Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(48)

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.

Now, with Ryzek out of the way, and Akos here, I wondered how we would both fill our days. I was used to spending sojourns alone. There was still something splattered on the side of the stove from the last sojourn, when I had cooked for myself every night, experimenting with ingredients from different planets—unsuccessfully, most of the time, since I had no talent for cooking. I had spent my nights watching footage from other places, imagining lives other than my own.

He crossed the room to get a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water from the faucet. I tilted my head back to look at the plants that hung above our heads, shining in their resin cages. Some of them glowed when the lights were out; others would decay, even in resin, withering into bright colors. I had been watching them for three sojourns already.

Akos wiped his mouth and set the glass down.

“I figured it out,” he said. “A reason to keep going, I mean.”

He flexed his left arm, where his first kill mark was etched.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” His head bobbed. “Something Ryzek said kept bothering me . . . that he would make Eijeh into someone I didn’t want to rescue. Well, I decided that’s impossible.” Days ago he had looked empty to me, and now full, an overflowing cup. “There’s no version of Eijeh that I don’t want to rescue from him.”