Twisted Metal Heart - Eve Langlais Page 0,67
a young Riella wouldn’t hand over the ornate metal barrette she’d fabricated herself.
“I had my head shaved a few times, usually to get rid of some kind of critter.”
“Ew.”
“More like itchy. When I was bad, my dad sometimes took his belt to me.”
“He beat you?”
“Not mean like, but when he taught me a lesson, I never forgot it.”
“I’ve never forgotten any of mine either,” she said softly.
“Your mother beat you.”
She sighed. “I don’t want your pity.”
“I won’t pity you. I want to understand what it is like being you. Because you’re not how I expected.”
She arched a brow. “You expected a pampered princess with attitude who couldn’t save herself if she tried. I hate to disappoint, but none of us were like that. The Enclave hasn’t ruled for so long by choosing weak members. Only the strongest make it into the ranks.”
“And how did she make you strong?”
“She didn’t. She hated seeing too much strength, and so she did her best to beat us into submission.” She ducked her head. “Whippings were given out most often. Across the back, as the infraction occurred. All our teachers carried a short-knotted length of leather. Getting an answer wrong during our lessons meant a rap across the knuckles. When I was eight, I stopped crying at the punishments. I had decided, you see, to not give them the satisfaction. To prove I was strong enough to handle it. But that wasn’t the point of being punished. I was supposed to break. An Aunimaa specializing in mental psionics was brought in. You might have heard of him. He was the queen’s advisor, Duke Leroy. He could flay a mind and make it seem like years in the space of minutes. Most people who try to jab someone’s mind either find themselves yanked out of theirs or destroying the one they poke, but he had it down to an art.”
Titan rubbed his temple. “Mind control?”
“Hard to believe but true. Most Deviants have a small measure of it, not enough to do harm. But Leroy, he was strong. And cruel.” Despite it being a decade past, she still remembered the slicing sharpness of his mental claws.
“You speak as if he’s gone. He died?”
“I killed him. Right after I found out he’d murdered my father. You’re not the only one who can be called killer.”
He stared at her. “You are nothing like I expect. Every time I think I’ve got you pegged you say something that blows my mind.”
“This is the part where you’re supposed to be trying to get far, far away from me.”
“Why?”
“Because if my mother doesn’t kill you for being with me, I just might if you irritate me enough.”
“Guess I better not piss you off.”
“Good luck with that. I’m pregnant.”
He gave her a mock expression of fear then chuckled. “So long as you don’t expect me to bring you back one of them sea kraken things myself to satisfy your cravings, we should be good.”
“What if I really, really want one?” she teased.
“If the baby wants, then the baby shall have, I guess.” He shrugged and glanced out over the water, still a glassy surface that deceived. “I’m sorry the Enclave tortured you growing up.”
“My experience is no worse than anyone else’s. You might think those in the city, those named citizens or even Enclave, have this wonderful, easy, happy life. I’m sure a small number do, but the majority, at least in the Emerald City, are worse off than those in the Marshlands or, I’d daresay, even your Wastelander camps.”
“My dad used his belt, but he truly never beat me cruelly. Well, except for once. He smacked me good when he caught me with his gun, aiming it in jest at my mother.”
“I’d have smacked you too.”
He grinned. “Never said it was wrong.”
“My father never laid a hand on me,” she admitted softly, staring at the soaring shape of a bird. The spirit of her father recreated in metal and forever changed so that she no longer always saw the man he used to be. “He was the good parent. The doting one. He made everything bearable, and then he was taken from me.”
“Why did the queen have him killed?”
“Because she found out he’d hidden something from her.” She looked down at her hands. “I realized if she could kill him, a man she loved in her own twisted way, then what chance did I have? I wanted to live rather than die suddenly at her whim.”
He drew her into his arms.