“Do you know why it does that?” he asks me. “Why your hair regrows so quickly?”
“No, do you?” I quirk my eyebrow at him in question.
“It’s part of your genetic engineering. Do you know what happens when I cut your hair?” He lets my newly regrown hair spill over his fingertips, and I’m reminded of a miser and his gold.
“It renders me unable to sell it at Gurlz Need Weaves?”
Kyon’s blue eyes dance with suppressed humor. “Is that a drawback?”
“Where I come from, a little extra money would’ve been handy.”
“You’ll never have to worry about money again.”
“I guess that’s one good thing about dying.”
“Do you know what hair is?” he asks me.
I sigh, tired of his game already. “A collection of dead cells,” I reply.
“To be more accurate, it’s made up of long chains of amino acids joined together by peptide bonds forming polypeptide bonds. When I cut your hair, it forces your body to regenerate cells more rapidly. It rejuvenates you, making you—”
“—freakish?” I ask, attempting to find the word for which he’s searching.
“Immortal . . . or very near to it. You won’t physically grow much older than you are now, if you continue cutting your hair on a regular basis.”
“That won’t make me immortal, because you can still kill me with your knife.”
He trails the sharp edge of steel over my cheek, heading for my mouth. “I find pleasure in your ability to reason. I’m growing tired of inane blonds.”
“That sounds like a cultural hazard for you as an Alameeda. Most of you are pretty stupid.”
He lets my insult roll off him, as if he agrees with me. “Priestesses can be very naïve, and most of them are spoiled to the core.”
“So you deserve each other. How nice for you.”
His blade rests against my lips. He lifts it and holds it away from me so I can see my mouth reflected in its silver gleam. “Look at this . . . your bottom lip is not so broken anymore . . .”
I suck in my lip, running my tongue over the surface of it. The cracks that were there have healed a bit—the marks aren’t gone, but they’re no longer scabby.
A shiver tears through me. “It’s ridiculous that you know more about my body than I do.”
His knife skims lightly over my chin, down the front of my neck, over my chest, pausing above my frantically beating heart. “I should know everything about your body. It belongs to me.”
“Yuck!” I make a face, “I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.”
He stiffens. “You’re so melodramatic.”
“So your plan isn’t to kill me? You plan to keep me,” I say, already knowing I’m right. Part of me is relieved that he doesn’t want to cut out my heart right away, but another part of me is desperate because he still believes he owns me, and I can’t have that.
“We’re going to destroy this ship. I came here to save you.”
“I have another way you can save me: go away and don’t kill anyone. It’s a simple plan, one you can grasp.”
He shrugs. “Eh, my way’s better,” he says with a smug smile. “It’s the prophecy, Kricket. A house will fall. We’re making sure that it’s not our house.”
“You’re the only aggressors here,” I counter. “Rafe isn’t looking for a fight.”
“Oh no? Why have they been after the Tectonic Peninsula? It’s a staging point to mount an attack against Alameeda.”
“Probably because you moved your troops to the borders of Peney first. Don’t try to spin this. You guys were there when I arrived in Rafe.”
From the pocket of his uniform, Kyon pulls out a silver disk. He touches it to the manacles on my wrists; it sticks to them like a magnet. Lights flash as it makes a high-pitched sound until one cuff clicks open on my wrist. “I wouldn’t dream of spinning anything with you. You’re a Diviner of Truth.” I don’t try to correct him with the fact that I can discern only lies, not necessarily the truth. He plucks the disk off the cuff, transferring it to the other one as he remarks, “You cannot deny that Rafe went looking for you at the same time as we did. That wasn’t an accident. They have an agenda, Kricket.” When my other restraint clicks open, I’m unable to hold myself up. Kyon catches me in his arms before I fall down. With a deep scowl, he murmurs, “You’re weak.”