Page 37 of A Taste for the Peculiar

Reid has taken Avirin to a corner of the party. She keeps her eyes cast out across the room, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers. Another song begins, and Reid guides Avirin’s arm into his.

Pye’s heart hammers. He pushes through the crowd, ignoring the growing sounds of discontent until he appears before the two of them. He tries to steady his breathing. “Miss Ellison.”

He bows to Avirin, but it’s Reid who steps toward him. “Mr. Riften. What a surprise.” His smile is tight. “I’d started to suspect you considered my company beneath even the demimonde.”

“Far from it,” Pye clips. “I don’t consider your company.” He keeps his eyes on Avirin. “I hoped to speak with you, Miss Ellison.”

Avirin opens her mouth, but Reid pulls her tight against his side. “Apologies. She has a prior engagement.”

The word is a punctuation mark. Reid pulls Avirin away. Pye tucks his wings behind him to keep pace, following when Reid leads them into the center of the room.

The music starts. The dance begins again.

Pye does not step aside. He knows Reid hopes to cow him with the other couples brushing past and casting uncertain glances, but Pye stands firm.

Reid knocks into him with a snarl. “I will draw your cork, you base-born —”

Another couple swirls into Reid. He lurches forward, whirling toward them with furious intent despite the dancers’ effusive apologies.

Pye doesn’t waste the opportunity. He slips his hand into Avirin’s, weaving through the crowd and pushing past the growing whispers. They burst through the door to the gardens, never slowing until they reach the walking path and the cover of shrubbery.

Avirin’s cheeks are flush from the brisk pace. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Do you intend to marry him?”

Avirin’s mouth closes, like having to speak the answer is too much for her.

Pye shakes their head. “He is dangerous. Heinous. A villain of the highest order. My words are not borne of envy, I swear to you, but there are reasons why the courtesans do not welcome him at our parties. Why he is barred from our events.”

The thought of Avirin encountering this evil — being subjected to it — is more than Pye can bear. His hands flex to reach for hers, to make her understand, but the resignation in her eyes stops him in his tracks.

“He knows what I am.” Her words are weary, like she has spent days searching for any others. “I have been brought to point non plus. If I do not marry him, the rumor will spread. I will lose any opportunities I have left. I will be whispered about in the streets. Shunned by every business. Shuttered away by my mother.”

Pye wants to tell her that he understands, but their struggles are not quite the same. In the eyes of this world, Pye can never be anything more than an eccentric man with hedonistic appetites. Like the performers at the opera can provide entertainment, but never be elevated. Like Cascade can run a house, but never own it. Like Avirin can salvage her future, but only if she gives every piece of herself away to get it.

Pye’s chest tightens. What can he do? They cannot change the idle precepts set out for them, no matter how they ache to. No matter how they try. Their heart swells with a sadness they can hardly breathe past, desperate for some flicker of hope for her. “Do you love him?”

“Of course not!” Avirin recoils like she’s been burnt, but the truth of the matter settles heavily onto her shoulders. “But what choice do I have?”

She looks at them like she’s waiting for something. Praying for something. The words tingle behind Pye’s lips, on their tongue, against their cheeks. They have to ask her. Even if they cannot provide her the life she desires, they must ask her, so that she knows exactly what her choices are.

He exhales softly. “Avirin…”

Her lip quivers. She looks at him with an animal fear, like she’s not certain what he will say, like it could be worse than the fate already set out before her. Then she surges forward to press her mouth to his.

Kissing Avirin is every bit as devastating as Pye imagined. It captivates him suddenly, then slowly, immersing him in every detail. Her clutching hands that he soothes with his own. The tentative curl of her tongue seeking his. The needy sound she makes when they press closer.

He groans, and her hand tangles in his hair. She kisses him like it is the first and last time she will have the chance. He wants to calm her, to assuage her doubts, but he can’t pry himself away. When he pulls back for a labored breath, all he sees is the pleading tilt of her mouth, and he can do nothing but kiss her again.

She pours into him, an overflowing vessel. He returns it with a deluge of blue smoke, and she drinks him down, hungry for everything he gives her. He tugs roughly at her gloves, so desperate to feel her skin that he casts the fabric aside and guides her bare hands between the top buttons of his shirt.

He’s so lost in her that he doesn’t sense movement behind him. He doesn’t hear the gasps. He doesn’t see the two women in stained dresses — but Avirin does.

Her breath stops short. She tries to step back, but the bushes already surround her. Pye blocks her body with his, but the women have seen enough, barely covering their mouths to hide their revulsion.

The black in Avirin’s eyes does not fade, and something else casts a shadow across her face. Pye lifts their gaze to the two horns sprouting from Avirin’s forehead, thick and dark and bending back along her temples.

Her hands follow his eyes. When she brushes the keratin, a panicked sound escapes her. She jerks her fingers away, but in her horror, she reaches for the horns again.