“OH, I’M SORRY,” LUTHOR SAYS. “I DIDN’T MEAN TO INTERRUPT. ” While his face is impassive, his eyes linger on the inch of exposed skin above my waistband. I tug my tunic down with such violence I’m afraid my fingers will poke through the handwoven material.
“What do you need, Luthor?” Elder asks. I’m not sure if the impatience in his voice is because Luthor interrupted us or because Elder knows how close Luthor is to Bartie’s plans for a revolution. Elder twists around to look up at the man. “Stars, Luthor, what happened to you?!”
Now it’s my turn to smirk at his black eye and busted lip.
“Nothing of importance,” Luthor tells Elder. “Nothing I can’t . . . handle . . . myself. ”
I don’t let my face betray my fear.
Luthor sneers down at me, but when Elder glares at him, he shrugs, chuckling softly to himself as he meanders down the path away from us.
“That man is a frexing nuisance,” Elder says. “The only reason he’s been helping Bartie is because he likes trouble for trouble’s sake. ”
“Yeah,” I say in a hollow voice. Before Luthor interrupted, I was going to tell Elder about the stairs and everything else I’d found out this morning. But Luthor’s very good at silencing my words.
Elder turns his full attention to me. “What’s wrong?” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Amy, do you know something? About Luthor? Did Luthor do something?”
A hand wrapped around my wrist, pushing me down into the ground, cutting off the circulation in my hand, fingers digging into that little space over the blue veins under my palm. But when I look down, it’s my hand wrapped around my wrist, not Luthor’s.
I open my mouth.
“Tell me,” Elder says.
I can’t.
It’s too late. I can’t change the past, and it will only upset him. I can’t explain why I never told him before—a combination of being afraid to put what happened into words and being worried about what his reaction would be. I let too much time pass. Part of it was my fault—I shouldn’t have gone outside during the Season. And even though I know, logically, it’s not my fault, it’s his, I still can’t forget—
His body straddling mine. Holding me down. His eyes, laughing—knowing what he was doing. The way he watches me even now. The way his gaze lingers on all the wrong places. The way his thumbs rub against his fingers, as if imagining my skin under his touch.
Elder touches my hand.
I flinch away.
But then I remember how Victria shied away from me.
And if I can’t speak for myself, I can at least speak for her.
I talk to the pond, because it’s easier to talk to water than to Elder’s rigid face. I start at the end, telling him about how Victria and I used the med patches to exact something of revenge on Luthor. I tell him that Victria’s pregnant, and explain how it wasn’t her choice. I know I shouldn’t betray her trust, but I also know that Elder, more than anyone else on the ship, needs to know the full extent of Luthor’s evil. I add my fear that Luthor did the same to the girl in the rabbit fields.
And then I tell him how Luthor has been threatening me. I try to be emotionless as I describe the way he chased me across the field, the way it excited him when I tried to escape, but my voice still cracks.
To his credit, Elder doesn’t interrupt, not once.
“It was his eyes, Elder. I could tell,” I say. “He knew what he was doing. He knew, and he was enjoying himself. ” I think of the way he slowly licked his lips. “He still is. We’re a game to him. We’re just mice, and he’s a cat, and he loves toying with us. ”
For the first time since I started speaking, I glance at Elder. There are scars in the earth, claw marks. Elder loosens his fists when he sees me staring, and two clumps of dirt fall from his hand.
“Thank you for telling me this, Amy. ” His voice is so cold that he reminds me of Eldest.
I reach out to him and grab his forearm. His muscles are taut and hard.
“I’ve been so fixated on Bartie and whatever revolution he thinks he can cook up,” Elder says, “that I forgot the evil one man can do on his own. ”
I try to draw Elder’s gaze to me, but his narrowed eyes are focused on the ground. “It was Luthor the other day in the Recorder Hall. ” I say. “He’s the one who said he could do whatever he wanted. Maybe Bartie even got the idea from him. ”
He stands. “Thank you for telling me this, Amy,” he repeats.
“Elder?”