Drakkon

Chapter Sixteen

Heat flushed my features and I turned away.

"Don't worry about the markings," he said as he yawned. Sitting on the bed, he scratched the back of his head before pulling out a chest from beneath the bed. He opened it quickly and yanked out a looser shirt, which he pulled on over his head. "Tattoos are common in many clans, tribes, and villages." He shrugged. "The only markings that you should be worried about are slave markings and I assure you, I do not have those."

I barely listened to his words.

He killed someone. Images of that man's sprawled, lifeless body flashed in my head and I squeezed my eyes shut, my hands trembling as fear parched my throat.

I had seen death enter a man's eyes, and it was because Meilin decided to end that man's life.

"You've never seen someone die?" he said quietly, his voice sounding louder in the silent room, shaking the little shred of calm that was nestled in my chest. I shivered at his question, staring at him with wide eyes and wondering how it was possible for him to be so nonchalant about killing someone. As if it wasn't a big deal.

I swallowed, bringing my shaking hands together and clutching onto them to stop my trembling. It didn't work and as I stared into his unfathomable eyes, I was frozen in fear and I couldn't stop thinking about Meilin killing that man. He had easily snapped his neck and pushed him away, as if that man was an insect and that killing him wasn't a big deal.

"No," I finally whispered, answering his question. "Not until . . . "

"Today," he finished for me.

I nodded, involuntarily shrinking back until my back was pressed against the cool glass window.

"I'm not really that surprised," he said with a shrug. He yawned once more, watching me with those predatory black eyes of his. His lethality clung onto him in a dark haze, his eyes windowing only a speck of the darkness within him. "I'm guessing you never saw someone kill another person."

The only time I had come close to seeing someone die was when one of the villagers in my village had accidentally run over a boy with his ox. The boy's legs were mangled and he was bleeding profusely, but he survived. Even then, I remembered crying and holding onto my older brother every time the nightmares of that boy came to me. It took me months to forget the image of his mauling.

"How can you kill so . . . casually?" I breathed the question before I could think better. I cringed when the words were out, my peace of mind precariously hanging on a thin thread that Meilin was close to clawing away.

His dark eyes were on me and for the longest moment he didn't say anything, as if he was assessing his words or thinking about what to say. Or maybe he was being thoughtful to try not to upset me. I wasn't sure as I stared at him and his unreadable gaze. "Killing isn't easy for most people. Most people are haunted with the images of the people they kill. I, on the other hand, don't really remember the faces of the people I've killed," he said honesty. He was watching me carefully, as if assessing my reaction. "It's not that I don't want to remember their faces, but more so that I just don't care to remember something as insignificant as that. Their faces, whether I remember them or not, will never haunt me."

"That's horrible."

"That's war and that's life."

"Not like that," I said with trembling fingers. Heng hadn't wanted to kill anyone even though he was a soldier, and he had even told me while crying, recounting the time he had taken someone's life on the battlefield. This . . . unemotional way of handling death wasn't . . . human. "War and life has nothing to do with mercilessly and thoughtlessly killing someone."