Page 41 of A Vow of Shadow and Blood
“Wait? This is the apothecary boy? The one with the small di—” I slap her hand as she goes to make a gesture with her pinky finger, and she quickly stops speaking.
Finn eyes me.
“You’re really a piece of work, you know that.” He swivels to face Tori. “And it’s not small. It’s average. I have anaverage-sized penis, and there is nothing wrong with that.”
Tori lets out a laugh, but Cora is anything but amused.
“Can we please get back to business? We don’t have long. Need I remind you what is at stake if we are caught?”
Tori clears her throat. “Sorry.”
“Good, now I suppose you’ll want to count this?” Cora hands Finn a pouch, and my eyes fall to his greedy little face.
“You’re paying him?”
Cora tries to brush me off with the flick of her hand, but I will not back down that easily.
“You’re an asshole, you know that, right? She’s an oldblood, she needs all the money she can get, and you’re charging her tohelppeople?”
He snorts at this.
“Some of us weren’t born with the kind of potency in our blood that guarantees us a roof over our head and food on the table. If I don’t make coin, I don’t eat.”
“You get money from the medicine you sell.”
He throws his head back and laughs.
“Yeah, you try living off that. This is the real world, Adina. You can pretend it doesn’t exist inside your little bubble, but you don’t get to judge those of us who actually live outside of it.”
Cora’s eyes fall on me, and I know she is thinking the same thing. Life is different for purebloods—we lack nothing. Yet I want to shout that every privilege I enjoy comes at a cost. But instead, I remain silent as he counts the money, making sure every coin is present, the greed in his eyes adding an extra shine to it.
“Happy?” I ask when he finally ties the pouch and slips it beneath the folds of his cloak.
“It’s all there.”
Our eyes meet, and I see the challenge in them. I hate to admit that his words affected me, and he knows it. He may be annoying, but beneath all of that, he’s smart, and he knows how to hit me where it hurts.
“Good, now we can get going,” I say.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He taps the place where he just placed the pouch. “This was for me to provide safe passage forone.You’re not coming.”
I slip out my dagger within seconds, holding it up for him to see.
“Try and stop me.”
He shakes his head and laughs.
“Why do I always come face to face with a blade whenever I’m around you?”
“Because you’re a self-righteous little prick.”
Remember when I told you to torture him?
This isn’t the time for anI told you so.
And yet I did.
Shut up, Athriel.
