I dropped her, taking furious steps away, putting a shit ton of space between us. Until I didn’t smell fucking lemons, until I could barely see the mark. The back of my thighs slammed into the edge of a desk, rattling it against the wall.

I lifted myself up on the desk, opening the drawer in front of me, exposing a stash of weed, rolling papers, and loose suckers.

With an arm propped on a leg, I rolled a joint on my knee.

“My game of chicken obviously fucking worked.” I licked the paper, watching Snitch. She stared at the floor. “You have two options. Tell me who sent you, or jail.”

“No one sent me!” She lifted her head, eyes earnest. “I live here, I work here, this is my home.”

“Hasn’t stopped your kind in the past,” I gritted.

“My kind,” she breathed. “Are we really so little to you?”

We’re accused of not treating our servants like people, and I won’t deny it, but it goes both ways. To them we’re pieces of diamond that they want to take a chisel to. I’d lost count of how many maids or cooks or guards we’ve had to let go, or even press charges against, because they’d tried to sell a story or steal an heirloom from that very fucking room.

I rooted around the drawer, looking for a lighter. After a moment I found it, lighting the joint.

I sucked in smoke, then blew it out. “So jail, then.”

“You’re not really giving me an option.”

I trailed my ring finger along my other hand, thinking of the first idea I’d had. “Do you know how easy it would be to make your life hell? I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”

Her nostrils flared. “Are you threatening me?”

I smiled. “I was giving you an option, Snitch.”

Through the smoke her mossy eyes found me, searching and seeking. Fuck. Those eyes. There was a reason we had our servants look away. Grandfather said it was because training them that way is one more step of corporate security. An intrinsic threat of don’t look at us, don’t look for our secrets.

Mother said it was because they need to learn who we are and who they are.

I think it’s because the eyes are the windows to the soul.

Maybe they’d learn our real secret—we didn’t have any souls.

Coldness filled my veins again. The kiss, the outfit—Snitch was like every other chick I’d met, pure manipulator.

“You really have some kind of death wish,” I said.

She quickly averted her gaze.

“If you weren’t there for me, then you were trying to snatch something priceless.”

I don’t believe in fate. Fate is the bedtime story people without power tell themselves so they can fall asleep.