But it wasn’t to me. One of the Spirits had dared drift too close.
“If you want my attention, make yourselves useful.”
At once, one plunged into the water and surfaced with a long filament of algae, which it began to rub against the sorcerer’s feet as he lifted them from the water. Another waited on the bank, holding a black silk robe, ready to hand to him.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I felt like an intruder in a moment I was never meant to see.
Then he took a heated blade in his gloved hand. I held my breath. He didn’t tremble. His face remained impassive, almost empty, as he slid the edge along his remaining horn. My stomach twisted. The sound was sharp—a wet crack, bone and nerve torn. The horn fell, swallowed by the lake. A dark vein surged at histemple, and a line of violet blood traced down his cheek. He didn’t flinch. He wiped it away with a cloth, as if screaming were useless and pain could no longer reach him.
I was about to turn back when a branch snapped under my foot. I shut my eyes and stopped breathing.
“You didn’t leave.”
This time, he was speaking to me.
8
Spirits were notorious gourmands. After all, food was a universal language of love, and perhaps they, too, sought the warmth of what it meant to be alive.
ARAWN
My Spirits bristled at the sight of the confectioner.
And for good reason—she’d just stepped out of the undergrowth. She, with her candy hair, was like a pink thorn that burned far worse than this cursed wound.
“Why do you talk to them like that?” She didn’t even bother to hide her intrusion. Because of course, spying on what I’d never shown to anyone but the dead wasn’t enough—she had to add insolence to it.
I straightened, leaning an elbow on the lake’s edge, fingers trailing along my cheek, chin resting in my palm. “They’re not like you. They don’t have a heart.”
The Spirits beside me growled. Two rippled across the lake, and the third shot toward her.
I raised a hand. “Enough.”
They folded in on themselves before sinking into the lake, curling under the lily pads.
“Your sweet scent disturbs them.” I tilted my head, a vague smile tugging at my lips. “Like an overripe fruit just out of reach.”
She clutched the hem of her skirt against her, visibly ill at ease, which only widened my smile.
“In other words, you have no business here. Unless you’d like to get yourself eaten and turn my Spirits into a pack of sugar-drunk fools.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she protested. “It was the boy Spirit who brought me here, I—” She turned and realized she was alone. “Oh.”
A dry laugh escaped me. “Gone, hmm? You’ve been here barely a night, and already you sow discord, frightening my Spirits. What fascinating skill.”
She shot me a look so outraged it might have killed me—if I still had the right to such luxuries. “Me? Frightening? You’re joking?”
I stepped out of the lake, black water sliding down my torso. She turned her head away, too late for me not to notice. So this was what it took to make her avert her gaze. Curious.
“You could warn me before you… you…”
“Before I what?” I asked, amused, as water dripped behind me while I tied the black silk kimono that an obedient Spirit held out. “You’re still here, after all. Which means I’m not that terrifying.”
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
“Better, like this?” I asked, a smile in my voice, wet strands clinging to my brow.
She crossed her arms, and for some reason, she narrowed her eyes, forcing herself to keep them fixed on the foliage behind me.
