Queen Takes Rose (Wicked Villains #6) - Katee Robert Page 0,46

proper boundaries between us, reminding us of our respective roles. I didn’t expect to need that reminder as much as she apparently does. That must be why I’m furious. It’s certainly not because she’s shutting me out.

She presses a single finger to my chin and guides my face up until I meet her gaze. “We’re not through talking.” Without looking away from me, she reaches to the middle of the table and presses the button to summon the server.

He arrives a few minutes later, bringing in our food, replacing our pitcher of water, and disappearing just as quickly. I pick up my fork, but I’ve lost anything resembling an appetite. It’s so tempting to put the utensil down and just drink some more wine, but I can practically hear Allecto’s voice in the back of my head.

You want to defeat a warrior, Aurora? You have to train like one; and that includes eating.

A rousing pep talk when I was twenty-two. Now she just shoves extra protein on my plate any time she catches me during a meal. It’s annoying and endearing in equal measure, and with that in mind, I start working on the chicken scattered throughout the salad. “If we’re not finished talking, what are we talking about?”

“I would have thought it was obvious.” Malone cuts her chicken like she does everything else—with precise violence. “We’re going to talk about you.”

15

Malone

Aurora is no rabbit, but she certainly impersonates one when she’s backed into a corner. She freezes, and her eyes go wide. “Me? What could you possibly want to know about me that you don’t already?”

I eat a bite of chicken slowly before speaking again. “We’ve established that the innocent act doesn’t work on me. Try again.” It shouldn’t irritate me that she keeps throwing up shields, treating me like every other one of her patrons. Maybe it wouldn’t have before I forgot myself and told her too much about Sabine Valley and my family, though I doubt it. Aurora gets under my skin like no one else I’ve ever met, and I crave the truth of her.

She eats for several long moments, and I can practically see her considering and discarding strategies to react in a way that will get her what she wants. Which is obviously not to talk about herself.

If I weren’t already determined to find out more about this woman, her resistance would only pique my curiosity further. I focus on my meal but watch her out of the corner of my eye. I have thousands of questions about this woman, but best to start with a relatively simple one. “You’ve been in the Underworld for nine years.”

“Yes.” The word is clipped and icy.

“Hades always did like to rob the cradle.” Not that twenty-one is all that young. By twenty-one, I’d already left Sabine Valley behind and come here with the intent to take a piece of territory for myself. But Aurora is not like me, and we’ve more than established that.

She goes tense beside me. “It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?” I’m provoking her, but asking in a direct way will guarantee she shuts me down. I have to rile her a bit. “Twenty-one and fresh-faced. It’s no wonder he made a deal with you.”

“If he was really what you seem to be suggesting, he would have had me working there when I originally made the deal eight years earlier.”

Shock stills me. She went to Hades when she was thirteen? I don’t know why that surprises me. At thirteen, I was hardly an innocent. Amazons don’t shelter their children in the same way civilians tend to, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was a child when Hades accepted that bargain.

Something barbed and dangerous slithers through my chest. “Did he touch you?”

“Of course not.” She sounds so horrified, I believe her. “He gave me what I asked for, patted me on the head, and told me to come back when I was twenty-one.”

There are few lines I won’t cross, but grooming a child to work in the Underworld is unacceptable. “Did you see Hades during those eight years?”

“No.” She glares. “I finished school, paid my way through most of a bachelor’s degree, and was devastatingly normal.” Something in her expression falters a little. “I waited a month after I turned twenty-one, but he never called the bargain due. I had to go to him.”

Relief nearly makes me woozy. I hadn’t thought the old man would cross that line, but if he had… I don’t