And I won’t let it be used again.
“Gemma Ashford. But everyone calls me Gem.”
“I don’t care.” Dropping my gaze to my plate, I snatched a strawberry and shoved it into my mouth. First, I would eat. And then, I would kill.
She was nothing more than a creature caught in my snare with a broken leg and a bloody hide. I was doing her a favor. She’d thank me for—
“What’s your name?” she asked, her voice quiet but strong.
I kept chewing and ignored her.
“What is this place?” She waved around the cell. “How many live here? Is it just you? Where are you from originally? Have you been here long—”
“Shut up. Eat. I don’t have all day to finish this.”
“Finish what?” Her voice caught with fear.
I looked up.
We made eye contact.
She sucked in a breath, reading the truth of what I meant. Not finish breakfast. Finish her.
Shaking her head slightly, she bit her bottom lip. “Why?”
Once again, I ignored her, grabbing the bread and tearing a mouthful off with my teeth. Her questions had made my own spring up. What was the world like these days? Where had she used to live? Did she have a husband back home? Would anyone miss her when I buried her in the garden? What was her favorite season?
I need to know everything.
I don’t need to know a thing.
Stuffing a snow pea into my mouth, I chewed hard and fast.
Sensing my animosity, she reached for her own plate. She went to grab a strawberry, but then she paused. Throwing me a suspicious glance, she watched as I selected a stick of celery and crunched.
Swallowing, I cocked my head. Her stare made my hair stand on end. “What?”
“You tried to kill me yesterday, and you just admitted that’s still your intention. Is this how you’ll do it? Is that why you’ve given me food?”
“I’ve given you food so you don’t die on an empty stomach. It’s called being kind.”
Her nose scrunched in disgust. “Kind is letting me go. Kind is not touching me. Kind is letting me live.”
“Then eat, and you’ll live a little longer.”
She held up the berry I’d painstakingly nurtured from seed to fruit. “Is it poisoned?”
I turned to chilly stone. “I’d never tamper with food that way.”
“Yet you’ll tamper with my life.”
“Different.”
“How is that different?” She glared at me as if her hatred had just grown a thousandfold.
“I want the strawberry. I don’t want you.”
Her shoulders went to slouch, only for steel to force her straight. “You wanted me last night.”
My hands curled around my plate. “That won’t happen again.” Those four words were spoken in honesty, but they tasted like the worst lie I’d ever told. Would I be able to end her life before touching her a final time? Would I truly deny myself the chance to be inside her before she turned lifeless and cold?
She studied me silently, dropping the strawberry back onto her plate. She scanned the breakfast I’d generously provided, her eyes slowly filling with an empty darkness.
Once again, I was familiar with that look.
I’d seen it staring back at me in mirrors before I’d smashed them, and I’d seen it in the eyes of my prey. She’d stopped fighting against the inevitable. Her instincts sensed there was no way out. She was dead, regardless if she wanted to be or not.
Normally, with that realization came a hollow kind of peace. But in her case, she looked lost, terrified, and painfully alone.
Eating another snow pea, I tried to ignore the tug in my chest. The sensation of empathy that I’d long since crushed.
She placed her plate silently onto the floor.
That affected me to the core.
She’d been so grateful for the food only moments ago. And now, even in her immense hunger, she refused to take a single thing from me.
A stalemate sprang between us.
Her despondency made impatience and annoyance fill me, but beneath that, a minor trace of compassion burned.
Silence ticked for a while.
Her stomach grumbled.
I snapped, “Nothing is poisoned.”
It was her turn to ignore me.
“Would I be eating if it was?” I growled.
She didn’t look up, staring at her hands in her lap. “You could have just poisoned my share.”
“I value food too highly to ruin it. On that you have my word.”
Her hair slid forward, obscuring her face.
Needing her to look at me, I said coldly, “And why would I poison you, anyway? It would deny me the pleasure of squeezing your delicate neck again.”
She swallowed hard, her swirling eyes flashing up to mine. “You’re a monster.”
“No, I’m dealing with a problem.”
“Let me go, and I’ll no longer be a problem.”
“Let you go, and you’ll bring a thousand problems in return.”
She crossed her arms, trembling hard. “Go on then. Finish the job. Kill me.”
I tore off a piece of bread, a sudden coldness flashing through my heart. In the few short minutes of conversation, I’d remembered something that I’d so successfully forgotten.