”To boil,” he says, and Teiran is sure she can agree, though she can’t exactly imagine it. The feel your blood grow hot from something other than anger, ”To burn” like a criminal at the stake, to feel yourself dying. It is a dark and painful one, indeed. Eik may not want to think about it but Teiran has faced worse things than burning. At least to burn means to eventually get the sweet reprieve of death. To be tortured is for it to only continue, and to bear the scars of it forever.
He asks her to keep speaking and her sharp, sage green eyes glance down at the same moment that his glance up. The soldier doesn’t recognize the question as any more than it is: a request. She can’t think that it is somehow soothing to the Emissary standing at her side for her voice to drone on about insignificant things, but he asked and she would, indeed, oblige.
”Tell me something about yourself.”
Ah, and there is so much that she could say. Things that he likely is aware of but doesn’t exactly know the truth of, the things that made her who she is. An orphan with a vigor inside her much bigger than the body that housed it, a tool and a puppet, a formidable, talented fighter. She doesn’t say any of those things. “I hate parties,” is the eventual fact that escapes her, and no doubt what a revelation it is, if her lack of enthusiasm is any indication.
“Parties mean that equines get drunk and when they get drunk they get reckless, and that means babysitting a bunch of adults.” Her words are lackluster, a little dull and maybe even a little nonsensical, but she says them anyway. “And, when they’re drunk they try to talk to me too much,” and if there is one truth about anything on this night, it is that Teiran is horribly unfit to carry on small talk. For all the ways this party had been made to keep them warm, she didn’t think she’d get lucky enough for it to burn.
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