Page 30 of Born for Silk
I’m scooping her into my arms before I can consider what has come over me. Call it interest. Call it boredom. A moment of psychosis, but it’s not compassion or sympathy as I have neither, nor do I wish to.
I slide the mask over her face. “Breathe deep, little creature.” She flops as though boneless. I nearly expect her to crumble to dust she is so slight. “Aster,” I say her name as though I’ve said it a million times before. “Little Aster.”
She inhales the reversing gas. It awakens her slowly. Her eyes move beneath their lids, then they open, her red lips parting on a small exhale as she gazes up at me.
“My king.” She smiles. She fucking smiles at me… “You can see me. You are here.”
I stare at her inebriated expression; the gas has hit her hard. Discomfort crawls along my fingertips, taking hold of my veins and coiling them in tight knots.
“I thought you said you would eat more.”
She swallows when her face comes within an inch of mine. “I-I think that I forgot to.”
Fuck. “You’re weak,” I say to her. I expect a wince or a tear, any kind of response, but I get an immediate acceptance of the truth in a sad nod.
“I tried to be strong. I tried to survive.”
So close to her violet-coloured eyes, staring at her, staring at me, it is in this moment that words carve through my cranium. Words I tried to forget from a time that fades each year with my humanity. ‘Strong things survive because they are strong. Fragile things survive despite it.’
It can’t be.
The baby we took from the Common community? It must be. An Opi allergy is rare. Her violet eyes, black hair, the age sits right… Fuck.
“You will look after her.” Her eyes hit mine like a hammer to a skull. She asked me—directly. I should say no; it doesn’t concern me, but I don’t. I want to be their saviour— her saviour.
“I will.”
It was an ignorant declaration from a time long before I painted my soul with the blood of hundreds and let it dry to a dark crust. Perhaps it was my last selfless moment.
My last slither of humanity.
Her hair falls like an ink-black river over my hand, my fingers, unbidden, moving through the thin, silky strands. “Do you still want to come with me?”
“Yes.” In a daze, her gaze losing constancy, she lifts a hand to touch my face as though to check I am real. “You are here.” I clench my jaw as her soft fingertips caress the rough surface. “You’re so hard.”
My heart squeezes.
I often forget the organ exists outside of firing my pulse for violence. It is too buried in layers of Xin De skin and muscles, lead and bullets, indiscriminate deaths and welcomed evil. My heart isn’t often reached, no, affected by anything.
Forcing my eyes from her, I survey the warehouse; one Guard is taking evidence for Cairo; three are hauling unconscious Endigos outside; Kong is staring at me.
Fucker.
“What’s happened here?” Kong asks, approaching me while I cradle this tiny creature in my arms. A Common Silk Girl with the audacity to touch me—stroke me—without permission.
I can barely look at him.
Scowling, I shake her hand from my face, and it drops. “I’ll have the doctors look her over when we return to The Estate.”
He stops. “We are bringing them back with us?”
Them? I look across at the other one being carried by a Guard. A redhead with a full body—perfect proportions for a Silk Girl.
“Cairo wants heirs. Yes?” I stare at Kong again. “We have two Silk Girls here. That’s a complete set for my Collective. Why return them to the aviary when we already have them.”
It wasn’t a question; I don’t know what bullshit it was.
“What a successful campaign, then?” Kong mentions. “It couldn’t have gone any better if Cairo had planned it himself.”