Page 215 of Of Kings and Kaos
“No, I don’t haveanyaffinity.” There was something forlorn in her voice, but she covered the emotion on her face quickly.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” I admitted.
“Apparently, neither had Lord d’Refan’s scholars,” she said dryly.
I chuckled lowly at that.
“So you’re here as a freak experiment like the rest of us.”
Faylinn shrugged her shoulders again.
“It would seem that way.”
We lapsed into comfortable silence again.
“How did you end up here?” she asked quietly.
I chuckled again.
“Getting right into the deep stuff, aren’t you?” I teased.
When was the last time I teased someone?It felt good. Foreign, but good. Even when I took care of my siblings, I rarely teased, rarely laughed.
“I’m sorry. Should I ask you your favorite color, then? Or perhaps your dick size. Though I can see it clearly through the wall, so that would be a wasted question.”
A laugh barked from my chest completely unbidden, and Faylinn smiled at me in return. She was radiant, even in the dark.
A few of our cellmates grumbled at the sudden burst of emotion and noise, and we quieted for a bit, allowing them to fall back asleep.
“I volunteered, I guess,” I said.
“You guess?” Her question was laced with disbelief.
“I was voluntold.”
She hummed as I recounted the story of how General d’Alvey found me on the streets.
Faylinn said nothing during my story, and it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders the longer I spoke.
Her presence was cathartic—a balm for my soul that I didn’t know I needed. She was comfort and light in this continuously and depressingly dark place.
I worried the dark would steal her light completely.
We lapsed into silence again after I concluded my sordid tale, and for a bit, I thought she may have fallen asleep. I felt my own eyelids growing heavy, my breaths evening out, as I found solace in Faylinn’s comforting presence.
“Do you blame him?” Her question was whispered into the dark, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear her.
But I did.
I rolled my lips and adjusted my position on the straw bed, mulling over her question and my feelings.
DidI blame Rohak?
“No,” I finally answered, and was relieved to feel the rightness of my answer in my soul.
“You love him.” I turned my head toward her at that quiet confession. Faylinn was lying down on her straw bed, just on the other side of the cage. If there had been no bars to separate us, our shoulders would have connected.
How I longed for connection that wasn’t forced, that wasn’t with a faceless whore I was forced to fuck for Lord d’Refan’s experiments. It wasn’t even about sex or fucking at this point—I just wanted someone else to touch me, hold me.
