Page 12 of Reckless
I stiffen. We eye each other, silently communicating the one thing we never used to utter aloud. Kitt’s comment was subtle, but his lack of faith in my fulfilling his command was anything but.
My reply is distant. “That is different. And you know it.”
“Is it?” Kitt’s tone is unsettlingly innocent. “You had no attachment to those children, and yet, you still spared them their punishments despite their crimes.”
“Kitt—” I start before he abruptly cuts me off.
“Look, I’m not saying that saving children was the wrong thing to do.” He laughs, devoid of humor. “I’m not a monster. Banishing the Ordinaries with their families instead of outrightly executing them was a kindness, however small. But”—his eyes darken—“you repeatedly disobeyed Father’s orders. Again and again.”
I sigh through my nose, exasperated. At the mention of Father, I’ve lost the argument before it’s even begun. In Kitt’s eyes, nothing I say can justify an action against the previous king.
“I always obeyed orders,” I sigh. “And I always will. That was an exception.”
“Was?” Kitt repeats, his expression equally scrutinizing and skeptical. “What, do you not plan to continue that exception because I am king? Because I know?
It’s a struggle to not openly gape at him. “Do you want me to execute the children, then?” My chest heaves, heart hammering against sore ribs. “By all means, just say the word and it will be done, my king.”
Shit.
I bite my tongue hard enough to focus on the burst of pain and not the surge of anger sweeping through me. The last thing I want is toview Kitt as nothing more than my king, to treat him how I treated the one before.
Kitt is easy to love until he begins resembling the father who had little love for me.
“Kai.” The king’s harsh gaze softens with his voice. “I know this isn’t exactly a simple order to follow. I suppose I’m just… paranoid. I’ve witnessed you go against orders in the past.” At the look I give him, he hastily adds, “For good reason. Which is why I worry when asking you to bringherback to me.” His eyes find mine, full of an emotion I can’t determine. “And what better ‘good reason’ to disobey orders than your feelings for her.”
We stare at each other, eyes locked and throats lodged with unspoken words. I want to protest, beg my mouth to open and spew a convincing string of words that contradict his accusation. But he’s right, and we both know it. My feelings are what freed her in the first place.
The thought jolts me, has me jumping to the conclusion that Kitt knows this, knows that I already let her go once—and he resents me for it. But nothing on his placid face proves this, and I bury the thought before it can do the same to me.
“This can’t be easy for you, either,” I say quietly, testing the rocky water that is Kitt’s flood of feelings for the same girl.
He almost laughs. “Oh, so now we’re going to talk about this?”
We’d skirted around the touchy topic even before she decided to tear the tendons of our father’s neck with the very dagger I have strapped to my side. She was a risk, something we avoided voicing as though that could stop her from driving a wedge between us.
Falling for her was fatal.
“Whatever I felt for her died the day she killed him,” Kitt says simply.
Lies.
I’ve been telling myself the very same thing, convincingly calling it the truth.
“I know the feeling,” I nod.
Lies.
We eye each other, both content to drown in our shared delusions. But we say nothing else, not bothering to confront the fact that we’re lying to both ourselves and each other.
“I will bring her back to you, Kitt.” My voice is quiet, earnest. “Before I was your Enforcer, I was your brother. My loyalty is to you and no one else.” I’m silent for a long moment, allowing my words to sink in. “She killed my father too, you know.”
More silence stretches between us.
“Alive,” Kitt says finally. “Bring her to me alive.”
His tone doesn’t suggest that this is exactly a mercy.
Pulling off the thick ring I was given the day I became Ilya’s Enforcer, I place it on his desk. “Give it back to me when I’ve earned your trust again.”
