Page 22 of Venom & Vanity

“Others.” She doesn't elaborate. Her eyes track across my face like she is reading something written there that I can’t see. “They come off boats frightened, angry. You come off angry and looking.”

I blink. “Looking.”

“At everything.” A pause. “Most people don't look at things. They look for a way out.” She shifts her weight slightly, a minute adjustment, like an animal resettling.

“Is there a way out?”

She goes very still.

It’s a different kind of stillness to the stillness she arrived in. This one comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere that the careful feral surface of her is not quite covering.

“The light matters,” she says. Quiet, almost to herself. Then her eyes find mine again and they are doing something complicated. “You go back. Ten minutes are nearly up and the one called Daddy means what he says.”

My brows lift. “You know them.”

“I know all on this island.” No boast in it. Just fact, stated with the flat certainty of someone who has had a very long time to accumulate knowledge and nowhere to spend it.

“How long have you been here?” I ask.

She unfolds from her crouch with a fluid economy of movement and stands. Upright she’s slight, straight and entirely herself in a way that none of the people I have met on this island so far have managed to be. Like the island hasn’t broken her down into something smaller. Like she and the island reached some private agreement a long time ago.

“Always,” she says.

Then she steps back into the tree line and the brush swallows her, disappearing like she was never here.

I stand in the cold water for another moment.

Always.

Born here, then. Raised here. This island isn’t her prison, it’s the only world she has ever known, and she moves through it like she owns every stone of it, which I am starting to think she might.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PRINCE

I’m about to go hunt her ass down when the front door opens and she stands there in my shirt, with a glint in her eye that has me frowning and pursing my lips behind my mask. That’s the look of someone who just figured out an equation that has been bugging them for days. Panic begins to unfurl inside me, did she figure it out?

Does she know who we are?

Doc steps forward but Snow cuts her gaze from the three of us to look over at the Glass Charms—no, at Cinder. The blonde rises from her spot on the sofa between Jaq and Duke and stands facing Snow.

I look between the two girls and watch as a silent conversation plays out between them. I bite back my growl, hating that I’m not privy to what they are discussing without words.

“Show me,” Cinder breathes out, then rushes across the room to Snow. Before we can stop either of them, they are rushing out the door, the six of us chasing after them. I attempt to reach out and grab Snow’s arm but Doc knocks it away. I shoot my best friend a glare.

“I want to see what the fuck this is, let it play out,” he says, then continues after the girls. I hang back a little and when Bash notices he slows his pace to walk beside me.

“You good?” he asks.

A whoosh of air escapes me. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until this moment. I lift my hand to scrub it down my face, only to stop when I realize I can’t because of this stupid fucking mask.

Information is currency on this island, and the best thing you can do is conceal your identity so no one can use it against you. I’m at the point where I want to be done with these masks and expose who we are to her and then… fuck. I don’t know what comes next but it has to be better than waking up each day feeling utterly confused.

“I don’t—-Fuck, I don’t know how to answer that.” It costs me more than I want to admit, saying that outloud.

I spy him nodding out of the corner of my eyes. He dips his head and I hate that he is holding back from me and not confessing how he truly feels. A part of me is terrified that with her being here Bash will leave me. I’ll just go back to being his dad’s best friend and nothing more.

I don’t think I could fucking survive that.