Traitor Born (Secondborn #2)(59)

Grisholm snorts, watching us. “The sexual tension in here is savage. Find a way to be together so I don’t have to be subjected to your mating dance every day.” He takes a sip of water, still breathing hard from the training I put him through. He’s slowly getting better with his fusionblade. It’s been a month since I began training him, and I’m just now losing some of my worry that he’ll chop off his own leg.

Reykin pauses and scowls at Grisholm. “She’s secondborn.” His tone contains no small amount of disgust. I murder him with my eyes.

Grisholm takes another sip of water. “Hey, I know, it’s slumming, but I do see the attraction.” A backhanded compliment, the best I can hope for, though it still makes me want to skewer him with my sword. Instead, I walk away, toward Grisholm’s spa, to get my burns treated. They trail behind me.

The sophisticated spa area is just down the hall from the main pool. Its tranquility comes from rough black tile on three of the walls. There isn’t a fourth wall. It’s just an opening with an indoor-outdoor pool and pool deck providing a stunning view of the sea. Ocean breezes stir large potted palms. Atom-Fated secondborn technicians wait for us at hovering medical tables.

I change into an emerald bathing suit and join the Firstborn Commander and Reykin. Grisholm is lying facedown on one table while an attractive female secondborn works on the burns I gave him across his back and calves. Reykin, bare chested and attired in a black swimsuit, sits on the opposite table, holding his forearms up to his female attendant. I take the middle table. My attendant is a tall, leggy female, too. Grisholm selects them. Like Reykin, my arms need attention, but nothing else.

“We’re still on for tonight,” Grisholm says. “You’re not going to back out on me, are you, Winterstrom?”

“No,” Reykin replies. “I’m still in.”

“And you’re coming, too, right, Roselle?”

I sigh heavily. “Do I have a choice?”

“No,” they both say in unison.

“You’re my slave,” Reykin says. “We need you to assess the competitors.”

“Then I’ll be at your stupid Secondborn Pre-Trial event.”

“You make it sound horrible,” Grisholm replies with a chuckle, “but it’ll be fun.”

“It is horrible,” I retort, “if you’re on the other side of it, Grisholm. Are you sure your father said it’s okay for us to go?”

The Virtue only just agreed to let The Trials move forward. I’d hoped that when Clarity Bowie postponed the Secondborn Trials, it would be indefinitely. It’s only been two weeks since the chaos of my father’s funeral. The Virtue declared a state of mourning, and secondborns slated to be in The Trials were shipped back to their Fates to resume their duties. Now, apparently, they’re all coming back to compete. Well, most. Some of the Swords have gone into active duty or died fighting the Gates of Dawn.

“Of course I’m sure!” Grisholm replies. “And I’ll wager that, by the end of the evening, you’ll place a bet on someone, Roselle.”

“I bet I won’t.”

Grisholm hisses at his attendant. “Are you using a wire brush to scour my skin? Why don’t you try numbing it first!”

“Stop being a baby,” Reykin replies with a smirk. “You don’t hear Roselle crying about her burns.”

“That’s because she has no feelings,” Grisholm replies. “I’m convinced she’s a cyborg.”

“Is that true, Roselle?” Reykin asks with a condescending grin. “Are you a cyborg?”

For some reason, his question stings. Maybe it’s because it’s only one of a handful of words he’s said to me in the past two weeks. He has kept his distance from me since the night I last saw Hawthorne. Reykin and I see each other almost every day, at training or in council meetings, but he never comes to my apartment anymore—at least, I don’t think he does. I’ve awoken a few times and thought I heard the door close. And sometimes, I think I smell his scent when I wake up, or see the indention of his shape in the chair by my bed, but I can’t be sure.

“Sometimes I wish I was,” I reply, “but I can assure you that I do think for myself, and my heart is my own.”

As soon as my skin is repaired, I slide off the table and go to the tranquil pool. I wade down the stone steps, plunge beneath the surface, and swim underwater to the far end. When I emerge, I’m in the sunlight, squinting. I lean my arms on the stone deck of the pool. A shadow falls over me, and I gaze up directly into Agent Crow’s killer stare.

“Did you miss me?” he asks, crouching. He’s the most dressed down I’ve ever seen him, in rolled-up casual pants and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. “I came to see you.” He smiles, his steel teeth glinting in the sunlight.

“I don’t want to see you.”

His icy eyes turn colder. “Last time I checked, you’re still secondborn. I don’t need your permission.”

Grisholm and Reykin wander out onto the pool deck toward us. “Census,” Grisholm says, “do you have information for me?”

“There’s been an interesting development that I thought you might not be aware of,” Crow says.

“Oh?”

“It’s been reported that the Second Family of Virtues, the Keatings, have suddenly misplaced their newly minted firstborn heir, Orwell. It’s such a shame. Firstborn Rasmussen Keating is murdered. Now his brother is missing. The Keatings will lose their position as Second Family of Virtues. They might even find themselves having to leave Virtues altogether because they no longer have an heir to guarantee their position in society.”