He was supposed to be an angel but they took him from that light and turned him into something hungry, something that forgets what his hands are for when they aren’t shaking.
J
ust as she did last time, This encounter should sicken me; I should be revolted by the ease with which I brush shoulders with monsters, with those I once hunted. Instead, I am relieved. It is a sloughing of skin; a shedding of a shape I do not fit well in. The fire, the hunger, the unease in this frivolous setting; all of it makes me ache.
(And yet, this same evening, Adonai will play me the lyre and I will try not to weep. He will take me to a room full of leather and swords, and I will cast my eyes from them).
I can be nothing but contradictions.
Well, for starters, I think that man slipped something into my drink, so it might be fun to kill him. Unless, of course, there’s something you would like to tell me.
My eyes flit over her and I raise my brow. “Do I strike you as the type of man to resort to poisons? Lucinda, I am insulted.” The mock contempt curls my lips wryly and yet her jest reminds me, simultaneously, of what she is to me.
An enemy.
Nevertheless, she looks so differnet from the Khashran. And though she whets me like a blade, there is none of the amorphous subtleties, none of the suggestions that she might at any moment become something else.
“Fire? That is an interesting choice, for a water horse.” I toast my drink to her as the fire flickers between us. (It is a feat of magic in and of itself that I do not flinch from the casual display). “Or do you identify more as a sorceress?”
If I am unsettled by the licking flames, I do not show it so visibly.
(And yet, I cannot help but wonder—is this whole damn place mad? Fire at the table, poison in the drinks?)
