The slightest movement, even a breath, and it will cut.
Then my attacker inhales. “Wait. Is that…”
The blade eases.
I grin. “Yes, it is.”
Reaching into the satchel strapped across my chest, I pull free a shiny red apple.
Before the apple has even tasted the night air, a grubby hand snatches it from my grasp. A figure, cloaked in tattered gray, sweeps past me into the cave, settling before the fire in a swirl of threadbare fabric.
A loud crunch fills the space.
“Dear Pale Mother,” she sighs, her voice thick with satisfaction. “This tasteswonderful.”
I duck inside, tossing my satchel at her feet. It lands with a heavy thud, apples spilling across the ground. “Well, lucky for you, I brought the whole tree, Zema.”
The figure pulls back her hood, and the firelight reveals what the shadows tried to conceal.
Even beneath the layer of dirt that smudges her pale skin, she is stunning, breathtaking in the way only a Mordorin Fae can be. Her large brown eyes gleam with knowing mischief, her lips parted just enough to reveal the crisp white bite of apple between them. A thick braid of dark hair spills over her shoulder, so long it coils on the ground beside her like a waiting serpent.
She is cut from the same jagged stone as her kind. Mordorin females, whose beauty is only matched by their strength. There is no softness to them, no delicate refinement like the females of the other houses and as Zema tears into another bite of apple, her satisfaction written plainly across her face despite the desolation around her, I wonder if there is a single female in all the worlds who could have survived as she has.
She looks up, catching me staring.
“Well? Sit down,” she says curtly, “unless you’re just passing through.”
I shake my head and lower myself onto the hard ground, the fire’s warmth chasing away the rain clinging to my skin, seeping into my leathers.
“You look good,” I say.
She snorts, leveling me with a glare. “I look like shit, Daedalus.” Another crisp bite. “But I’ve been exiled here for half my life.” She gives me a once-over. “What’s your excuse?”
I chuckle. “It’s like that, is it?”
She shrugs, the ghost of a grin playing at her lips. “Serves you right for taking your time between visits. Is the Prince of the Mordorin’s schedule so full he has no time for an old friend?”
The playfulness fades from my face, replaced by something heavier. Something sadder.
“Ialwayshave time for you, Zema. You're right… I’ve been too distracted.”
She waves me off with a chuckle. “I was joking, Daed.”
“I wasn’t,” I say, and it startles her. “I have to do better by you.” My gaze sweeps over the cramped cave, the worn books, the scraps that were her last meal. “I don’t know how you suffer this.”
She exhales through her nose, shaking her head. “What choice do I have?” Her voice is steady, but the certainty in it stuns me. “It’s this or death, and I’m not ready to die just yet.”
I drop my head as if her acceptance is too bright to look at. “How can you be so resigned to your fate?”
Zema shrugs. “I’ve had a lifetime to come to terms with it. I am Awakened. I saw this fate long ago.”
My throat bobs, and she notices.
Her expression shifts, curiosity sharpening her features. “What is this?” she asks, a slow, knowing smile peeling back the tension. “Something’s happened. You feel… different.”
I frown. “You’ve been in this cave too long. Nothing is different.”
But she only watches me, studying me like she can see straight through my skin, through my ribs, into the secrets curled tight within me. Then, suddenly, she tosses aside her apple core, picked clean as the fish bones by the fire, and shifts onto her knees, inching closer.
