“Why have eight children only to terrorize them?”
I sigh, throwing my head back. “Sinta’s going to get squashed.”
“What makes you say that?” The sidelong look he slants me is heavy with warning.
Here’s something I never thought I’d say… “You’re too nice.”
Beta Sinta’s eyes spark dangerously. “I’m fairly certain the Magoi royals weren’t thinking I was nice the night I plowed through them with my sword, and you’d do well to remember what I’m capable of, too. Don’t cross me, Cat. Ever.”
I mock shudder. “I’m so scared.”
He ignores my sarcasm, his hard stare hitting me even harder than usual. “I’m just as capable of making people miserable as other royals. I don’t do it for fun. That doesn’t mean I won’t.”
Did he just threaten me? “Fine. I like to provoke. Warning ingested.” And spit back out. “You’re big and bad. I’ll try to remember.”
He arches a dark eyebrow. I think his lips twitch. “So. Eight children.” He pokes a stick into the fire, sending sparks spiraling into the gathering gloom.
I actually respect the way Beta Sinta can end an awkward situation and move on as if nothing happened. We brawl? So what. Everyone gets up, and it’s done. I swim around naked high on euphoria? It’s forgotten. Pretty much. I think… I insult him and insinuate that he can’t protect his realm? He tells me he’s as mean as the next guy when he wants to be, and it’s over, back to the eight children.
“Eight children should be enough to ensure the bloodline even with all the fighting among them. Andromeda is Alpha. Like most royals, to avoid coming under constant attack from her own children, she spent their childhoods teaching them to fear her and to hate each other. To them, she’s terrifying. Untouchable. They fight to become Beta, to inherit the throne. It’s suicidal to even think about trying to eliminate an Alpha like her.”
“But Betas challenge Alphas,” he argues.
“Not Alphas like Andromeda. But yes, otherwise, if the Alpha’s power dwindles, and when other threats, like siblings, are taken care of.”
“It’s not natural. Why not raise her family to be loyal to her? And to one another? They’d be stronger that way. A unit.”
“Because royals, and especially Andromeda, don’t think like you. Power is their ultimate goal. They challenge each other for it. They kill to get it, and they kill to keep it. Everything else is secondary, including emotional and family ties.”
“And you gleaned all this while spending eight months in a cage?”
Eh… “It was an instructive period in my life.” I hesitate and then add, “But I was in the castle for a lot longer than that.”
He studies me, his eyes dark and metallic in the firelight. Reflecting the flames, they glint a burnished bronze. “How old were you?”
“You mean in the cage?” That’s not the question I was expecting.
He nods.
My lungs constrict in a familiar way, making it hard to breathe through the memory of lies, sneering grins, tempting food just out of reach, fists, flames, and blades, all snaking their way through the bars, and Andromeda’s face, a cold, marble mask, watching it all. “Nine.”
“Nine!”
“Don’t look so horrified. I’m lucky none of them killed me. Andromeda had guards on me day and night to avoid it coming to that.” I huff a bitter laugh. “The guards didn’t stop much else, though.” Only Thanos did. For brief, blissful moments I could sleep, and he kept everyone at bay.
Beta Sinta’s voice turns gruff with anger. “She caged you for your magic.”
I’m tempted to say “like you,” but things have changed too much for that. It wouldn’t be fair, and he’s nothing like Andromeda.
“Yes.” It wasn’t really a question, and I don’t elaborate. I don’t tell him how she encouraged the royal children to lie to me, or how she hid me behind screens during gatherings and made Ajax record my every twitch so she’d know who was lying to her.
“How did you get out of the cage?”
I stare at the tips of my boots, itching in my own skin, sick with the knowledge that Andromeda made me an accomplice to cavalier murder a hundred times over. “When I found out she was eviscerating people for utterly insignificant falsehoods, I learned to control my reactions. She knew I still felt the lies, but when she couldn’t beat the truths out of me, she let me out of the cage.”