The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“Didn’t they? In a sense,” Parisa said. “They selected six candidates knowing that one would be eliminated. Don’t you think they have an idea which one they find expendable?”

Dalton blinked again.

And again.

His thoughts went cloudy and reformed; a different shape this time.

“How did you kill him?” Parisa asked.

“Knife,” said Dalton.

“Ambush?”

“Yes. A bit.”

“How Roman of you.”

“We were heavily intoxicated.” He scrubbed wearily at his jaw. “It is not easy, taking a life. Even when we knew it was required.”

Compulsory anything was not a concept Parisa enjoyed. “What if you had not done it?”

“What?”

“What if you had chosen not to kill someone,” Parisa repeated, clarifying as Dalton’s thoughts unraveled a second time. “Would the Society have stepped in?”

“He knew,” Dalton said, which was not an answer. “He knew it would be him.”

“So?”

“So he would have killed one of us instead, if he could have.” A pause. “Probably me.”

Ah, so that explained his fear, or at least part of it.

Parisa reached out, brushing Dalton’s hair from his forehead.

“Have me in your bed tonight,” she said. “I find I’m besieged by curiosity.”

His sheets were crisply white, cleanly tucked. She took great pleasure in unmaking them.

There were other times.

Once, she found him in the gardens. It was early, cold, and damp.

“The English,” she said, “over-romanticize their own dreary winters.”

“Anglophilia,” said Dalton, turning towards her. His cheeks were bright, spot lit by twin buds of cold, and she reached for him, taking his face between her hands to warm them.

“Careful,” he warned. “I may take this for tenderness.”

“You think I’m not tender? Seduction is not all lethality,” said Parisa impatiently. “Most people want only to be cared for. If I had no softness, I’d get nowhere at all.”

“And where do you want to go this morning?”

“Nowhere you cannot take me,” she said.

“Flattery is part of seduction,” he said, “isn’t it?”

“Inescapably, yes.”