“I said you weren’t going anywhere,” he said, gripping her more tightly when she tried to jerk away. He eased her down to the ground. “You’ll need blood or you won’t fully recover.”
His matter-of-fact statement gave her a very different kind of shock. Humans didn’t despise Opiri only because of their attempt to conquer the world but also because the very idea of feeding on blood was an abomination to their kind.
He did not offer you his blood, she thought wryly. But where else did he think she would get it, in her condition?
“Wherever you lived,” she said, “it must be very unlike the human compounds in this area.”
He pulled his pack close so that he could reach inside, and she caught a glimpse of a rifle stock, a kind she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t one of the weapons he’d gathered from the militiamen, then hidden. Apparently he wasn’t unarmed, after all.
“I assume the local militias kill every Nightsider they find,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “They consider it their divine purpose to hunt down as many Opiri as possible. Do you find that strange?”
“The militia compounds see packs of vicious predators, and the rogues only a source of food. An eye for an eye.”
Now she heard in his voice what she’d sensed in his mind and seen in his aura: simmering anger fed by a deep fear that was not for himself.
Don’t think about his feelings, she reminded herself. Don’t let them get inside you again.
But she knew it wasn’t that simple. Her shields had fallen, and she had to build them back up again. As quickly as possible.
“What was it that your famous peacemaker once said?” she asked, forcing herself to remain calm. “‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’”
His laugh reflected his obvious surprise at her knowledge of human philosophers. “Very clever,” he said. “Most Opiri don’t have much interest in human wisdom. Are you one of those rare Nightsiders who see humans as more than barbarians, killers like the militiamen or potential serfs?”
“How else should I regard them?”
“Forgive me for my foolish question. Tell me—why don’t you live with other exiles?”
“It is not in the nature of Freebloods to live in packs,” she said.
He searched through his pack, and the scent of his skin—his blood—drifted toward her. “Not in the Citadels,” he said.
“And how do you know so much about our lives inside the Citadels?”
“Inside the Citadels or out,” he said, “Freebloods spend most of their time struggling constantly for dominance, so they can build Households of their own. That’s the entire basis for their existence.”
“It is not the basis for my existence,” she said.
“Because you don’t want to fight?” He withdrew a wrapped object from his pack. “Somehow, I don’t think you live apart because you’re afraid of being killed by your own kind.”
“I am not.”
“Then there’s something else about your fellow Freebloods that you don’t like. Do you hunt humans?”
The direct question startled her. “No,” she said, without thinking.
“That would explain it, then.” He opened the package to reveal several strips of dried meat, and Artemis’s stomach clenched with hunger. “I knew you were different when I first met you.”
“How would you know that?”
“Instinct.”
The same kind of instinct, she wondered, that had made her trust him so quickly? “And if you had determined that I was like every other Freeblood,” she asked, “would you have let me die?”
His very green eyes met hers. “But you aren’t,” he said. “I’ve met Opiri who didn’t believe in living on human blood on principle, and others who just didn’t believe in taking it by force. Which type are you?”
He spoke, Artemis thought, as if he had engaged in long, philosophical discussions with other Opiri, and that idea was flatly ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
“Many Freeblood exiles do not know how to live without human blood,” she said. “But most do not kill.”
Garret offered her a piece of jerky. “Too bad the ones who don’t kill can’t—or won’t—stop the ones who do.”
She pushed the offered food away. “Are you so certain they have not tried?”
“Have you?” he said, searching her eyes.
“I want what is best for my—” She broke off and took a deep breath. She had no reason to tell him what she had attempted and failed to achieve in Oceanus. He would never believe it was possible.
“You hate us, just like the militiamen do,” she said, covering her confusion with anger.
“Us is a very big word,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”
He was right, she realized. She couldn’t sense any personal hostility from him. To the contrary, he was intrigued by her, genuinely interested in knowing more about her life. She was afraid to look any further.
“I am still a Freeblood,” she said.
“But you’re no rogue,” he said, setting the knife down on a flat rock beside him.
She was almost tempted to let him go on thinking that she was superior to her own people. Different, as he claimed. She found that she wanted his good opinion.
But if she let herself believe that she was better than the rest, she would betray her own principles. Freebloods only needed to be shown, guided, by one who had seen a little way beyond the bars of the prison they so blindly accepted as the limit of their lives.
Guided not by emotion, but by rationality. She didn’t need her unwanted empathic ability to tell her that Garret was controlling feelings that might have paralyzed him if he set them free. In that, they were frighteningly alike.
“Where do you come from?” she asked. “From all you have said, it cannot be anything like the local compounds.”
“I live alone.”
“Without the protection of your own kind?” she asked. “Is that how you lost your son?”
Her cruel question had been meant to provoke an unguarded response—any response that would help her understand him—but all it did was open her mind to the ache of his sadness.
“It is my fault,” Garret said quietly.
The red aura flared around him again, and Artemis covered her face. It made no difference. She wasn’t seeing it with her eyes but with her heart. And now all she could feel was his pain, his sorrow, his terrible sense of loss.
She had known loss, too. But nothing like this. Not since she had been human herself.
“I am sorry,” she said, dropping her hands from her face. “Have I convinced you that I know nothing of this abduction?”
Staring at the dried strip of meat he still held in one hand, he gave a ragged sigh. “Yes,” he said.
His simple answer almost made her doubt his honesty. But the “talent” she’d tried to bury insisted otherwise.
If she was wrong...
A fresh stab of hunger caught her unaware, and she sank back to the ground with a gasp. Garret set down his scanty meal and leaned over her.
“You’ve spent too much time talking and not enough resting,”