That page ...well. When I first looked at it, I felt all kinds of strange feelings I’ve never felt before, and now that picture is branded in my mind, destined to be the source of impromptu blushing until the day I die.
It wasn’t the nakedness that threw me. Not even the way the woman was stretched out, back arched, pinching her nipples and chewing her bottom lip.
It was the way her thighs were parted.
It was the man holding them open, face buried in their apex. It was his posture—half crouched like a feasting cat—and that long, hard, naked length looking ready to drive up into her.
“Fertility?” I ask, hating the way the word squeaks out of me.
He turns me to face him with a grip on my chin, and I note a gleam in his ocean eyes that wasn’t there before.
“Correct,” he purrs. “Clever girl.”
“I doubt my tutor would have congratulated me for such a feat.”
“No,” he chuckles, releasing me. “Probably not.”
Cheeks scalding, I turn the page.
“I don’t know what that one is,” I say, pointing to a man cloaked in black, the handle of a sword poking over his shoulder. All you can see of his features are a sharp jawline and the slash of a mouth that’s pinched in a frown.
Except he’s not a regular man.
There are three different versions of him melding together, and each has a different face, the two either side less vivid but no less chilling.
The one in the middle is carving off a piece of the blackness falling from the wide breadth of his shoulders, letting it flutter into the volcano’s crater lake.
“Kavth. God of Death,” Kai rumbles. “He can take on the many forms of the dead, and he made the Irilak with a piece of his shadow.” He taps the illustration of a wraith easing from the basin—afamiliarshadow with a face that looks like it was carved from a bleached piece of wood.
“So that’s what they’re called,” I whisper, tracing the creature’s chalky features.
I’m so caught up on that new slice of information—offinallyhaving a species name to attach to Shay—that I don’t notice the tension strung between Kai and myself until his finger slides under my chin.
He guides it up until I’m staring into narrowed eyes. Pinned by his keen attention.
“What?”
“Orlaith. Don’t go getting close to an Irilak.” His tone is hard like the rock I’m sitting on, edges just as sharp. “They’re temperamental. Deadly.”
“How so?” I ask, pushing a loose ribbon of hair off my face.
“They feed on fear ... among other things. They’ve been known to lure children into the forest, leaving nothing but a husk of skin clinging to skeletal remains.”
I repress a shiver at the crude picture he’s painting, thinking about the hard, fluffy lumps left behind after Shay’s finished feasting on my offerings. But aside from ...that, he doesn’t seem all that frightening. He’s never once tried to attack me in all the years I’ve been flinging mice his way. I practically hand-fed him the other night, shaking with fear as I shoved an arm over my Safety Line for the very first time, and he still preferred the mouse.
The moment stretches while Kai searches my eyes, then sighs, transferring his attention to the book. “I’m guessing you brought this down for other reasons?”
He knows me so well.
“Thing is, I recognize a number of the creatures in here just from illustrations I’ve seen in other books,” I say, turning to a page marked by a dried flower, “but there were plenty that threw me. Likethisone.”
The Goddess on this page is the most enchanting woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, with willowy lines and a dress that pours off her like petals. She’s tossing a twinkly rose into the crater lake, and from it, the creature climbing out is no less striking than the deity he was made by.
His pale skin holds a light shimmer, his eyes like buffed crystals. Poking out from amongst the strands of whitewash hair is not a regular ear, but one with tiny, delicate thorns lining the shell that slims to a point.
“I was wondering if you could tell me what they are?”
Kai’s voice drops to a low, almost mournful whisper. “In Valish, they’re calledAeshlians. It means ‘eternity without a shadow.’ There are very few left.”
