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“That will be the Sheriff,” Emrys says. “I sent him off on a side quest, but you can let him in. We can’t keep him at bay forever.”
I let out a sigh knowing that this, too, was inevitable. There is no escaping fate, or the numahn Sheriff.
“He wants to kill me,” I remind Emrys.
“I wanted to kill you too,” he reminds me. “He might change his mind.”
He is not going to change his mind.
At any other time, I would be terrified, but I think Emrys might have drunk away my fear. I lie in Emrys’ sheltering arms and I peek out between the thick strands of his hair as the most terrible creature I have ever known is allowed into our presence.
Sheriff comes striding into what I suppose must be some bedroom cum meeting chamber. Valker interior design is hard to make out when so much of it is really oriented around fuckable surfaces.
“Well, hello,” he says in that casual drawl that might make you think he wasn’t such a bad guy if you knew absolutely nothing about him at all. “There you are, Emily.”
I cringe as he uses the name the numahns gave me. Emrys was right. I am without a name, because I will always reject any imposed upon me.
“Emily? That is your name?” Emrys snorts. “That will not do. We cannot be Emrys and Emily. It’s almost cute. That’s completely unacceptable. You’ll have to choose another.”
“I’ve been choosing another for as long as I can remember. Emily is not my name. He is the last person who would ever have the right to name me.”
“I am getting the strong sense you two know one another,” Emrys says.
“He is the one who did it,” I tell my king. “He is the one who made me what I am.”
“Ungrateful brat!” Sheriff laughs. “I am the one who saved your life.”
“You didn’t save me from anything. You saved me to use me. You’re sick.”
I am finally getting to say things I wished I had said many years ago. I am not afraid. There is nothing and nobody who can possibly get me while I’m here in Emrys’ arms. Not even the great Sheriff.
“You’ve had your use of her,” Sheriff says. “I agreed to give you enough time to complete your homecoming ritual, and I did that. Now it is time to surrender her. We had an agreement.”
“I don’t know that we did,” Emrys says. He sits up in bed and gestures for Aristo to hand him a rod of hard-pressed bloodweed. The servant does as his king demands and provides a light. Red smoke curls into the air between us. I am still lying on the bed, protected by Emrys. He has one languid arm draped over my waist in a casual gesture which belies his readiness to do great harm. Anticipation, even.
I notice that Sheriff is not wearing any weapons. Aristo and the other valkers would never allow that. He is standing here with only the weight of his largely self-proclaimed authority to protect him. It is arrogance, and I hope Emrys makes him suffer for it.
Sheriff is a horror I sought to escape over and over again. Now he stands before me in his shiny space-junk uniform, looking at me with judgement I was never going to escape, and making me realize I should never have spent so long running. What I should have done was gotten stronger and made allies.
Sheriff can’t touch me now, not even this close. He’ll never touch me again.
“So am I to understand,” Emrys purrs, his voice even between deeper inhalations of smoke. “You raised this human from an infant?”
“I took that creature into my home,” Sheriff says. “She repaid me with disobedience and criminality.”
“You took her in after her own family was killed.”
“Yes.”
“By you.”
“By fighting with my unit.”
“So you destroyed her world, killed her family, kidnapped her as an infant, and you have the temerity to be offended when she grows up to be anything other than grateful?” Emrys lets out a dry, rasping laugh. “You are deeply delusional, aren’t you, so-called Sheriff.”
I am grinning so hard it feels like my face might split open. Emrys is not going to give me up. I know that. He doesn’t have to say it. There’s no promise he needs to make. I can feel it in the marrow of my fucking bones that I will never be betrayed by him.
“You do not understand,” Sheriff says.
