Page 45 of A Simple Truth (the Freckled Fate #2)

44

FINNLEAH

M y fingers were bright red from the icy spring runoff, but I didn’t bother warming them as I furiously washed my clothes again and again, until they were perfectly clean. Until not a speck of red sand remained. My poisoned thoughts rapidly spiraled down, no matter how thoroughly I rinsed.

They were there back at camp. Smiling, laughing, having a good time together, enjoying each other's company. He dated her. He touched her, he cared for her, he loved her.

I embraced the fury within me because truly, I should be angry. I should be enraged. Not at the General. He had been nothing but consistent in showing his true colors since the very first moment I met him.

I should be furious with myself.

Did I forget what I was here for?

Did I fall into comfort so damn quickly so as to neglect my purpose here?

Was I truly so fucking ignorant to forget the smell of rotten human flesh against the dusty wet stone of the Rock Quarries? To forget that while I spent each day free, countless other slaves endured yet another day enslaved?

Was my life so useless and wasteful that I had the time to pout and be jealous over a Destroyer?

No, the only man I should be thinking of was far away, in the peaks of the rocky mountains of Esnox. The scars on my back itched, my wet hand scratching them, irritated, though pointlessly.

I was a raw fire wielding Destroyer. I was a trained assassin.

And I was a runaway slave.

Perhaps it was time I started remembering that.

Yet, I was nowhere nearly as strong as the Destroyer General. I couldn’t hold off battalions, couldn’t shield hundreds of slaves.

That was what I had to work on; not waste my time daydreaming of his lips on mine.

I had a promise to uphold.

And I would not sit and wait around for a man to help me.