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“You’re going to have to stop with that narrative sooner or later. If you can’t understand why I do what I do, then you need to end this fight with me now.”
“You really didn’t do it?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then who did? And who would mutilate him so much that they can only bury ‘what was left of him?’” I ask.
“Someone else must be doing this, here and back at your last town.”
“But why?”
He shrugs before grabbing my arm and pulling me back into the street, continuing in the direction we were walking in before.
I sneak another look at him, but this time not because of his appearance. This time, it’s because I’m not sure when I started trusting him, but apparently, I do. Enough to believe that he didn’t kill Aleron.
Deep down, in spite of everything, I do think there’s something pure in all that darkness. Something that does what he does for good reasons. Something honest and trustworthy.
Does that make me crazy? To trust someone as fucked up as Rukh? To trust a demon? What does that say about me and the person I’ve always prided myself on being?
Is he better than I thought a demon could be, or am I worse?
12
RUKH
“Ithought you said security had lightened up here?”
I look back at Annette, who pants, trying to keep up with me. I told her that I wouldn’t slow down for her, which was a lie. She couldn’t dream of matching my speed.
But her porcelain skin is covered in sweat, which only glistens in the torchlight. Her hair burns with the radiance of the open flame on the sconce next to the vacant guard tower.
I want to thank the gods for creating her, but they’re still not responsive.
“I didn’t think it would be a big deal,” she says through heaving gasps. “You made it seem so easy for you.”
“True, but I didn’t have a human as a liability.”
On the precipice, the town of Mellara sits at the base of the hill, lit by torchlight.
“I think all the security’s bogus anyway, at least up to the city gates,” she says. “Last time I looked, it was all an illusion.”
“And how did you find that out?”
She chuckles. “Oh… I sort of just went for it.”
“You went for it?”
“Yeah, the illusion was flickering, and they disappeared for a full second.”
I stare her dead in the eyes, looking for clarification.
“So, as you’ve explained countless times, if you’re caught in Mellara, they will put you to death.”
“Right.”
“And yet you felt it safe to chance walking in front of the guards, just following your inferior human instincts?”
She crosses her arms now. I’m not sure whether it’s in defiance, or whether she’s simply cold from the night’s chill.
