Toni, who had flinched a little when the senator called her delicious, sat up straighter and added, “I can promise you that much. I was in therapy for years after my little encounter in the woods, and I remember my father grilling my therapists, trying to get them to figure out whether I’d survived a kidnapping attempt. He might have been willing to shuttle me off to the middle of nowhere as a broken adult, but as a kid? I was his. The proof that he was a real, virile man who could get a woman pregnant any time he wanted to. The thought that someone had tried to interfere with that infuriated him.”

“Thinking people do not appreciate attacks on their children. We are, by our very nature, by the faces we continue to wear even as their colors peel away, a walking, breathing attack on their children. I fully expect the first charges to be filed against one of our own within the next twenty-four hours.” The senator’s voice was back to its calmly measured smoothness.

“Charges?” I asked. “For what?”

“Murder. We are each of us a murderer, however unintentional the killing was. It’s almost elegant. As seeds and flowers, we’re unthinking, unable to tell right from wrong. We seek the largest source of available protein. We consume it. We become it. The woods may be crawling with emerald deer and malachite bears … but they’re still animals. We, on the other hand, became intelligent when we imprinted on our human prey, which means we can be considered murderers.”

I stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” He looked at me levelly. “My wife has already been detained, and her parents never liked me. They thought of her as strange, maybe a little unwell, but their own. And then I came along and remade her in my own image, using the lever of our shared origins to convince her to join me. They’ll charge her with the death of their daughter as soon as they realize it can be done—and I expect someone is telling them it can right about now. A good, high-profile murder trial does a great deal to make a war look winnable.”

Toni leaned over, resting her head against David’s arm. “Things are about to get ugly, fast. Thanks for including us in your little ‘free the humans’ stunt, by the way. I can really feel the love.”

My mouth moved silently. None of the words I had available seemed to fit. Seeing that, Toni laughed.