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Ever since my father almost beat me to death when I was six years old, everything in my life has been about reminding myself that I’m alive.

As fire burns through my veins as Silla’s fingers scrape through my closely cropped hair, and her tongue tentatively brushes across mine, I find someone who makes me feel alive. Someone I may want to keep, except I fear my darkness may corrupt the things I find intriguing.

Eighteen

SILLA

As I stare into the emerald green eyes of a man who should scare me, I find myself softening instead. As his lips twist into an awkward smile, I wonder if it’s because he just doesn’t have much to be happy about.

“Shall we?” Sidney murmurs, and I have to blink to remember something about poisonous plants.

“Uh, sure,” I respond, untangling myself from his arms.

Walking to the patch of innocuous looking flora, I glance back at him expectantly.

“We’re going to be working through the most important poisons that you’ll use in the field tonight,” Sidney explains.

Picking up shears to hand to me and heavy duty gardening gloves, he puts them on.

“I’m going to walk you through what each one is, and its uses. The Warden wanted me to teach you something, so I guess this counts,” he says.

There’s a chuff of a breath that sounds like it could be a chuckle, and I force myself to focus on what he explains next.

Sidney walks me through hemlock, castor bean, giant hogweed, and rosary peas and their uses. My mind is spinning with all of the ways these can be used to kill someone or make them violently ill by the time we’re finished.

Carefully separating each grouping of the clippings he cut, Sidney puts them into different bags.

“If Andrya was doing this, she would be obsessively labeling these all, but I can tell them apart by sight,” he smirks, straightening up. “We’ve been here awhile, we have just enough time for you to catch lunch before it ends.”

A part of me wants to ask him to have lunch with me, but the butterflies in my stomach tell me that’s dumb. I don’t know how old Sidney is, but it’s clear he’s much older than I am. So instead I nod, brushing off my knees of dirt because I ended up kneeling at one point.

“I want to talk to the Warden about a pants option for Section B uniforms. As much as I enjoy the amount of skin in class, this doesn’t make sense,” Sidney says to himself as we start walking to the door leading back inside.

My head tilts in surprise, but he doesn’t see me. Why does he care about what I’m wearing? I’ll admit, the practicality of a uniform that’s pajama material doesn’t seem feasible. It would be nice not to freeze everywhere I go in this Gods blasted facility.

I’m so in my head that I don’t notice when Sidney stops suddenly, and I slam into his back.

“Ooof,” I groan, stepping back to rub my nose.

He turns around so quickly, I flinch, expecting him to yell at me for not paying more attention. The skin around his eyes pinches, but Sidney doesn’t say anything.

“You’re thinking very hard right now. Are you going to share?” he asks, turning to walk into one of the hallways that’ll lead us to the dining room.

“No,” I say quickly, still rubbing my nose. It’s not broken at least. Sidney is fucking solid.

“Mmhmm.” He doesn’t sound as if he believes me, but my thoughts don’t bear mentioning.

Walking in silence, I wonder if I can deal with the closed room of the dining hall after spending so much time outside today. It was exactly what I needed, but it was hard walking back in here.

Maybe I just need a nap to escape my thoughts.

“I’ll see you in class tonight, Silla,” Sidney rumbles as we reach the dining hall.

Biting my lip, I wonder if I’m hungry or nauseous. My stomach is gurgling, but that doesn’t say much.

“Silla,” Gray says, right behind me.

Yelping in surprise, I whirl around. “Yes?” I gasp.