Quilla
Indigo hadn’t been lying. Graykeys really had murdered most of his family.
And don’t ask me when I’d started thinking of him as Indigo. The more I’d read his journal, the more he’d become Indigo.
But I wasn’t going to let him know that just yet.
His family history was almost as sad as my own. His parents had been killed during the tenth reaping, just as mine had. His great-grandparents were assassinated in the ninth reaping. A distant Moast uncle and cousin were slain in the Great Lowden War following the eleventh reaping. Then his grandmother and beloved grandpa had died in a highly questionable accident by members of King Orick’s royal procession when they’d been traveling to High Cliff to sign a treaty, which never got around to being signed.
He really had no love lost for my people.
And yet revenge wasn’t his driving force. He might’ve kept impeccable records about the Graykeys and was still keeping track of them, but it didn’t take me long to realize Earth was his main obsession.
From his notes, I realized his great-grandmother had been switched here from Earth when some Graykey had taken an amulet through the portal eighty-three years ago. He called the earthlings who were pulled here to take the place of a Graykey going there Replacements. Made sense to me, so I shrugged, going with it.
The more he wrote about the stories his grandfather told him about her, the more I realized I knew who he was talking about. Her disappearance had been legendary on Earth when I had visited, even all those years after her disappearance. The urge to tell Indigo what I knew about her filled my tongue, but I swallowed it back.
He’d love to hear what I knew, so I couldn’t tell him. I was still mad over learning about his involvement in tracking my people down. But I wanted to tell him, which made everything worse.
What was wrong with me? I shouldn’t have any desire to converse with the vile man at all.
Except I did.
A part of him came through his writing that I hadn’t noticed before. He was thoughtful and thorough with his ideas. And even though he had more of a vested interest in wiping out my family than just about anyone I knew, he’d considered alternatives than outright genocide. In another list—I never would’ve taken him for being such a list maker, but his book was full of them—he had come up with different ways to stop Graykey destruction.
His number one option had been to simply break the curse, but not a single living soul had any idea how to do that, so he contemplated putting all the Graykeys on an island, away from the rest of the Outer Realms, so they couldn’t hurt anyone outside the family. He’d come up with the idea for a register, so they could be found easily and quickly, then simply detained for a short spell whenever a reaping began, until the bloodlust was over, then released again. He’d even wondered if sterilization would work to stop more generations from emerging.
But a sub-note under the list told me King Ignatius had nixed all these ideas, meaning Indigo had approached his king with more merciful solutions.
Before ever meeting me.
I glanced up. Why hadn’t he told me that?
I glanced back down at the words that momentarily blurred before me. Maybe he didn’t think it would matter since he’d helped his kingdom track me down regardless. So no, he wasn’t perfect by any means. But maybe he wasn’t a complete soulless monster either. He was simply human with flaws, like anyone else.
I’m not sure why that made my heart soften toward him in any way, but I’d always been suspicious of people who’d acted too pretty and polished and perfect. There was no such thing as perfect. It made me wonder what atrocities they were hiding. I’d just as soon know what their downsides were from the beginning. So it was nice to see upfront what lurked behind Indigo’s irritating, charming smile. It was even nicer that he didn’t try to make excuses or cover anything up once he was exposed.
Not that I was thawing toward him.
I was just noticing that he was different than I thought he’d be. That’s all. I still had no interest in having a true love partner.
None at all.
And the fact that I caught myself sneaking glances at him more often than I should meant nothing either. He was handsome; why shouldn’t I treat my eyes with some pleasant scenery? Didn’t mean that I wanted to know how it would feel to touch him, or if he smelled as nice as he looked. And the fact that I wanted to egg him into talking to me again was only because I liked the tenor of his voice; it had nothing to do with being charmed by the things he actually said or the stupid jokes he told.
Because I wasn’t.
And why the hell wasn’t he talking anymore? Yesterday, and even this morning, I couldn’t get him to shut up. The man had rattled on incessantly, barely taking a break for air. But since I’d discovered his involvement with hunting Graykeys, he sat there as quiet as a tomb, looking miserable and distinctly uncomfortable while I read his book.
He probably assumed I hated him now. I mean, I was apathetic, of course. He meant nothing to me. But seeing him look so defeated and miserable caused a slight stir of sympathy, or maybe it was regret, to waffle through me. It was a stupid emotion, whatever it was, so I immediately tried to squelch it, except he must’ve felt it anyway.
He lifted his face, concern wrinkling his brow. “Quilla?”
“Don’t say my name,” I snapped.
Er, at least, it was meant to be a sharp, cracking snap. Except it came out sounding more like a breathless whisper. Dammit.
Indigo blinked. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t like how it sounds in your mouth.”
God, why had I said the word mouth? Now I was thinking about his mouth. And looking at it, too. And remembering how he’d pressed it against mine just a while ago, all heat and passion and hard pressure, demanding and raging, making me crave more.
Wait, no. I craved nothing from him.
Except the jump in my pulse proved that was a lie.
The bastard felt the need and energy and anticipation in my emotions, too. His lips quirked up into a sexy smirk just before he crooned, “Yes, you do.” Then he chuckled, and I absolutely hated how amazing the sound was. “I think you like it a lot.”
“Yeah, well, you think too much. You should really stop that. Your thoughts are overwhelmingly ignorant.” My pulse jerked again with my lies. “They lead you to write this drivel.”
I lifted his book, then turned it upside down before letting it fall to the ground, landing page-first in the dirt and rocks.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. The man did not want his precious journal to be vandalized, that was obvious.
But he didn’t comment about the abuse, he merely smirked and countered, “Really? You were reading it awfully ardently for someone who considers it drivel.”
“I was skimming,” I shot back archly. “Trying to find something of interest. Which I didn’t.”
He laughed this time, not to be confused with his deep husky chuckle. This was a full, open shout of pure amusement. It made a strange ache cramp the pit of my stomach, as if my gut experienced a desperate longing to make a similar sound.
“I like the way you lie,” he finally told me, his eyes glittering and lips smiling wide as he spoke.
I lifted a single eyebrow. “Lie?”