Page 14 of Acedia

He coughed loudly, choking on his own saliva, and I listened out to see if the ruckus would wake my brothers. “Yes. I thought it was just a rumor, but I’ve overheard some stuff while being in close proximity to the Council over the past few days. Stuff that isn’t exactly widely available knowledge to the rest of the Hunters. That they feed off ourlust. I… Do you know much about lust?”

“Of course I know what lust is,” I replied, keeping my voice gentle but not entirely able to hide the impatience in it. I experienced desire just like anybody else. I had wants and needs.

I got lonely.

I got lonely a lot.

“You can’t possibly want that. They’d…touchyou.”

I didn’t knowhowthey’d touch me. Maybe it’d be cruel. Maybe it would be worse than the bruising pinches my brothers gave me.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it’d be gentle.

Maybe it would feel good.

If they were feeding off lust, if theyneededlust… Surely, it would be more efficient to use pleasure than pain? It was an alluring motivator. With each year that passed, I craved physical touch more and more—Iachedwith it some days. And if I could provide something they needed, then I might not be a burden. I might actually be valuable.

I wanted so badly to be valued by the people around me.

Of course, it would mean overlooking my other flaws and the Shades might be just as repulsed by me as everyone told me the Hunters were. But on the off chance that they weren’t…

What were Shades even like? Nana had always described them as mindless and evil, but I’d struggled to reconcile that description with a group who we were negotiating a treaty arrangement with, sealed by a marriage between our kinds. From what I’d overheard, there was nothing mindless about them at all. What my parents had attributed to evil seemed more like the Shades fighting for their interests—the exact same way we were.

Had Nana ever said anything else about how they looked? I knew they had a solid form in their own realm and a ghost-like one here.

“In their realm, their den of iniquity, they look like demons that have crawled up from some ancient underworld. Your grandfather saw drawings in the archives once—he said theywere the most repulsive creatures you could ever imagine in their true forms.”

That didn’t bode particularly well as far as lust was concerned. Then again, I couldn’t see them. Their touch would matter the most to me, and maybe that felt good? Maybe they smelled nice. That would be a bonus.

“I guess you wouldn’t be the first,” Lucas muttered. “Other Hunters have defected. Maybe their families were raging psychopaths too.”

“That seems a little excessive.” I wasn’t very sure of the words, but it felt disloyal to not try and defend their honor at least a little.

“It’s actually an understatement. You do appreciate that it’s not normal to hide your child in an attic their entire life, right?”

“The twins told you about that?”

“They boasted about that.”

That was an uncomfortable thought. “I know it’s strange. But it would have been disastrous for Moriah’s career in the Hunters if anyone had found out about me. It was really for the best.”

“No,” Lucas said firmly. “I’m sorry. I get that you have Stockholm Syndrome or whatever, but there’s no world in which that was an appropriate solution. There are homes where Hunters who can’t hunt for whatever reason are sent to live. Where they can still contribute to the cause and have a community, and live normal lives.”

I’d heard all about those places in hushed tones from Nana. From what she’d described, they weren’t the idyllic dreamy villages of rejected Hunters that Lucas seemed to think they were.

What would he know about them, really? He didn’t have to learn about those places. He was strong and healthy and an asset to the Hunters. He didn’t have to worry about people or places like that.

There was a noise from the other room and Lucas cursed under his breath. “Hold on, let me see if the coast is clear for you to sneak out of here.”

I’d never really snuck anywhere before, I realized with some amusement. When guests were at the house, I had to be quiet but the TV was always on because Moriah told everyone that Nana had an apartment in the attic. No one had ever trusted me tosneakbefore.

Lucas did whatever he was doing before coming back into the room, whispering at me to stay quiet as he gently grabbed my wrist and led me out of the room, depositing me back at the kitchen counter where he’d found me.

“I’ll go let Tilly in,” he murmured, pushing the glass into my hand that I’d been patting the counter, searching for.

If he was a bad person, he was doing a very good job of hiding it. So far, I felt much more comfortable in Lucas’s presence than my brothers’. But I also knew not to trust my own judgment because Nana had regularly told me how naive I was to the ways of the world.

I startled as a phone rang, sloshing water all over my hand. One of the twins groaned, answering it groggily. “What’s up, Mom?”

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