Page 93 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“You are right, I won’t die,” she said somewhat regretful. “It never wanted me you know. Dying knows me, it passes, ignores, and makes fun of me…all the time. It never once wanted me. It never pitied me. People are so versed in pitying me, yet the one thing I wanted to take pity on me cared so very little.” She giggled mirthlessly. A drop of silver flew out of a golden eye sliding to her temple. “I could bet anything, even if you tried to nail a sword in my heart right now, I would not die.”

She told me a truth, yet I found it harder to understand compared to her lies.

A breeze of wind blew and rustled tree branches, snow lifting in the air as mist. “If you have no intention of trying would you take me back, I am starving. Or try after I’ve ate.” She shook her head, clutching her eyes tight. “Midworld cannot welcome me starved, I’d be such a terrible glutton. How could someone with my face be a glutton.”

She made it so easy to forget, maybe she wanted to forget what she’d just told me.

“You’re terribly mad.”

“You will be in so much trouble,” she sighed. “Once this fever passes and I realize what I’ve allowed you to do, what you have made me say.”

“Unless you become a glutton. I eat too healthy, you would not even sniff near me without feeling sick.”

She giggled jollily. “Careful planning, well done Adriatian.”

It was dizzying, the sound of her laugh. “Your obsession of hating all green vegetable has become my salvation.”

She blinked surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Not hard to notice the cringe at their sight, and then your careful tactical picking out of all trace of them from your dish.”

“Broccoli is vile, do not make me start on peppers and that shinny leather atop,” she made gagging sound and it almost made me laugh.

“Why green only?” I asked, letting go of her hands.

She shrugged. “When I was young, I used to dislike red vegetables too and it just seemed odd to put only that aside. I began lining the green along it, so it didn’t feel lonely. You know, like when you lose a slipper, and you are stuck with a lone one.” She shivered. “Doesn’t that bother you too? Why is a shoe lonesome, it comes in a pair?”

My mouth parted open. “I’ve never heard so much madness come from a sole mouth.”

I began pushing myself from her, but she gripped my jacket tight holding me still. “Answer me now. Truly, why do you hate me? I am sure it’s not because you were raised like most to hate me. There is something else.”

I glanced where she held me, how she still shivered. “You are wrong, it is just because of that.”

She smiled knowingly, reading through my lie. “You lie so pretty to me, Adriatian. But your lies are yours. Isn’t that what your goddess says? You defy all your upbringings just to find my truths. ‘We read emotion, but one’s emotion is but theirs to show, hide, fear and adore’. Astrum liber has such pretty lies too. Different from you, I don’t care about your lies. Different from you, truths are feather weight, they lift no change to me.”

“Let go of me.”

She let her hands fall and then lift them as if in surrender. “See how easy it was to let go of someone when they ask you to. Even an inhuman knows to read a situation better than you.”

“Your verbal sparring is commendable.”

“Once, it was all I had, Adriatian. It has become perhaps my sharpest blade.”

“What happened to calling me Kilian?”

She put two fingers on my forehead pushing my head back. “What happened with boundaries?”

I nodded, biting my smile back. “Sharp indeed.”

“Yet you stroke it wish such delight,” she purred, fluttering her lashes all tease and flirt. “Haven’t you been told not to play with blades.”

“Don’t you tire from the metaphors?”

She tsked. “Come now, I know you like them.”

“If I have to admit liking something of yours, it will have to be your silence.” And perhaps…those eyes. Damned thoughts that needed banishing away.

I helped her stand and faded us back to the squadron. I had my truth, yet it weighted heavier than all the lies. What did I expect to hear? Did I want to know that she took pleasure in her kills, to condemn my detest for her just?