Page 10 of Love and Death
“Cerberus,” I whisper, his name barely making it past my lips just as the door clicks open. He stiffens at the sound of his name, and my heart sinks yet again.
“What,” he answers, the word far too prickly for my liking.
Have I truly misjudged the situation? It certainlywouldn’t be the first time. I just wish I knew what’s caused this dramatic shift in his behavior toward me.
“Did you mean what you said,” I begin, scarcely able to give voice to the question, “that is, when you came to ask—”
“I know what I said,” he snaps.
“But did you mean it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
All too slowly, he turns to look down at me from his great height.
Our eyes meet, and I nearly stumble back a step at the look I see etched into his features, though whether it’s a look of pain or displeasure, I cannot tell.
“Why?”
Frustration begins to stir within me, and I have to swallow the answer I really wish to give him right now.
“Because … because I need your help.”
His lip curls up ever so slightly.
Displeasure, it is.
Perhaps I should have given him the full truth after all.
“Is that so?” he scoffs, the hope draining from me bit by bit as he continues to ignore my question. “And whatexactlywould you have me do?”
I hadn’t thought this far ahead.
I blink up at him, my mind utterly failing me as it refuses to give me any sort of plan at all.
“I-I don’t know,” I admit.
His eyes narrow on me, sending a shiver down my spine.
“It does not matter anyway,” he snorts. “My answer is no.”
“Please, I need your help! There is no one—” I catch myself before I can finish the sentence, but I can tell from the way his hand tightens around mine that the damage has already been done.
“No one else. No one but a lowly dog left to help you,” he finishes for me, the words bitter on his lips.
I recoil at this.
“That isn’t what I meant at all.”
“No? You attempt tobribeme into helping you, undoubtedly betraying my king in the process, and yet you … you cannot think of asingleway in which I might possibly redeem myself in your eyes. Excuse me if I do not believe you ever spared a thought for me until—what was it? Oh, right, until there was no one else left to save you.”
“It isn’t that,” I plead, utterly taken aback by his strange outburst.
“No? I saw the way you looked at me in the arena.”
“I’ll think of something. I promise. I—”
