“No. I’m not looking to let you go.”
“You might not have a choice.”
“Why do you say that? Have you seen something I should know about?” he asks, like I’m hiding something from him.
I point my thumb over my shoulder to the window at my back. “Yeah,” I scoff, “I just saw two people get killed over me.”
“That’s war, Kricket. People die.”
“They do,” I agree. “Badly. But some live. Maybe I don’t want to be one of them. Anyway, how am I supposed to defend myself without a weapon?”
“You weren’t speaking of defense just now, you were looking for a way out, and I promise you that I’ll never give you one. I gave you the opportunity to leave; you didn’t take it. Now I can’t let you go.”
“Why not? You’re okay with them torturing me?”
“You made me love you!” he says harshly. “You’re not allowed to give up, do you understand? No surrender to death. Whatever happens, you have to survive it.”
“But what if things get really, really bad?” I ask.
“Then you fight, like you always do, and we’ll pick up the pieces of us later.”
“We will?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says without a hint of doubt.
I exhale a deep breath. “Okay.”
“If you want to learn to defend yourself, then I’m definitely the person to help you do that. Everything is a weapon,” he says. As he nears me, he takes his shirt off. I don’t have a thought in my head for a second. He pushes the chairs out of our way so that we have room to move around. When he stops in front of me, he looks down at my face. “The problem you have is with your height. You’re short.”
“I’m not short. You’re all freakishly tall,” I retort.
He smiles and I lose the fight I had immediately. “If you were taller,” he amends, “I would advise you to go for the throat or the face. They’re both vulnerable, you can grab the larynx—” he mimes grabbing the front part of his throat “—or strike the cartilage here.” He demonstrates a fake chop to his own Adam’s apple. “This will gain you some time to get away, but not much.”
I listen closely as he explains all the most vulnerable points on the body. He shows me how to exploit them in the most efficient ways, although it’s difficult to concentrate, because his body is ridiculous in its perfection. He really needs to put his shirt back on if he wants my full attention. When he demonstrates several ways I can take him down, my focus becomes razor-sharp. He lets me stalk him, as we practice different moves to incapacitate my enemies.
After rehearsing a takedown move at least a hundred times, I finally manage to get Trey flat on his back. Breathing heavily, I pounce on his chest triumphantly. Straddling him, I ask, “Did you just let me beat you?”
He hesitates. “No,” he lies.
“Ugh! Little white lies are beneath you, Trey. I need more practice.”
“You’re doing fine. I’ve been fighting for a long time. I don’t know what kind of practice you can do now that will make up for that.”
“I need an equalizer.”
I see the reluctant agreement in Trey’s eyes. “Yes. You do. But it has to be one that your enemy can’t easily take from you and then use against you.” His words remind me of the incident in the Beezway with Kesek Alez, when he took the harbinger away from me like he was taking a toy from a child. “I have an idea,” he says.
He sits up and lifts me up as he gets to his feet. Playfully, he tosses me on the bed before he moves toward a display console built into the far wall.
There’s a menagerie of crystal figurines on the shelves. Some of the cut-glass images are of animals and some are Etharian forms—dancers and musicians. Trey touches a drawer and it slides open. He extracts a long, black lacquer box. Tucking it under his arm, he closes the drawer. Then he selects a few of the crystal figurines from the shelves and brings them back with him to the bed.
Sitting cross-legged on the middle of the bed, I scoot over to make a little more room for him to join me. He does. Sitting cross-legged too, he sets the black lacquer box in front of me.
“What’s this?” I ask him, looking at the box curiously.
“What you’re looking for.”
I try to lift the lid, but it won’t open.
“Oh, sorry. I forgot that it’s security locked.” Trey places his hand on the lid of the box. A blue light scans it. A decisive click sounds as the catch of the lid unlatches.