Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
I am going to discipline Mila. There is no doubt about that.
I am going to enjoy it, too. There’s even less doubt about that.
Mila
Having been sent back to bed, I try to get some sleep. Whatever Lizzie and I were indulging in has worn off now, well and truly. I feel very tired, and also very depressed. Sitting in this darkened room, I think of sunny valleys, milk straight from the cow, and freshly made bread. I think of Maraline, and what fun we had when we were younger.
I am going to be lonely here, I can feel it.
I am not sure what time it is when Arthur wakes me up.
“So,” he says, removing his shirt. “We need to talk about what happened yesterday.”
I guess I slept an entire day. Good for me.
I sit up in bed, wrapping my arms around my knees. I know he must be quite furious with me if he did not come to bed with me.
“Did you stay up all night?”
He runs his hand through his thick hair and shakes his head at me. “There is a lot of work to be done,” he says. “It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Artifice faces serious challenges closer to home than previously expected.”
“You mean everybody I’ve met being on drugs all the time?”
“Yes,” he says. “I mean everybody you’ve met being on drugs all the time.”
“I guess I’m surrounded by bad influences,” I say. I hope he forgives me this time like he did last time. It wasn’t really my fault, after all. Lizzie brought the drugs. I know he won’t let me see her again probably anyway, so she may as well take the blame.
He looks at me, deadpan. “The first time it happened, you could be presumed innocent, but I don’t believe you’d fail to recognize the effects a second time.”
“I didn’t think about it. I was just having a nice time!”
“Mhm.”
It’s not working. He doesn’t believe me. Not even a little bit.
I feel myself starting to shrink with fear. Arthur is speaking in a very cool, very matter-of-fact way. It’s the same way he talked to the fine lady before he banished her. I’ve already forgotten her name, that’s how erased someone is when Arthur decides he’s had enough of them.
Clementine? No. That wasn’t it.
“Soma is illegal. The penalty for possession is deportation, or death,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.”
“Will you deport Lizzie?”
He gives me a long, hard look. “Not at the moment,” he says. “But it is not a small matter, and I dislike how casual you continue to be about it. And that is before we deal with the issue of you deliberately trying to defy me by running from your bodyguard. Lydia does not follow you about because she wants to. She does it because she is ordered to.”
He is angry at me, and the sight of him angry at me is incredibly fearsome. I see his scars, some of them anyway, and I remember the rest of them. He is an incredible creature, and he is dangerous and I have crossed him.
My lower lip starts to quiver. I am trembling. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe just that he would never turn this energy on me. I thought that all the rules were for other people. I thought I was special. That was foolish.
“Are you going to make me disappear?”
“What?” He stops for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“Like the man in the sex shop. Or Emmaline…” That’s it! Emmaline, not Clementine.
He narrows his eyes at me for a moment, then shakes his head.
“No, Mila. I am not going to make you disappear. I am going to make you very, very sore, and very, very sorry.”
I take in a sharp breath.
“I’m already very sorry, and I don’t want to be sore,” I whimper.
“You should have thought about that before you did what you did today,” he says. “We’ve talked about all of this before. I am wasting my breath talking more. Get up. Now.”
I get up immediately. He has a kind of gravitas that comes with being Archon-General. He commands thousands, so of course he commands me too. All my previous actions and decisions seem like the most stupid things ever. He’s right to say that I knew better. Of course I did. Even a small child knows how to follow basic directions.
I think I must have been testing him on some level. Did I want this? Do I need his anger for some sick reason? Or was I testing to see if he’d send me away too?
It doesn’t matter.
He strips my nightgown off me by picking it up by the hem and lifting it up over my head. I am instantly naked. He towers above me, tall and fearsome and so very stern. He is still wearing his pants, but his torso is as naked as I am. His muscles and his scars meet my eyes as I lower them away from his face. I can’t meet his gaze right now.