Page 44 of Inside the Wicked

“I know you’re there,” she says, bored.

I step out. I don’t know how she has the confidence to balance there. The drop isfardown into a ravine, with this side of the house on the edge of a small cliff.

“You didn’t tell me you were involved with Alistair like that,” I say carefully.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Is that why you brush off Silas?”

She huffs a laugh with bitter notes and shakes her head in mock amusement. “Silas is nothing more than an arrogant ass who thinks he’s owed what he sees. He’s just like the rest of them.”

“You said you were only fifteen when you came here ... Did he?—?”

“Did he wait until I was at least of an age to consent, even if still illegal, before he fucked me?”

I wince. Inside my stomach turns to liquid at the thought. But I’m getting the sense Kenna would be repelled by my pity.

“He could help, you know,” I say delicately.

Kenna doesn’t snap. Doesn’t outrage. It’s worse ... because she shows nothing at all. She merely takes another long inhale of her cigarette and closes her eyes on the exhale.

“I’m not in need of saving. Not like you.”

“How old were you?”

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

“Rhett is alive,” I whisper.

I don’t think she hears me. My heart is pounding so hard in my ears I hardly hear it myself, and my head whips around at my reckless words, terrified one of Alistair’s men is close enough. We’re alone, and in my distraction I turn back and gasp as Kenna spins her legs around, hops off the railing, and steps intome in the space of a breath. At the same time she reaches to her thigh, plucking a small dagger out from a concealed sheath.

“You far surpass my expectations of how much of a pining fool you are,” she hisses, her minty, smoky breath fanning my face.

“Alistair never told you,” I say.

She doesn’t believe me. “Because it’s not true. He’s been waiting to kill that son of a bitch for years. He’s fuckinggone.”

I’m hyper-aware of the lethal blade at my throat.

“He’s not. Alistair has been holding him somewhere.”

Kenna laughs, haughty and sinister.

“You desperate idiot,” she mutters.

“You don’t have to defend him anymore. We’re going to find Rhett, and we can keep you safe.”

“We?”

I don’t confirm my alliance with Silas. How this meeting is just a ruse, and the intent is to recruit her, not Alistair.

“We came for you,” I say, barely a whisper when it might be the stone that trips the explosives she’s crafted around herself.

But Kenna blinks as if she hears four words of another language instead. As though they’re both utterly indigestible, but still, she’s said them to herself a hundred times. Maybe in a dozen variations. Her press against me slackens.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she says, voice devoid of any emotion, and I stare at the ghost of her. Wherever she’s gone, it’s familiar to her. Cold and detached, but her only safety.

Her blade scratches under my chin as she steps away, eyes unblinking as she says, “Absolutely everything is legal to him. He didn’t wait.”

---