The White Sheep's Disguise ✓

Chapter 31

After a night of no sleep and a morning spent shoving food down my throat with no appetite, my arms hardly have the strength to lift a full bucket of water from Cloak's bathing chamber and back to his bed. He is sprawled out over the top, his head stuffed underneath the pillows, and I move them to the side.

When I bend low, blood rushes into my bruised cheek, forcing tears into my eyes, but that is the least of my struggles. The concerned glances and Gustus's desire to heal me are. After an hour of persuasion, he finally dropped the subject and agreed that healing me would lead the queen to investigate every living beast living in her home. Eventually, the truth would slip from someone's lips and then a sparkling new hell would break loose.

So I'm left to deal with double-takes and pitying stares. If only for a few days.

Drool puddles on the sheet next to Cloak's mouth. He fell asleep with his arms tucked underneath his stomach and the sheets wrapped around his ankles like silk chains. I will not wait hours for him to wake, I will not waste the day after he burdened the night.

It is time for me to make change happen.

With all the strength I possess—which isn't much—I hoist the full bucket into my arms and use my knee to lift it to the mattress's height. Cold water sloshes over the side and onto the floor, dripping down the side of his mattress and soaking into the frame. I wince.

Gustus made this look so easy. Not only with dumping the bucket onto his brother's head, but getting away in time for him to start swinging for faces.

I tip the bucket to the side, spilling the cold water onto Cloak's face, and he lurches, sputtering under the endless wave until the bucket is empty. He leaps from the bed, shaking his head every which way, and drags his hands down his face.

"You...asshole!" His growl turns into a scream and he whirls, somehow sliding off the edge of the bed to plant his feet in front of mine—inches away. Drawing his fist back, he prepares himself to deliver a wicked punch, but I don't move. When he realizes his brother isn't the one standing there, he stops himself.

Arm cocked, hand tightly wound, he hesitates. A bead of water streams down his broad nose and soaks into his top lip. He licks it away and forces his arm down, back to his soaked side. "You have no right," he says sharply. Walking to the side of the bed to chuck the bucket across the room, he adds, "Go back home. I'll never talk."

I don't possess the right to do much these days. Yet I find myself with no other choice.

"Your mother will kill me if I don't do this, Cloak," I remind him. "Do you care about my life at all? What about those children? If you cared about their lives, you should care about mine."

Cloak stops in the middle of his room and stares at the wall as if the answer to my questions is there. I watch a droplet of water drip from his chin and land on his bare chest, sinking down to his stomach before turning to steam against the heat of flesh. He releases a long breath. Something slaps him internally, and he continues towards his bathing chamber to snatch a towel. When he reemerges, wiping at his face, he hammers the final nail into my coffin. "I show no sympathy for other lives."

I don't know Cloak that well. Our encounters are arguments, hatred, and regret for the mistakes we made to force our paths together. But I know he doesn't speak the truth. What he did in the war and to those children will scar him forever; he did them because he had to. No one sane wants to see bodies littering a field at your hand. On your order.

There are many reasons Cloak drowns his sorrows every night and tries to forget. The things he has done are just the beginnings of a surface I have yet to crack. Having falsified my emotions before, I stride across the room and stop in front of him, folding my arms over my abdomen. He stops rubbing the towel along his face, mud brown eyes flickering to the faint bruise on my cheek. A flash of recognition from the day before, then nothing.