Page 111 of Winter Gods & Serpents

She shuffled against me, her body brushing over mine. “I can tell. You’re very irritated.”

I gripped her hips tight and she flinched a little. Had I hurt her? I pushed her the furthest this tight situation allowed us and stretched my neck in attempt to release some tension. I knew how to make her uncomfortable too. “Why did you have to chase these men tonight?”

She sighed and halted her hand teases. “Spite. I’m spiteful.”

Again her tone awfully deceiving. “Lies.”

“It’s a secret.”

“Isjord’s secret or Your Highness’s secret?”

She laughed softly. “I hate it when you call me that, or princess, you sound like my father. So angry.”

“Good to know.”

“Don’t enjoy this too much.”

“I’ll try.” I was trying. I shouldn’t be trying. It should be easy, yet I was trying.

“If you wanted to get close and feel my breasts, you should have just said so, I would have let you.”

“Sleep, you wild beast.” I said, tucking the jester tight hoping she’d shut her mouth with her jokes before she actually made me laugh.

Her head rose again like a rose bud in spring—a black rose. Beautiful. “Was it not heathen, am I a beast now?”

“What keeps your mouth silent for one heavenly minute?”

“Many things, food, c—”

I brought my hand over her mouth and she dug her teeth in my flesh, making me groan in pain. “Hand was not one of them, arsehole.”

“Would you rather I put my cock, you vixen!”

She yawned and ducked her head back on my chest. “Maybe some other time, this vixen is too tired for that much work.”

It was then I smiled. Every joke she’d made flashed in memory and I grinned like a fool as I let myself fall for her teases, silently.

“Don’t hold me so tight,” she whispered, heavy with sleep.

“Why,” I asked in panic, removing my hands from her. “Am I hurting you?”

“No, I feel trapped… like in a cage…like I can’t run.” Her soft voice shivered at the last word. She took a deep breath that turned to a yawn. “Offer to give your life for me one more time, I will pluck your balls and feed them too you.”

Run from what? From me?

I felt her grip around me loosen, she had gone to sleep.

I looked down at her peaceful stature, so calm and fragile looking. I’d be afraid to touch, let alone hit her like those that had marked her had. She was a resting thunder, crackling heavy beneath her thin surface of hate and suffering. She held terribly much within, it was terrifying to know what would happen once it rained on us.

I dared move my hand through her silken black hair and down to her pale face. Soft and cold like fresh cool silk—like rays of moonlight hitting water surface in the clearest of nights. My fingers ran voluntarily tracing the outline of her eyes, her brow, the bridge of her nose and then over her mouth. So human. So alluring.

Entranced, I brushed the scar on her cheek, and she flinched just slightly in her sleep. How had she gotten this one?

She dreamed, breathed, bled, hurt, lied, joked like all humans did. Gods, didn’t she joke. Gods, didn’t she hurt, and didn’t she bleed awfully. Was this truly the ybris? Was the woman I held, half shivering from the cold her skin could not bear like all other normal humans, was she truly her? Gods, wasn’t she dangerous. Gods, hadn’t we made her dangerous, had she not been hurt by so many.

I pulled my hand back, dazed by my own thoughts. This was the woman I’d learnt all my life to fear and hate. The woman I’d taught myself to hate. Woman.

Have the decency to call the girl what she is.