Page 74 of Her Dreadful Will
“Itdoesbother me.”
“I only hurt people who deserve to be hurt.”
She traced the cool window glass with a fingertip. “How do you decide who deserves pain? Who made you the judge?”
“Who makes anyone the judge of anything? Sure, we elect people to decide on criminal punishments, but those decision-makers are flawed. Many of them are plainly corrupt and unjust. They interpret the laws in line with their own beliefs. How is that any more or less reprehensible than what I do? Judges make rulings by right of study, experience, and appointment. I do so by right of sheer power and a clear perception of what needs to be done. Rehabilitation and reparation are always my goal. Unless—”
“Unless?”
“Unless the crime is too extreme, or the person’s nature makes rehabilitation impossible.”
“And then you would what—kill them?”
Achan’s lips tightened, a muscle flexing along his jaw.
“You’ve killed people before.” The shock of her own statement buzzed through Soleil.
Achan didn’t answer.
Killer.
Murderer.
Chills flooded Soleil’s skin in slow, electrifying waves. She looked inside herself, searched for the horror and revulsion she knew she should feel—but there was only a kind of wary, fascinated eagerness. What was wrong with her?
You’re a monster, she told herself sternly.He’s a monster. A killer. You should be scared.
She should insist that he take her home. She should be deeply offended that he deemed himself worthy of deciding when a human life should end.
She should end him now, herself, before he could pass lethal judgment on anyone else.
If she asked him to pull over, maybe she could catch him by surprise and overpower him. She was weak, but with her kinglet skull ring, she could manage—
“Don’t hate me.” Achan bit out the words, each one heavy with so much emotion that she glanced at him sharply. A car swept past, its headlights raking his face and turning his green eyes translucent. They looked more liquid than usual.
“I don’t hate you.” The gentleness in her own voice annoyed her. She stiffened her tone. “But I want to know how many you’ve killed, and why.”
“Six,” he said. “As to why—those are long stories I don’t have the strength to tell tonight. But you would agree with me, that every one of them deserved what they got.”
He parked along the edge of the road. “The gates to Hatter’s Fall won’t be open tonight, and Rick isn’t on duty. We’ll have to sneak in.”
Soleil got out of the car, relishing the wash of cool night air over her skin. Her sneakers whispered through the thick grass as she followed Achan through a belt of undergrowth and along the edge of the Hatter’s Fall parking lot. She still felt stiff and odd, deeply weary in body and mind. The forested hills reared above her, trees piled upon each other in great mounds up to the indigo sky. Stars glittered between scraps of gray cloud, and the white gibbous moon glowed placidly above it all.
Then the overarching branches cut off her view of the sky. Achan summoned a cloud of fireflies and led the way along the shadowed path.
“How do you attract the fireflies?” Soleil asked. “Is it the tattoos on your back?”
“It’s a bit of nature magic I perfected in school. Did you ever take Zoological Magic with Highwitch Cohan?”
“No. I heard his class was super boring.”
“Some think so.” Achan shrugged. “He’s got a thing for bugs, like I do, so he gave me a few private lessons, taught me some tricks. My leaf tattoos strengthen my connection with nature, and my shoulder tattoos allow me to bond with specific insects. But it’s more than that. To link with them, I have to understand them. Fireflies are attracted to deep grass, rotting logs, pine canopies, floral scents—so if I talk to them about those things, they usually follow me a while.”
Soleil was about to ask another question, but the sudden, desperate keening of a mosquito made her flinch and bat the air. “Ugh, go away!”
Achan turned around, raising an eyebrow at her.
“Mosquitoes. They adore me, and I don’t have bug spray,” she grumbled. “Can you keep them away from me?”
