Page 161 of Light Leech

The orca distracted another by tossing the corpse of the first at him, making the killing stab that much easier. The next was as little a threat as the first two. The final Eunuch surprised me. He took the little wit he had remaining and retreated, leaving Zhou alone as everyone else did except for Naoma.

I locked eyes with her and nodded. She stepped forward, smiling as she turned to Zhou without fear.

“What do you want?” he asked Naoma, not acknowledging me. I had defeated his game with nothing but one of his tools to support me. That didn’t matter to him. I didn’t have the societal status to earn his attention.

I wanted to eat his teeth.

“To talk,” Naoma said. “Candidly.”

He laughed, fear starting to shake his voice. “About what?“ Go ahead and ask! You’ve cleared the room so we might as well open it up!”

“Can you safely dock your body here?”

He glared at her.

She smirked. “I want to speak to the real you. A projector would be nice as well. How about your throne room?”

I glanced her way, wondering what she had gathered that I had missed, but settled with trusting her. She bit the air. I nodded.

“We can wait,” she said.

I shook my head. She knew I didn’t want her to see my least favorite part about me, despite the pleasure I took in it.

“It’s fine.”

I sighed, then spoke to my orca. “You can go now.” I kept my hand on her to understand her words through our light connection. My fingers were shaking.

“I want to stay with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

I turned my thoughts to Zhu. Did I break her?

“I do not believe so. If anything, Zhou broke her into cognitive captivity. You’ve liberated her.”

What am I supposed to do now?

“Perhaps one of your Luxists associates has a lake to give shelter to such a creature.”

Most are as polluted as the black ocean.

“Petya!” Naoma said.

“A problem for later. Your mate needs you.”

Another problem to add to David.

“Who told you that I–”

Naoma cut Zhou off. “We’ll talk later.”

I told the orca to lower me to the ground. “Don’t think less of me because of what you see,” I told her, though I doubted she would think of me poorly as an indelicate predator herself.

I began with the closest Eunuch. Reserved behavior turned to voracious brutality the moment I touched the unblemished enamel beneath the Eunuch’s mask.

I wept. I was not afraid to admit how weak I became at the jarring euphoria of feeding not only after a taxing battle, but after an ascending transformation that demanded more light from my body than from anything before. Just as with any resource, the more powerful the light, or antilight in this circumstance, the more costly it was.