Twisted - Esme Devlin Page 0,54

boy?” Celeste cuts him off.

Andrei smiles at her warmly and makes to leave the room while Celeste pours the dark red liquid into the glasses. She pushes one of them across the table to me.

We were never allowed alcohol at the carnival. It might have made us emotional, that was Maxim’s reasoning. And emotional girls do not make good submissives.

“Thanks,” I say, drawing the glass to my lips. I take a sip and can’t help screwing my face up at the bitter taste.

Celeste laughs. “That’ll put hairs on your chest, girl. Here. It’s been too long since I’ve had cake.” I reach over and take the half she’s offering. Unlike wine, chocolate is something I absolutely adore. There was never much of it, and I almost wish that, like the wine, I’d never tasted it. You can’t crave what you don’t know exists.

Which reminds me why I wanted to speak to someone in the first place. To find out what exists.

But I can’t jump straight in with that. I need her to trust me, if such a thing is even possible.

“So… Baron isn’t gone then?” I’m trying to keep my voice as casual as possible, but the faint smirk on Celeste’s face tells me I’m failing.

“He was,” she says. “He returned two nights’ past. He has not come to see you?”

I shake my head and look down at the lines on the wooden table. “No.”

“And that upsets you?”

I glance up at her and see she is watching me intently. “I’m not sure how that makes me feel.”

Celeste shrugs. “Understandable, I suppose. Baron is a paradox. I love him with my whole heart, but I don’t particularly like him.”

“He has always been this way?” I take a bite of the cake. It’s sickly sweet and moist. Fresh, as if it were only baked this morning. I wonder how they got the ingredients for it.

“What way?”

“Cruel,” I answer. It’s the best word I can think of.

Celeste leans back in her chair. “Is cruel a word you would use to describe Maxim?”

I think about it for a moment. Maxim is many things… selfish, cold. Perhaps a little insane. But not cruel. “No.”

“Maxim makes money from risking girls’ lives, while Baron makes money from risking their sanity. Should we argue about which one is crueler?” She lifts an eyebrow at me.

I do take her point. “Maxim never seemed to enjoy it the way Baron does.”

Celeste laughs at that. “I don’t think Baron enjoys it. I think he is a man who would be capable of good but not in a world where good and magnificent are mutually exclusive.”

“You mean if the world wasn’t different…”

She looks like she’s thinking about it. “Even in the old world, sometimes the worst men were the most brilliant.”

“I wish I could have lived in it,” I tell her. “I have only heard stories.”

She smiles. “I was probably your age when things really began to change.”

“The curse?”

“Is that what we’re calling it now? You young ones are so superstitious. It wasn’t a curse that ended the world; it was vanity.”

“Vanity?”

“Vanity. And perhaps a touch of capitalism.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“To understand it, you would have needed to live through it.”

“Try me,” I say.

This seems to amuse her. “Since humans have walked the earth, each sex had a role. The men provided, the women did everything else. We cooked, we cleaned, we died in childbirth. That changed. Suddenly, we became equal.”

I nod along.

“We won the vote. The right to work equal jobs for equal pay. But we never relinquished all the other things. We had drugs that ensured an unexpected pregnancy wouldn’t ruin that promotion for us. They involved taking a pill every day or having an implant in your arm. Sometimes, an injection straight into your ass cheek.” She laughs as she says it and then her face turns serious.

“Miserable things for many people, made your face break out in pimples. Made you balloon in weight. Sometimes, your bleeding stopped. Sometimes, it was worse. That was until that curse of yours came along. Although in those days, it was called the miracle.”

“So… what happened?”

“Nothing. For a while. Everyone loved the miracle drug. No bleeding. No weight gain. More energy. Shiny hair. Glowing skin. See, vanity. One pill a year and your troubles would be gone. They started giving it to girls before their bleeding even started. They found out it protected against all sorts of diseases—HIV, syphilis, herpes. Do you know about them? Doesn’t matter, I suppose. They’re gone now. Taking