Page 102 of Swallow Your Sorries

“Don’t get self-righteous,” I say calmly. “You tried to use my weakness against me too. You’re not better than I am.”

“She’sjusta girl.”

‘It’sjusta spider.”

The hatred that blooms in those icy irises almost takes me aback.

“You can’t compare a phobia to pussy.”

“And you can’t compare something you’ve never experienced. Something you won’t ever have because I won’t fucking tell you for a second time that Elle’s off limits.”

“And you have?” he sneers. “She hates you. She practically came running into my arms. I bet she’d let me into that hot little hole before—”

Zedd’s phone light lights up the dome ceiling that’s cast in shadow, too tall for the flickering flames’ light to reach.

We all pause to watch the moving nest. No less than three hundred spiders are creeping along the gauzy web.

“Did you know this breed prefers company?” I ask. “Lots of it. See that string? The pulley? It won’t be hard to inaugurate you into their nest.”

“N-nest?”

“I used to stutter too,” Étienne says as he raises a candle toward the pointed ceiling, toward the nesting spiders who are attempting to scurry away in protest.

Of course, they can’t. There are too many webs. Too much confusion. Too many of them.

Hundreds of them.

“You’re out of your mind…I have had more cunts than I can count. Couldn’t tell them apart without the lights on and yet you’d do all of this for that fucking ginger?”

“No,” I say, hooking the loop around his ankle to the pulley. “I’d do a lot more.”

Étienne reaches for the dangling rope, then Sylo’s bound ankle.

The contact immediately makes him kick out.

“Fine!I’ll stay away from Elle. Happy?”

“Eloisa Ginhart,” I correct him. “No nicknames. Use her full government name.”

“Whatever!Eloisa Ginhart.”

“What reason will you give her? As to why you can’t tutor her?”

“The truth. That she belongs to you and only you.Please. Just get him and that spider the fuck away from me.”

Hmm, still not good enough.

“Do you bend your knee to the Untouchables?” I cock my head as the spider continues to descend. Its fuzzy legs, as thick as my fingers, are only a few centimetres shy from Sylo’s nose now. “I’ve ignored you for two years now and it’s made you bold. Cocky. That’s what I get for giving a pass to the albino side of my family.”

“I don’t have albinism!”

“Despite the lack of sun, your brains have still scrambled, Sylo.”

“It must be the lack of melanin,” Bae notes.

“Do you bend the knee?” I raise a brow.

Sylo’s eyes cross as he gazes up at the spider’s leg just a hair away, then at the dark ceiling again.

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