Human Pet Prison (Possessive Aliens #7) - Loki Renard Page 0,30
promise her that I’ll never put her in harm’s way again. But those are not things a warden can say to a prisoner, so I settle for a question.
“Who is Ella?”
Her expression turns vicious. It is like watching a shadow pass over her emotional being, something dark and disturbing and ultimately tragic. It astounds me how much humans give away with the little motions of their face.
“How do you know her name?”
“You were calling it when you were sick.”
She shakes her head briskly. “Don’t ever say that name again.”
“Why?
She looks at me and there is nothing but hatred in her eyes. The kind of hatred which cannot be broken. I have seen this look before in the gaze of a matriarch who anticipates a threat to her clutch. It is a look of such complete loathing and utter viciousness that even I, in all my scythkin might, feel the pang of it inside my chest.
“Ella was my daughter,” she hisses. “You killed her.”
I assume she does not mean I personally killed her. I assume she is using the generic collective ‘you’ which applies to all scythkin. Either way, I am confused.
“We do not kill humans.”
“That is a lie. Your kind killed her.”
“It is the highest crime in scythkin….”
“Shut the fuck up. You have no system of justice. You have no government. No keepers of law. You have vague principles which some of you live by, and most of you don’t. My child was killed by your kind.”
I don’t see how that could possibly be true, but arguing with her won’t get me anywhere, and it won’t assuage her pain.
“I am sorry.”
I think that must be the thing to say. An apology. That’s what humans always want. Their obsession with past wrongs, their inability to move past the past at all. They are creatures stuck in their own personal timesplosions. Maybe three words can make it all better.
She stares at me, full of hatred and rage. “Fuck off.”
Maybe not.
I take her suggestion. Not because she makes the decisions for us, but because I have to think, and I have to research. Silver has been roaming the galaxies for ten of her human years, committing every crime under every sun she could find. I have my suspicions as to the reasons for her rage. I knew it could not come out of nowhere.
Humans need what they call a motive to engage in tirades of vengeance against their enemies. They are not like scythkin. We kill because it is in our nature to kill. We destroy, because destruction is in our DNA. But humans need something else: a reason.
From what I know of Silver, she is not irrational. She is angry. Something has happened to her. Perhaps I should believe her. Even if what she says sounds unthinkable. Scythkin do not kill humans. They have an evolutionary exception written into our code.
Silver
I shouldn’t have told him.
I should have kept that secret, as I have kept it from everybody I have known since it happened. He is getting under my skin. He is starting to break and shatter my sense of self, and with it, he is shaking out all the secrets I keep at my core.
I curl up on myself to try to keep it together. I can’t let him win. I haven’t come this far to fall apart. I’ll survive him, like I survived all the others.
She would be twenty years old now…
Thoughts like that aren’t helpful, but I can’t stop them. When I am alone, I think about her. My baby. My everything. To this day, it seems as though the day I first held her in my arms was yesterday, even though two decades separates me from that moment.
The door to my cell swings open.
He is back.
I do not know how long he has been gone. Long enough for me to cry and have the tears dry on my face again.
“I am sorry.”
He says it again, those thoroughly empty words which cannot mean anything coming out of his mouth.
Has a scythkin ever apologized before? The word sounds uncomfortable coming out of his mouth, as if it knows it doesn’t belong. He’s said it twice now, and it still doesn’t sound any good.
I say nothing. I don’t know what he’s pretending to be sorry for.
“My kind has caused you pain,” he says. “A great injustice has been done. If you say that your baby was killed by our kind, then I believe you.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I hiss. “So kind