Page 50 of The Vixen

Looking away, she urges Cinder off her lap in the opposite direction as me then gets up to begin picking up the glass. Cinder is quick to jump back in my lap, but Luna doesn’t turn around to scold her. With her back to me, I take the opportunity to look around.

In some ways, her room is familiar—sickeningly clean, the smell of chemicals overpowering a potted moonflower perched on the windowsill. In other ways, it’s a museum of my incompetence, a mosaic of all the shit I should’ve seen but didn’t.

A computer with three monitors (they wouldn’t have given their fucking captive a computer).

A single photo frame with what looks like a younger version of Thorne with his arm around a tiny girl with long white hair and self-conscious posture—odd for Luna, but obviously her.

Two of the four walls are lined with bookshelves just like the library, only my guess is these are more personal. I squint to read the title of a thick spine on the bottom shelf.Psychology: Foundations, Principles, and Applications.

No university, but she wasn’t lying when she said she was a student of psychology.

“How are the women doing?” I ask, turning my attention to Luna. Knelt on the floor, she scoops dusty glass into her hand and transfers it to her nightstand. A maneuver both strange and reckless.

“Not well, I’m afraid.”

My breath hitches. I take a second too long to respond. “Oh?”

Brushing off her hands, Luna turns to me. “I’ve ordered for Liberty’s execution to take place at dawn. We’ll see in time if Aubry can acclimate, but I won’t waste our time on the other.”

She looks me dead in the eye as she speaks with the same credence as if she were relaying the weather. Her expression is almost as neutral; but not quite. Her gaze is a bit too intense. She’s watching me, observing my reaction.

Do not react.

My blood feels as though it slows, tiny cells caught in the clutches of frost. Each pump of my heart slams and jolts.

As my face cools, I picture my skin paling to the same shade as Luna’s, but I don’t change my expression.

Brow smooth.

Cheeks lifted.

Eyelids a quarter-way closed.

Luna sits next to me on the bed while I try not to suffocate in her presence.

Do not react.

I take a breath as quietly and calmly as I can and let my hands sweat onto my jeans. “You gave me your word they wouldn’t be harmed.”

“And they won’t be. I will not harm any serious prospect you bring me, provided you’re capable of acclimating them. If you give me women who will be problems, I’m faced with no choice but to eliminate them.”

Her voice: unfeeling. Devoid of any semblance of humanity. There’s no uncertainty in it, no hint of retreat.

She’s serious.

My neck feels stiff as I nod. I flip through a hundred different conversations in search for the right response. It isn’t begging—Iknowthat—but I just barely bite my tongue.

“She asked me to kill you,” Luna says, her voice finally holding the first bit of emotion. I don’t know what it is. My brain swirls too much to decipher until she speaks again. “Whatever debt you feel you owe her is paid. She’ll no longer be tortured by her master. You’re still helping her, and you hold no guilt for this.”

Compassion.

Compassion, not for the woman she’d kill in cold blood, but for me. For my guilt.

Jesus Christ.

I want to gawk at her.

Instead, I lower my gaze to my lap.