Page 14 of A Sword of Shadow and Deceit

The boy sighs. “I’m less of a kid than you are because I don’t cry like one.”

I hurriedly finish wiping my face with my other sleeve, clearing away the tracks of my tears. “Well, I’m not crying now,” I say.

He arches a brow. “And? You’ll probably cry some more in your bed tonight when it’s lights out.”

“I will not!”

He snickers and his hand comes down on the top of my head, scrubbing as if he were petting a particularly rowdy cat. I growl at him. I’m not a kept animal—I’m not like what that woman said.

“That’s it, keep saying that, kid,” the boy replies. “Maybe someday it’ll be true. For your sake, I hope it is. Criers don’t last long here.”

I grumble and look away from him. Pulling my legs up from under me, I wrap my arms around my knees and set my head down on them. I should’ve never entertained him, I think. He’s annoying.

Minutes go by and the boy’s hand retracts. I think we’ve fallen into some sort of semi-considerate silence, but then, he speaks again. “What’s your name, by the way?” he asks. “Mine’s Regis.”

I lift my head and turn to see him holding out his hand. With another sniff I reach out, pausing when he jerks his hand away and grimaces. “Don’t shake my hand with the same one you rubbed your snot all over,” he snaps.

Ugh, he’s such a picky guy. I replace it with my other hand. “Kiera,” I say. “My name’s Kiera, but my dad used to call me Kiki.”

“Is that so?” Regis drops my hand and tilts his head. “Where’s your dad now? He sell ya?”

I shake my head. “No, my dad would never sell me,” I said. He loved me. He always told me so, and my dad didn’t lie.

“Then where is he?” Regis presses. For all his boasted maturity, he obviously doesn’t pick up the clues when someone does not want to talk about something.

I sigh and tell him anyway—after all, it’s not like giving him information about my dad will hurt me. “He’s dead,” I say. Just saying the words hurts more than whatever strange Divine spell the weird lady who had bought me from the bandits did.

“Oh.” Regis frowns. “Well, I’m glad he didn’t sell you.”

“Why would you even think that?” I shake my head.

“’Cause, it’s not unusual for poor people,” he says. “My dad sold me and my brother.”

“Your brother?” I repeat, glancing around as if another carbon copy of this boy will somehow appear out of nowhere. No one does.

“Yup.” Regis sniffs and scratches his nose. “But we got split up at the auction. Some pretty God bought Grell and now it’s just me.” He offers me a toothy smile and I notice that one of his front teeth wobbles a little bit, crooked and loose.

“A God?” I repeat.

His face squishes up and his smile fades. "Yeah.” Regis turns away. A moment later, he mutters a curse under his breath. “Bitch.”

That’s a bad word, too, but I don’t tell him that. I think he already knows and that’s why he said it.

“So why are you here?” he asks. “How’d you end up in the Underworld?”

I shrug. “Some people kidnapped me and when they realized they could get in trouble for having me, they sold me to the lady here.”

“Ophelia?” he clarifies.

I nod.

The frown he gives me deepens. “What do you mean, when they ‘realized they could get in trouble for having you’?”

I shift uncomfortably where I sit. His stare doesn’t let up. “I’m not supposed to say.”

“Who told you so? Ophelia?”

“Yeah.”

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