Page 57 of Storm of Shadows
I mean, we’re the most powerful shadow weavers in the academy. Not only can we offer her protection (which let’s face it given the number of injuries the girl has already picked up, she needs), by being our thrall she also gains access to privileges other ordinary kids in the academy could only dream of.
She tilts her head to one side.
“Would you want to be someone’s slave?” I sniff at the insinuation. She grins at me like she just won a point in a game. I frown back at her.
“A slave and a thrall are not the same thing.”
“Really? Because you just said I’d have to do anything you asked.”
“Slaves don’t have their faces healed by their masters. Slaves don’t get to dine with their masters or hang out with their masters. They’re not given gifts. They’re not …” I shift my chair forward and graze my knuckles against her bare knee, “pleasured.”
My magic crackles with excitement. The shadows inside me wants me to touch her more. A fuck-load more.
I slide my tongue along my bottom lip. It wants me to taste her too.
I bet she’d taste all stubborn. All stubborn and innocent. I bet she’s never even been with someone before.
She presses her legs together, denying me access further up her thighs. But is it my imagination or does she rub those thighs together?
Is she fighting this? Under all this stubbornness, does she feel it too?
“A gilded cage is still a cage,” she whispers.
“The whole world’s a cage,” I tell her. “Better to be inside a golden one than one made of shit.”
Her brow crinkles.
“You’re not caged,” she hisses, swinging her gaze around the kitchen as if this place demonstrates that. “You have everything you want.”
“Yes,” I say, “and that includes you.”
She shakes her head slowly. “Why me?” she whispers. “You could have anyone you wanted.”
“We want you.”
“Is it because …” Something flashes in her eyes. Something genuine. Something real.
“Is it because …?” I prompt, wanting to capture whatever that was.
She bites her lip as if to stop herself from saying the words.
I take hold of her chin again. “Tell me,” I say, the shadows dancing around us, enticingly. It makes it impossible for her to drag her eyes from me.
She closes them instead.
“Tell me,” I whisper again, more gently this time.
“All my life people have wanted to break me. Is that what this is? Is that what you want?”
I can feel her trembling.
Have I got this all wrong? The defiant attitude. The bratty persona. Is it all an act?
She opens her eyelids and stares at me, her gaze now steely. “Because if it is, then you can go to hell. I will not break.”
I let go of her chin and chuckle.
Yeah, it’s no fucking act.
