“So, what? She risked her entire life, this whole rebellion, because she found me attractive? Doesn’t sound like you know her as well as you think you do.”
Hunter laughs, but this time it’s predatory. “Oh, but I do. I know she is a paragon of logic and reason until her passion is ignited. If someone has gotten under her skin, there is no getting them out.”
I recall Thorne, Faith and the shooter, the militia. Where the Taylor I’d come to know was replaced by a vicious, driven version of herself otherwise kept hidden. “She is too devoted to the cause to jeopardize it for anyone, let alone me. She told me herself, nothing matters to her more than this rebellion.”
“People change.” Hunter lifts a bracelet from her bedside table and slides it on her wrist. “Love changes people.”
That is a truth I find too prickly to consider. “She doesn’t love me.”
“Are you sure? Besides, who the hell knows anymore? Everything is changing. I mean, look at us. The heir tothe Northeast Region is in the Southwest Leader’s dormitory, retrieving the daughter of the leader of the resistance. Life’s funny.”
I pace the room, using Hunter’s words as a brush to color in the black ink outline of my and Taylor’s interactions. Every movement Taylor’s made since we met must be pored over again, motivations altered. The feelings for me Taylor couldn’t make sense of in the cabin, could she have possibly held them this whole time?
Aimlessly rummaging around in her bag, she plants her piercing eyes on me. “You…you do care about her, right?”
I roll my eyes. “Isn’t a little late for the big sister act?”
“Indulge me,” she says. “You’ve met my mother. She is not exactly an overflowing fountain of maternal affection. Mason, Taylor, and I had to make our own family. We protect each other. That never goes away, no matter how long we’re apart.”
Protected. Are any of us protected? The armor we wear and the walls we build, and yet we stand, penetrable, vulnerable, finding life has uncovered our fissures and seeped into them. “And what do you think you’re protecting her from? Me?”
“From having her heart broken.”
With a sardonic chuckle, I shake my head. “Heartbreak is a matter of when, not if. Besides, if anything, it’s me who needs protection from her.”
Her eyes blink wide. “Oh. You love her.”
It’s like I’m being accused of a crime. “Yes.” Saying it aloud, even to this stranger, is a form of release. Like rubbing aloe on sunburn, the heat remains trapped beneath the skin despite the relief.
“I don’t blame you. She’s got a classic hero complex a mile wide and people go nuts for that brave and guileless routine. Except it’s earnest and she’s completely unaware of howattractive it is. And, as it turns out, she’s got thighs that could crack a watermelon.”
“Yeah, she’s… she’s incredible.” I speak plainly, and truthfully. “She’s the most extraordinary person I’ve ever known.”
“And you fell in love with her.” Her lips twist into a sad smile. “‘From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.’”
“For never was a story of more woe.”
Emotions simmer in my stomach, not quite at a boil. Hunter watches as I circle the room, seemingly quite pleased with having upturned the soil I’ve built the last few months. Paper crinkles under my boot as I pace and I lift my foot, exposing a familiar, square foil wrapper with the letters “XL” printed on it. Plucking it from the ground, I cock an eyebrow. “Looks like you and Ahote got a lot further than I did.”
“What?” Hunter has some humility, and snatches the condom wrapper from me to toss it into the nearby wastebasket. “How did you know?”
“I may not be a killer assassin like you guys, but I do have a few skills. I know sexual tension when I see it.”
“You know when people are boning.” Despite her disparagement, it is a skill, whether she wants to see it or not. And it’s served me well in this instance, finally finding my way under her skin as she’s found her way under mine. “How often has that come in handy?”
“In my circles? A lot. Sex is blackmail. Blackmail is power. Power is…well, everything.”
“Damn, Piccolo. You can take the girl out of the region but you can’t take the region out of the girl.” She smiles, and shows off some unfairly dazzling white teeth. “Well, anyway, it passed the time. He’s Wolfshield’s son. It gets lonely, you know?”
I don’t know if she means being kidnapped or, you know, life, but either way she’s right. “I do know. I was lonely too. And angry. But mostly scared.”
“Me too.”
“You were scared? The great, dead-shot assassinSelene?”
“I’m not much of a sharpshooter without a weapon.” She holds up her hands as if to say she’s unarmed. “All those years of training couldn’t prepare me for what this’d be like. The loneliness, homesickness, the long stretches of time with nothing to do. Ahote made it easier. He was nice to me.”
“I understand.” Suddenly beleaguered, I sit down on her bed. “I can’t believe Wolfshield has a son.”