up to Ryzek before. The cord of shame curled up in my belly unspooled a little. I was not quite as complicit anymore.
Akos sat across from me.
“What . . . what does this mean?” he said.
“It means he leaves us alone,” I said. “I . . .” My hands trembled. “I don’t know why I’m so . . .”
Akos covered my hands with his own. “You just threatened the most powerful person in the country. I think it’s okay to be a little shaken.”
His hands weren’t much larger than mine, though thicker through the knuckles, with tendons that stood out all the way to his wrists. I could see blue-green veins through his skin, which was much paler than my own. Almost like those rumors about Thuvhesits having thin skin were true, except that whatever Akos was, it wasn’t weak.
I slipped my hands out of his.