Vesper laughs as if we’re not travelling with some unknown monster that’s probably powerful enough to kill us without effort. Somehow, we’ve managed to form a tentative alliance with the thing after the safehouse, but there’s no telling how long that will last. As it is, I plan to keep a close eye on it. Steve seems friendly now, but Anders was scared of it for a reason, and anything that makes another evil being scared is something to be wary of.
“I am impressed with your sudden ability to reason,” Cipher pops in. “It is very out of character for you.”
“Are you still listening?” I grumble.
“I am always listening.”
Great. I’m going to die when the winterberry wine wears off in this frozen asshole of a place and all I have is a bastard of a machine and a biblically accurate Steve. What an end to a shitty life.
My eyes flick to Vesper. She’s tromping through the snow just as I am, her cloak swirling around her. Her cheeks and nose are slightly red, but it looks like it’s more from exertion rather than the cold. We would have never made it across the Shatterlands had she not been rewarded that thing. I would have given her all of the winterberry wine had she needed it, and then she would have been alone in that safehouse. Half of this place is luck. The other half is just sheer desperate survival.
Though I suppose it helps if Cipher actually likes you.
If it had been anyone else Cipher favorited, I’d have been bitter about it. But . . . I can’t blame the system for liking her. Because I like her, too. For years of my life in Dross, I’d been held in limbo by Mother Remainder, never making enough to earn my freedom, but making just enough to keep me fed. There were many who would kill for the position I’d found myself in, to be coveted by Mother Remainder, but . . . I’d hated her touch. It was always cold, emotionless, a chore. I was one of many, marked with the same barcode across all our faces. I’d grown to hate her touch while simultaneously yearning for it. I feel as if I’m starving for true touch now, and every time Vesper presses her flesh against mine, whether because she’s checking my pulse or pressed against me, I yearn even more for it.
I’mhungryfor it.
Fuck, I’d doanythingfor it.
And perhaps that makes me a risk in this place. Maybe it makes me an idiot falling for a woman who just wants to survive the same as I do.
But I think she feels it, too.
She’s had every opportunity to leave me for dead. She could have backstabbed me a number of times, left me to my demise. Instead, she’s risked her life to save me, stuck by my side . . .
. . . smiled at me.
Harrow, she fucking smiles at me. Genuine smiles.
And I’ve never wanted anything more than to keep making her smile.
I know Cipher is listening to these thoughts, but I don’t care. Let him feel what true human emotion is for once. Let him be jealous. I’d be just as jealous if he were here touching her, being touched by her.
“Watch out,” I tell Vesper, reaching out to tug her to the right away from the large mound she’d been about to sink into. It could be a rock beneath the snow.
Or a person.
We should be looting their corpses, but something about it feels . . . wrong. We hadn’t had any qualms doing so in the Verdant Nexus. But here, in this section where bodies are frozen forever in time, I can’t bring myself to check their inventories. When Vesper doesn’t either, I know she feels the same.
“Thanks,” she says, smiling at me.
Her hand wraps around my forearm briefly in gratitude, and though we’re both wearing heavy clothing, there’s a spark where her hand rests.
“I do not know whether you are a romantic, or just pitiful,” Cipher goads in my mind.
I don’t bother responding.
Steve pulses behind us. “Like, I could really use a burger right about now,” he declares. “Anyone else?”
I glance at him. “A burger?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know what a burger is, Lockey Poo!” At my look, his rings spin faster. “It’s only the juiciest, most delectable food in the world. Imagine this: a perfectly toasted bun stacked with a hamburger patty, some melted cheese on top of that, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, mayonnaise, ketchup, and the soul of a pedophile.” I jerk my head sharply toward Steve as he moans thinking about it. “Yum. Ugh! I could just burn in hell thinking about it.”
My eyes meet Vesper’s before I look back at the floating creature. “Did you just say you eat . . . souls?”
Steve giggles. “All angels eat souls, Lockey Poo. Duh!”
I straighten. “Should we be worried about ours?”
