Page 139 of Grim and Oro
Egan winces at the title, as if he hasn’t gotten used to it. “Be careful.”
“I will,” I promise, before slipping through the doors, already dreading whatever the bastard is going to say when I show up in front of his cell again.
“Can’t stay away, can you?”
His tone is mocking as ever.
I approach, then recoil. “You smell like shit,” I say, standing as far from his cell as possible.
He grins sardonically. “Next time I’ll make sure to scrub extra hard with the soap I’m provided.”
There is no soap. No bath. I remember my time in the prisons and feel a flicker of pity.
Grimshaw curls his lip in disgust. “Don’t start pitying me, second son. Burn me alive first.”
I still, shocked. Then I take a step forward. There’s no use delaying the question. “Can you read my mind?”
“No. And trust me, I’m grateful for it.”
Truth. I nearly sigh in relief.
He snorts. “If I could, yours would be the last I would get caught rummaging in.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why?”
He shrugs, his chains clanking against the wall. “You’re not very important, are you, second son? I wouldn’t waste my talents on someone so insignificant.”
He wants to rile me up. “Yet here you are, speaking to me.”
He flashes a mocking smile. “I am, as you can see, a verycaptive audience.”
Bastard.
It’s not the insult. It’s the fact that I could imagine one of my friends saying the very same thing.
He is not your friend, I remind myself, heat curling from my hands.His father killed your mother.
“So conflicted,” he says, shaking his head. “Not a very useful trait, if you ask me. Good thing you’re the second son. You would make an awful king.”
I glare at him, even if, on some level I don’t disagree. “I thought you couldn’t read my mind,” I say.
He lifts a shoulder. “I never said anything about your emotions.”
I don’t know what shocks me more. That information—or that he told me the truth, unprompted. He could have lied. He doesn’t know about my flair. Why tell me one of his abilities, when he could have easily used it against me?
Yet—perhaps he isn’t trying to use it against me. Perhaps, just as he has told me, just as I have inferred from his own actions, he is perfectly content to stay in this cell forever. Or perhaps he’s playing a similar game to mine.
Only one way to find out.
I sit down across from his cell, resting my back against the wall.
Grimshaw’s eyes narrow. For the first time, he looks suspicious. “Why are you here? If you’re not going to put me out of my misery, why deepen it with your company?”
I can’t tell him my reason. I also don’t particularly enjoy lying. “I’d like to understand my enemy.” It’s partially true, at least.
“Right.” He doesn’t believe me for a second.
I need to keep him talking. “You say you hate your father. So why not kill him?”
