“Why?” she asked through gritted teeth. She couldn’t mask the hurt in her voice. A familiar wasn’t supposed to harm their witches. A simmering wrath boiled in her stomach, but it didn’t feel like her own.
“I don’t like to be touched.” His tone was infuriatingly calm.
“You could have said something!” She winced as another shooting pain ran up her arm.
He cocked his head, ears pricked in a way that looked innocent.Bastard.
“I taught you a lesson that needed to be learned, little witch.”
Wait.Wait.Was the familiar talking?Familiars didn’t talk. Was the pain making her hallucinate?
“How are you talking?” Her voice wobbled, half from the pain, half from the shock of hearing his voice in her head once more. Something like amusement glinted in her familiar’s eyes.
He tilted his head. “Meow?”
Did she imagine it? Was her familiar gaslighting her? She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t play with me, Lucky. I know you can talk.”
“It’s Felix.”
“I knew it! You can talk.” Lying, asshole, bastard, cuntnugget—if she wasn’t in pain, she could have come up with a more creative insult. Her mother always told her it was deplorable—that’s why she did it so much. Instead, she settled on, “How are you talking?”
“The same way you are listening.”
“That does—that doesn’t even make sense.” She gestured with her bleeding hand for emphasis and immediately regretted it as fresh pain shot up her arm.
“You’re the one who summoned me, witch. You should know how the hell I’m speaking into your mind.”
“But...familiars don’t talk.”
Something like a pained strangle came out of him.“Well…this one does.”
Guilt turned her stomach. It must have been the forbidden part of the ritual. Maybe he was more powerful than just a house cat? In everything they had learned about familiars,the tutors never said that a familiar talking was possible. She narrowed her eyes even more to shitty slits, assessing him with the same suspicion as he did her. She supposed, in the witch world, nothing was impossible. What reason would one of the goddess’s servants have to lie to her? And, even if Lucky was an asshole that didn’t like to be touched, Cerituen blessed her with a familiar for a reason.
She was really trying to convince herself here. It wasn’t working.
Blood dripped onto the floorboards, dark drops that pooled between the cracks. She pressed her other hand over the wound, but it did nothing to stop the flow. The pain had evolved from agony to a deep, pulsing throb that matched her heartbeat.
“You’re bleeding on the floor.”
She whipped her head toward the cat. “You bit me!”
“And you ignored my warning.” He stretched out by the fire, completely unbothered. “I told you I don’t like to be touched.”
“After you bit me!”
“Semantics.”
Semantics. Fucking semantics. She wanted to scream. Or cry. Maybe she’d do both. Instead, she stumbled to the bathroom, leaving a trail of red behind her. Her reflection in the mirror looked pale. The bite marks were deep, two perfect punctures on either side of her index finger.
Running it under cold water made her hiss. The stream turned pink, then red, swirling down the drain. She counted to thirty, then forty, willing it to stop. When she pulled her hand back, fresh blood immediately beaded at the surface. This was it. She was going to get sepsis and die. That was what Google always told her it would be. Who knows where that cat’s mouth had been in the godly realm, if it had been anywhere as filthy as his personality, she was sofucked.
“Why isn’t it stopping?” she hissed under her breath, low enough that he couldn’t hear.
She rummaged through the cabinet with her good hand. Bandages. She needed bandages. Her fingers knocked over bottles of tinctures and healing salves until she found the small tin she kept for emergencies. Never thought the emergency would be her own familiar.
The gauze was harder to manage with one hand. She tried to wrap it around her finger, but it kept slipping, the white fabric immediately soaking through with red. Her hand shook. Whether from pain or shock, or anger, she couldn’t tell.
