“You speak it too.”
“I do,” he answers in Tratharine before switching back to English. “But I prefer English.”
Strangely, I do too. The Tratharine I knew once feels like it belongs in that rusty crypt I dug it out of, a crypt that I’d like to keep locked. In English, I continue, “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. What the fuck are you talking about Cynthia for?” Cynthia is turning out to be the bane of my existence. Insulting my girl, calling her out of bed, making her walk across town barefoot, and now interjecting herself into my conversation with the Wyvern, distracting the both of us. I will add her to the list of people to kill too. Fuck, kill, kill, destroy, kill—but hers must definitely look like an accident. I can’t have Monika irritated with me, as it’ll set back my progress in the fuck department.
My horns crackle. He glances up at them, and twin puffs of fire billow from the tips of his. “You ... don’t like Cynthia?” He cocks his head like I’m no longer speaking English or Tratharine, but Mandarin.
“Of course I don’t like Cynthia! Last night I tortured Cynthia! Why would you think I like that foul, annoying woman?”
I regret asking the moment he pulls out his phone. He opens a social media app and shows me my own latest post. It has six million likes. Six fucking million.
I snatch the device out of his hand and feel anger infuse my irises. In the screen of his phone, I see them reflect purple before bleeding fully red. I feel my left eye twitch and surging electricity sweep my bones as I take in the image on the screen before me.
Me. On one knee at a woman’s feet. Her gazing at me in pure rapture.
A photo Monika took.
The phone screen turns black. A crack appears down the middle. Having ruined the device, I take it all the way and crush it into pieces that fall down around my fist.
The Wyvern doesn’t even blink. He just reaches into his pocket and pulls out a second, identical device. “Don’t worry ’bout it. Happens all the time. At least to me.” He chuckles, like we’re friends. We’re not friends. I’m going to tear him apart.
“Who . . . How . . . What thefuck is this?”
“The picture?”
“Yes.”
“Of you and Cynthia?”
“Of me and that annoying bitch!”
My fingers fly over the keys of my own phone. My hand shakes as I fight the urge to crush the damn device. I send an angry email—just the one—before returning my attention to the beast sipping daintily on his coffee across from me. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, presumably sizeXxxxxxxl. Absurd fucker. Claws or not, I’m going to gouge his eyes out.
“I didn’t revert for Cynthia. I had just finished torturing her by electrocuting her face when I reverted. Monika’s photo seems to have conveniently left that part out.”
The Wyvern sets his coffee cup down. Some sweet-smelling concoction covered in cinnamon. “Interesting.”
“Tell me about your reversion,” I snap.
“I’m sure you’ve read about it in the papers. I got grilled like a flank steak by the COE, SDD, and every damn news outlet in Sundale.”
I nod. “You woke up one morning and looked like ... that. You found yourself in love with Ms. Theriot and all that mushy shit.”
He laughs. “Yeah, something like that.” And then shakes his head and leans in a little closer. “It was a lie.”
That perks my attention away from the horrifying photo on my phone—the one I don’t know how to take down because I don’t know my own goddamn social media log-in credentials.
“Not a complete lie. All that shit did happen overnight. And then the next morning, when I met with Emily—”
“The doctor?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she have to do with it?”
“Nothing. And at the end of the day, Vanessa didn’treallyhave anything to do with it either.”
“Explain.”
