“We share the same name day, born on the same night, within a turn of each other.”
Together, we fly.
He sucked.
“Before the rite, we had not seen each other in eight cycles.” Another drag of my blood.
My heart jumped, preparing to speak a lie woven with truth.
“We were publicly penanced for sharing a kiss.”
After another thick swallow, his teeth loosened their hold. He brought my hand down to rest atop his knee, limp, awaiting the next time he would have need of it. I stared at my thumb through the latch, the tip of it catching the sconce light, glistening wet with his saliva.
“The last is the lie,” he said after a while. “Though you were penanced, but for what exactly?”
I had the sudden urge to claw at my back, prickly heat racing up my spine before burrowing through my ribs, as if seeking a path to my heart.
“It doesn’t matter now.” My voice was quiet…quieter than I intended.
“Heed caution around him,” he said after a while.
My head shot to the lattice.Caution?
“The one you call Demetri,” he clarified. “Ifyou ever see each other again, that is.”
The heat in me flared, and I retracted my hand, resisting the compulsion to scratch him as I did.
“What need would I have to heed caution around someone I’ve known since I drew my first breath? The only one I should be careful around isyou, Druid. Considering Demetri and I have known each other for twenty-eight winters, and I have known you but for a handful of days.” I searched the Unmantle for something to strike him with, though certain I hadn’t the nerve to see it through.
“I speak the truth, that is all.” The softness of his pity only added wood to the flames. “There is something he keeps hidden from you. I could smell it.”
I scoffed. Even if the Butcher spoke true, it could have been an infinite number of things that were now insignificant—how he felt about the penancing, his anger, or worse, disappointment at me for never saying goodbye. A sudden pang of something shot through my heart, spearing its core. Even if I could find a way to send the letter, would he even deign to read it? To answer it?
“Ask your other questions. I will not speak of him further.” I tried to push him from my mind, but the thought of him wouldn’t budge. He’d never truly leave, woven within me as lies were with truth.
The Butcher’s hand—the one he’d rested on his thigh in the absence of mine—grew taut, knuckles protruding as his knee bounced up and down. He splayed his fingers wide, letting them relax, before reclaiming mine once more.
“Are you allied with any heretical groups, or enemies of the Dendralis?”Wet mouth. Slick tongue.
“No.”
“Has anything occurred before the Room of Rites that would suggest you’d been blessed, or that your blood had unsanctified powers?”Soft lips. Sharp teeth.
“No.” Before he could swallow, a memory pooled of the strange warmth—the sunflower in my chest that had unfurled on the scaffold and right before the Blood Tree kindled to ash.
“Ah, but thereissomething that happens to you?” he asked around my thumb. “Something you cannot make sense of?”
“I get a feeling sometimes…” I confessed, though unsure of what it was I was meant to unveil. “Something that blooms in the centre of my chest and spreads through the rest of me.”
“What does it feel like?” he breathed, his tongue writhing beneath me.
How could one describe unbridled euphoria? It seemed too large a feeling to compress into words. “I’m not certain. Happiness…bliss? A feeling of undisputed certainty that all be well. It comforts, but distorts…” I hesitated, realising I may offend the Blood God or the Other, whichever god may have chosen to bless me, if that’s what it was.
“Distorts?” he prompted, releasing my thumb to rest on his lower lip. He flattened both of his together, as if to kiss the tip of it in encouragement. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t pull away.
“When it blooms, it feels as if I’m wearing the skin of another. That I see the world differently. My pain dissolves to nothing, but I’m unable to grasp the horror of it within others.” The tip of his tongue darted between the swell of his lips and licked at the incision, tasting my blood as I gave him the truth.
“Curious,” he rumbled, his teeth clamping down on me as if he were about to worry his lip, forgetting I was there.
