“Have you ever killed for my father?”
“Yes.” She exhaled. We were back on familiar territory.
“Who did you kill?”
“During training I killed several martial artists and weapon masters.”
“Why did you kill them?”
“For practice.”
“Were they forced to fight?”
“No, they were paid to kill us.”
That was a familiar tactic, one my father learned from Voron. “What about after your training was complete?”
“I killed the Followers of Guram. They had taken one of Sharrum’s people and killed her, and he was displeased.”
I’d run across the Followers of Guram before. They were a nasty sect and they liked skinning people with tattoos, which they considered a mortal sin, to curry favor with whatever god Guram prayed to. Guram was a prophet of sorts and the rumor was that once you heard his sermon, you would become a devotee. Law enforcement stomped them out, but they were like a hydra. You crush one head and another pops up in a different city. Although I hadn’t heard about them for a few years.
“How many of the followers did you kill?”
She smiled a small smile. “All of them.”
Wow. “How long did it take you?”
“Two years.”
“What about Guram himself?”
“I killed him, too.”
“How did you feel about killing all those people?”
“Sharrum wanted them dead.”
I finally realized why she disturbed me so much. She was what Voron had wanted me to be. A killer without any remorse, without any doubt or questions. Point and watch the blood spray.
My father had done that to her. Like he told me, he’d given her serenity of purpose. And she was serene. The only time she became agitated was when I tried to send her away. My father was the closest thing to a god she knew. When your god orders you to kill and accepts full responsibility for it, it frees you from guilt, shame, and doubt.
This had to stop. My father had to be stopped.
“Adora, what do you want to do?”
“I want to serve you.”
“And if I said you couldn’t, what would you do?”
“I would kill myself.”
No doubt in her big brown eyes. Nothing except complete devotion.
“You wouldn’t go back to my father?”
“I would be killed. I wouldn’t be useful any longer. But if I had no choice, I would return to Sharrum.”
I had to walk her back to civilization if it was the last thing I did.
“Why don’t you like me, Sharrim?” she asked in a small voice. “I’m not the highest rated, but I’ve trained the hardest. I’m diligent.”
“I don’t dislike you, Adora. I don’t want to use you because people shouldn’t be used. People should follow their own paths in life.”
“But I want to serve you. That’s the only way I can get into heaven.”
When we stood over Jene’s body, Ascanio had said that Deputy Holland’s identity was wrapped up in being in law enforcement. But Holland didn’t grow up being a law enforcement officer. He likely had friends outside the sheriff’s office, family members, people he went to high school with. A whole net of people to catch him if he stumbled. Adora had no one. She grew up as sahanu. That was the only thing she knew. She’d lost her family and devoted her whole life to being the best assassin she could be because my father assured her she would get to heaven.
I would have to shatter that belief. I would have to explain to her that everything she had done, all the training she worked so hard on, all the lives she took were in the name of a lie. It would be like taking a lifelong devout Christian and showing them irrefutable proof that God didn’t exist. Her whole world would collapse. I spared her life and now I would have to dismantle everything she’d held as truth for the last seventeen years. It wasn’t just cruel. It would be devastating. It would crush her. It would’ve been kinder to kill her.
I looked at her and my insides churned. I hadn’t spared her because I was impressed with her skills or because I thought she was worth saving. I hadn’t saved her because I saw myself in her. I’d saved her because I wanted to send a big loud “Fuck You” to my father. Him sending her into my territory offended me. It made me angry in a way I hadn’t been angry for a very long time.
Deep down, if I listened to the voice inside me, I wanted to march into his castle, crush him, and take every scrap of land he owned. It wouldn’t be enough to win. I wanted to humiliate him and take his land. To hoard it like a dragon.
What the hell was happening to me?
“Are you well, Kate?” Adora asked.
I was a piece of shit. She was a person, an actual real human being, and I had decided to play God with her life. When I had a chance to turn her into a slave, I stopped because I recognized that Curran wouldn’t like it. I should’ve stopped because it was the wrong thing to do. Because I didn’t make slaves.
“Kate?”
How could I have gone so far? How do I fix this? If I went any further down this road, Adora would be the first of many.
“Kate? Are you sick?”
No. I had to find whatever it was that made me me and hold on to it. And I owed it to Adora to tell her the complete truth as gently as I could. I would need help. I would have to go very slowly. Baby steps.
“Adora, what is it you like to do? When you’re not working for my father, I mean. When you have free time.”