“The anger is part of your fire,” he told her, not for the first time. “Why do you persist on seeing it as a threat to your sanity?”
“And why do you refuse to understand that it isn’t anger?” she retorted. “It’s a kind of insanity and I inherited it.”
Pushing off him, she rose to her feet. “What my parents did wasn’t ‘normal’ in any sense of the word. They said they intended to teach me psychic control, but what mother or father could possibly think that beating a child with a leather belt until that child had no skin on her back, her blood flecking the walls of her cage, would lead to anything but a kind of feral madness in the child?” She folded her arms. “No sane parent. Mine weren’t sane, and I carry their genetic legacy.”
It was an argument the two of them had been having since childhood. He could remember the first time with crystal clarity.
• • •
“I’M crazy.” Small and with dirt on her face from an outdoor exercise, Zaira ate the nutrition bar he’d saved for her from his own lunch—she was given exactly enough for her caloric needs, but Zaira was always hungry. As if part of her couldn’t forget being starved as extra punishment.
“You’re not crazy.”
“I am.” She chewed a bite of the bar. “Not crazy like the human who used to scream outside the compound some days about the end of days, but crazy like I have a mean, bad thing inside me.”
“Does the mean, bad thing tell you to kill everyone? Kill me?”
“No. It only tells me to kill people who hurt me and who hurt you.” Her eyes zeroed in on a trainer Aden knew to be particularly brutal. “I lie in bed and I think about how I would cut his throat. I know how to get into his room. I could do it while he was asleep.” Another bite of the nutrition bar. “I like to imagine watching his blood turn his pillow all red.”
“Don’t. They’ll execute you for it.”
A sideways glance. “I won’t. I want to be there when you grow up and take over.”
• • •
ZAIRA had always believed he’d take over the squad, even before he’d shared his plans with her. “All of the reasons you’ve stated,” he said instead of getting into the same argument again, “are the same reasons it has to be you.” An Arrow no one expected to make it out and one who was deeply respected. If she was the only woman he could see by his side, Aden had long ago accepted that his relationship with Zaira wasn’t like the relationship he had with others in the squad.
Vasic was his closest friend, but Zaira . . . Her spirit burned hot enough even under so many layers of control that it had warmed him through the coldest winters of the soul. When Vasic was determined to die, to the point that he’d allowed himself to be fitted with an experimental and unstable biofusion gauntlet, it was Zaira Aden had gone to, Zaira with whom he’d shared his frustration and his concern. She’d suggested knocking Vasic over the head and forcibly removing the gauntlet before it became too integrated.
Of course Aden hadn’t been able to take her advice, but in speaking with her, he’d found the strength to keep going, keep fighting for Vasic’s survival. Zaira had used to send him regular mission specs for how the two of them could incapacitate Vasic so the gauntlet could be removed. Since they’d both known he wouldn’t take Vasic’s choice from him, it had been nothing but an intellectual exercise that had given him a break from the crushing knowledge that he would soon lose the only man he called friend.
It was why she’d done it, though if he asked her, she’d no doubt say she’d been deadly serious.
“You,” he repeated when she didn’t answer. “It must be you.”
Zaira didn’t respond to Aden’s words, to the relentless determination in his voice. Stubborn, irrational, obdurate Arrow. Taking both mugs to the food preparation area on that thought, she finished her drink while staring out through the window lashed by rain, then washed the mugs clean. And fought to keep from giving in to the violently possessive creature inside her, the one who wanted to grab at Aden’s offer and never let go.
“Don’t try to tell me my madness is a result of nurture,” she said when she could think rationally again, referring to one of his strongest counterarguments. “Every single generation of my family has been plagued by it. My grandfather was rehabilitated because of his violent episodes, and in the generation directly before Silence, we had two murderers.” A father and a son responsible for the murders of forty-seven women between them. “My parents abused me until I beat them to death. I was seven. What does that tell you?”
“Each one of those facts could be used to support the idea of nurture.” Aden’s voice never rose, and he remained in his relaxed position on the floor, but the thread of steel in his tone was unhidden. “The father forced the son to help him stalk and torture his victims. Your grandfather saw his own father be executed for murder. Your parents drove you to violence.”
Zaira strode to the other side of the room as the maddened rage creature shoved at her skin, wanting him all to itself. “Choose. Another. Partner.” She could put steel in her voice, too.
“Someone better suited? Younger? Without as much blood on her hands?”
“Yes.” Even as she spoke, Zaira saw the flaw in her argument. For this to work, for Aden to demonstrate to the squad that even their most broken could have a second chance at life, his partner had to be strong and deadly and kissed by darkness.