It was a test, with him as the only judge. My hands curling into sweaty fists, I vowed I wouldn’t fail.
I began to walk. My muscles quivered but otherwise held strong. When I reached the chair, I hauled myself into it with relief, feeling like I’d crossed into safety.
The illusion of safety was shattered when the chair scraped into movement. I gasped, clutching at the pink crystal arms of the chair as Asha Wylfrael pushed me towards the table from behind. He didn’t stop until the arms of the chair collided with the table, creating a cage of crystal I wouldn’t be able to escape without shimmying down on the chair’s seat, sliding to the floor, and crawling out.
From behind the chair, Asha Wylfrael reached down for one of the plates on the tray ahead. I didn’t move my head, but my eyes slid to the side, staring at the ferocious curve of his star-bitten bicep as he placed a plate in front of me.
I followed the glowing line of his arm down to the plate. The food there was mostly recognizable, I thought. There was what looked like bread, but dark red in colour, like it had been soaked in wine. There was also a small jar of a taupe mixture that looked like some sort of paté, and beside that, a collection of shiny, black spheres that reminded me of tapioca pearls.
Asha Wylfrael and I noticed the stone knife at the same time. There was a hiss of sound above me, a sharp intake of breath. We lunged for it simultaneously, but he was faster, his hand closing powerfully over the green crystal handle. Swearing under my breath, I let my hands fall to my lap. Asha Wylfrael stood staring down at me, his silence a rebuke that needed no words, no shared language.
“It wasn’t like I was about to stab you or something,” I muttered, daring to look up at him from beneath my lashes. “I just...” My words disappeared, an unexpected tightness entering my throat. I just wanted something, something I could use, something I could keep, something to make me feel safe...
I blinked rapidly, not willing to let a single tear fall in front of him. He watched me impassively. Then, he did something surprising.
He held the knife up, close to my face. I flinched back, afraid he was going to cut me, but he didn’t. Instead, he ran the edge of his thumb down the knife’s edge, pressing so hard I saw a divot form in the flesh.
No blood.
Heat flooded my cheeks, a combination of humiliation and powerless despair. It’s a fucking alien butter knife.
I lurched forward, my elbows hitting the table. My head sank down into my hands, my palms pressing against my burning eyes until all I could see was darkness. I wanted to stay there. The darkness. I’d lost so much – my dad, my home, the friends I’d had on this planet. Now, here I was, a prisoner not even trusted enough to hold a goddamn butter knife.
“Why are you even here?” I asked dully. He hadn’t killed me yet, and he didn’t seem to have come to hurt me. He couldn’t interrogate me, either. So what, then?
I didn’t expect an answer. And I didn’t get a verbal one. But there was something. Something that startled me enough to pull my hands away from my face.
It was the sound of stone and crystal hitting my plate.
I blinked at the knife as it rattled back into place, as if it had been carelessly tossed down from above. I looked up questioningly, seeking Asha Wylfrael’s face but only finding his back as he walked away from me to the other side of the table. When he sat down in the chair facing me, he did not look at me, but wordlessly began to eat from the other plate.
He came to eat fucking breakfast with me?
I watched him incredulously, wondering if I was dreaming. This scene was just way too bizarre. The two of us seated across from each other, with matching plates, like we were sharing a meal at some bistro together.
“Why are you even here?” I asked again, the question a whisper this time. His eyes flashed to mine, and I found myself looking back down at my plate. My gaze lingered on the knife, now still.
Tentatively, I picked it up, my fingers curving around the dark emerald handle. Across the table, Asha Wylfrael stopped eating, as if waiting to see if I’d hurl it at his head even knowing now that it couldn’t cut. When I didn’t, he took a swig of something from a mug.
Why did you give this to me?
Had he tossed it back down on my plate simply because he’d been satisfied the knife couldn’t actually do any damage?
Or had he noticed my reaction – my defeat when he’d taken it from me – and changed his mind about keeping it from me?
Or maybe it was all a trap. Something meant to look like carelessness, or kindness, that was supposed to lure me into a false sense of security.
“Did you kill them?”
I hadn’t even realized I’d asked the question until the words were out of my mouth. Asha Wylfrael lowered his mug, staring at me intently, as if by reading my lips from across the table he’d be able to make more sense of my foreign words.
“Did you” – I pointed at him – “kill” – I took the knife and mimed aiming it at my own throat – “them?” At the last word, I swung the knife wildly to the side, pointing towards a wall, beyond the wall. To the place my friends had once been. “Did you kill them? Did you kill the other women? Humans?”
Asha Wylfrael’s fox-like ears twitched. He leaned forward, bracing his starlit forearms on the table.
“Humans,” he growled. I shuddered at the disarming sound – the ripple of his deep alien voice wrapped around a word I actually understood. His eyes flicked to the knife I held. “Kill humans.”
He didn’t nod or anything like that, but there was a sense of acknowledgement in his repetition of the words. I knew in the deepest parts of myself that he’d understood my question. And had now answered it.
So, he did kill them.
Obviously not everyone, as the ship had left with some sort of crew. My heart twisted when I thought of Min-Ji and Suvi. They were so late getting back to the ship. Is there even a chance they made it?
I remembered how easily Asha Wylfrael had erected and then toppled that massive wall of snow, and I doubted it. He was too powerful. He could have stopped them in their tracks before they ever reached the safety of the ship.
“And will you kill me, too?”
Asha Wylfrael cocked his head, trying to make sense of the word “kill” among all the others.
“Asha Wylfrael... Kill me?” I once again aimed the knife at my own throat, this time to emphasize who it was I meant.
His silvery brows rose in an apparent mixture of understanding and surprise. He leaned back in his chair and studied me, one hand’s fingers drumming a slow beat against his leather-clad thigh, the other hand rubbing thoughtfully at his chin.
Fuck. I shouldn’t have asked him that. He looks like he’s actually considering it now!
Cursing myself for being such an idiot, I tightened my hold on the knife. It was so dull it was basically worthless.
But right now, it was just about all I had.
