“Look.” He leans forward and plants his elbows on table. His fingers drum over the colored tiles, forming the face of an Ethiopian woman looking out over a sunrise. “I got my memories back from Tratharine. I remember what our lives were like before. We were soldiers. Bred for combat and trained young. Every single part of our lives was violence. They didn’t even give us names, only numbers meant to keep us in line and keep us fighting to be stronger. The lower numbers were the strongest ...”
“I’m Six.”
He laughs. “‘Course you would focus on that, you narcissistic fuck. The Elders sent us with a mission to conquer and, once the battlefield had been leveled, open the gates so they could arrive and set up a new world order, enslaving the remaining humans and starting a new breeding ground for soldiers that would then go on and take over another planet, enslave a different people, and on and on and on, and for no fucking purpose other than the accumulation of power—but they made a mistake.”
Curious, I find myself leaning in toward him too. I imagine that we look like high school kids sharing gossip—if high school kids were seven feet tall, sometimes pink, sometimes eggshell blue. “What?”
“The Elders bred us for violence and thought we would revert with a violent trigger, that a spike in pain or rage would bring our original forms and our memories back. They expected that we’d land on an alien planet just as violent as ours—or worse.” The Wyvern is grinning wildly now. He even has the audacity to laugh. “But the humans? Theywelcomedus. There was no pain. No violence. So our original forms had to find new triggers—at least, that’s mine and Emily’s best guess.”
“And so when you got all lovey-dovey with your little boo thang, it was strong enough to break the spell?” I sneer in disgust. “Just a real-life Cinderella story, aren’t you?”
“I told you before, that wasn’t it. Love came later. But my reversion didn’t happen when I told people it did. It started way before then. The second I met Vanessa, I had an attraction to her. A normal attraction, anyone would have to someone they found good-looking. But then something happened. It was small.” His face twists, nose crinkling. He looks away from me, and his tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, like he’s struggling to puzzle through something. “It was so small it shouldn’t have mattered ... but it changed everything.”
“Stop being so damn cryptic. The fuck happened?”
“She fell.” His gaze flits to mine, and a bright, bright iridescent white consumes his eyes. It’s so bright I can’t even see his pupil. The runes on his skin seem to glow, forming a map that leads to a treasure Idon’t think is meant for me. “She fell and my first instinct was to catch her.” A wind comes from nowhere and gives me the fucking chills. “I damn near trampled people to get to her, just to slip my palm under her elbow and make sure she didn’t hit the ground. I didn’t want to see her hit the ground ...”
A sticky, creeping sensation, like tarantulas migrating, crosses my chest. My memories dance, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot force them to focus on any of the visions I had of my native land. I cannot recall any of the urgent, pressing things I’ve got going on with the Marduk or my weapon or the fallout I’m going to have to deal with from seeing that terrible post on social media. I can’t even remember the way Monika’s curves looked, bathing in the bright lights of my bedroom—I didn’t let her dim a single one, preferring to fuck her under a goddamn floodlight because I wanted to see everything ...
My memories come down to one.
The feeling I had when Cynthia started talking shit about Monika. All fluttering eyelashes and bright smiles. Fucking cunt. And how every instinct in my body had been ... not to defend Monika ... but to correct the other woman. She’d been wrong, flat-out, talking down on Monika when she’s the most impressive woman I’ve met in my life. And so I’d done something strange and out of character for me. I ... said something nice about somebody.
I knew in the moment I opened my mouth that I’d been in situations like this before and done and said nothing. I hadn’t been compelled to. So why then? Why now? Why over this woman who, just days before, I’d felt nothing for?
My memories are tugged to the vision of Monika pulling herself out of the Old Sundale Station tunnel like it was no biggie ... And then again, seeing the pictures she’d taken of me. Then when she responded to my email with two words and, after, showed up at her godmother’s gala in that dress. And how she’d been living in my apartment building this whole time and never thought to bring it up like it was no fucking thang ... She was just—isjust—too much. She’s too fucking cool for me.
The sex part hadn’t even factored when I stood up for her against those untruths. Her little camera had more power than a cannon. More power than me too. And so I’d been selfless. Just for a second, less than five breaths. The words I said couldn’t be revoked, and neither could their consequences.
I’m rubbing my chin absently when the Wyvern breaks my focus. “You did something, didn’t you? Something completely different for you.”
I nod.
“It wasn’t torturing Cynthia, either, was it?”
I shake my head. “I said something nice.”
The Wyvern nods. “Not much, but for you, that would do it ...” He starts to laugh.
“I said something nice about Monika.”
And then the Wyvern’s grin turns absolutely feral. He looks like the cat who ate the canary. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
He chokes. “You and Monika?”
I nod. “She’s mine now.”
“Fuck.” The Wyvern rubs his face. “I can’t decide if Vanessa’s gonna be pissed or find this real cute.”
“Why would she be pissed?”
“You kidding? Monika’s way,waytoo fucking good for you. You two aren’t even in the same league.”
I send a burst of electrical current to whack the Wyvern in the face. He curses and rubs his jaw, then sends a fireball flying back. I feel for his insides—a gift I know only a few of us in the Tratharine army possess. I find his mind, and I send a little electrical pulse between his temples that causes his entire body to sit up straight.
He blinks at me, shakes his head, blinks again. “Fuck,” he says. “That’s like what the Marduk—”
