Page 30 of The Glass Empire
"I can smell it."
I finally turn. Aleksander is standing at the corner of the building, half in shadow, half in the sickly yellow light that spills from the warehouse door. He's wearing a dark coat, open over his suit, and his hands are in his pockets. He looks like he's been standing there for a while.
"Were you watching?" I ask.
"Waiting."
"Same thing."
"Different intentions."
He walks toward me. His footsteps are quiet on the gravel, almost silent, and I feel my body tense as he approaches. Not because I'm afraid he'll hurt me—I'm not, not physically—but because I'm afraid of what I'll see in his face. The truth of him. The monster behind the grey eyes.
He stops a few feet away and pulls something from his pocket. A handkerchief. White, clean, folded into a neat square. He holds it out to me.
"Your mouth," he says.
I take it. The fabric is soft—expensive, like everything else about him. I wipe my lips, my chin, the places where the bile has left its mark. The handkerchief comes away stained, and I fold it over on itself, hiding the evidence.
"Now you know," he says.
The words land like stones dropped into still water. Now you know. Now you've seen the cages. Now you understand what I am, what I do, what I've built.
"What are you?" I ask.
He's quiet for a long moment. The wind blows off the river, cold and damp, and I watch his face in the shifting light. The grey eyes. The silver at the temples. The lines around his mouth that might be from smiling or might be from something else entirely.
"Someone who needs someone like you," he says. "To fix what breaks."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agrees. "It's not."
I want to scream at him. I want to hit him, to hurt him, to make him feel even a fraction of what those women in the cages must feel. But I don't. Because I'm not that person. Because I'm someone who leans in, not someone who lashes out. Because my hands are steady, and steady hands don't shake when they should.
Instead, I say: "I need more money."
He tilts his head. Something flickers across his face—surprise, maybe, or respect.
"Excuse me?"
"More money. For the job. For the medical work." I fold my arms across my chest, holding myself together. "I saw what's in there. I know what you're asking me to help with. I'm not doing it for minimum wage."
"You want hazard pay."
"I want to survive."
He looks at me for a long, searching moment. Then his mouth curves—not quite a smile, not quite a grimace, something in between that looks almost like admiration.
"Name your price."
I do. It's more than I've ever made in a year. It's enough for vet school, if I ever get out of this alive. It's enough to send my father money, to help my sisters, to build something that isn't built on blood.
He agrees without hesitation. No negotiation, no bargaining. Just a nod, a quietdone, and I know I've been played. He would have paid me anything. He would have given me the world, if I'd asked.
Because he needs me. Because I'm the only person who can do what I do, who can stitch his men back together without flinching, who can look at the cages and not run screaming into the night.
Because I'm already his. I just don't know it yet.
