Page 167 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“Trace Melanthe,” she ordered the animal. Memphis stood, waltzing around, her vicious muscles gliding in elegance while she took in the scent of its surroundings. Growling loudly in the air, she shifted around black smoke into a raven, before flying out towards the skies.

“How did you bond with her?”

“Looking to kill her too?” she teased, inspecting the dust on the ground.

“Does it hurt to just answer me for once?”

Her giggles symphonies around the empty quarters, making my skin prickle as if it had been traced with silk. “No, it’s just more entertaining,” she said, leaning back onto her hands. “Six years ago she got really sick, Memphis was born in the lands of Aita, before as everyone knows, my father burnt.”

Silas’s famous second claim of his killer king title.

“They said her kind grew heart sick quick, but it took her a few years after. She would not shift, not eat, or move so I stayed with her, not ate, not moved as well. One day she woke me pulling me to the kitchen, Alaric swore my loud stomach had scared her.”

“He might have had a point.”

She threw me a glare. “As I was saying, she wanted me to eat but I refused till she would do the same.”

“Why? To trick her?”

She sneered, throwing a pebble at me. “Because it broke my heart, is that what you want me to say?”

“I want you to say the truth, now I got it, continue.”

Snow blinked annoyed at me but went on, “She ate with me, walked, ran, slept and then finally shifted again. One night, I dreamt of a land I had never seen before. Magnificent wouldn’t begin to describe it, it looked what I imagined heavens were. Memphis showed and spoke, I was in her head, memories of her lands. She told me of her life and offered her soul to me, so I offered her mine and that was it, bright lights, internal warmth all of that ride. Now I can see, feel and sense everything she can and unfortunately she can do the same for me.”

“Not unfortunately, she wouldn’t have done that if she thought like that. Morphs are beyond intelligent, she picked you because of what you are.” Dyurin blessed animals were connected to the spiritual, they felt through that rather than actions or words.

“You might as well have just called her dumb,” she murmured glancing around.

We waited in silence as the morph rapidly flew back in, landing in front of Snow. She pulled her forehead away from the animals, her face dressed in worry.

“What is the matter?”

“Not a trace of her scent anywhere within long miles from the castle. How can she disappear, no, how can the whole of what has been here disappear within a night?”

“We will find out. I will help you. For now let's leave this place, I know you can feel it as well, it creeps of darkness and death.” I reached a hand down to her.

She stared lost about the room before taking my hand. I didn't want to let go of her, I held her palm tight in my own savouring her unusual touch, it felt as if the hearth of heat had gathered between them.

“Do you feel this danger would require us to hold hands?” she asked playfully, and I looked down where I held her. She wore no gloves today, had she forgotten? She also no longer flinched from me when I turned her hand over running my fingers atop her palm.

“How can they even hold a sword they are so…small?”

She scowled. “Not everyone is six foot and extra and I seem to handle myself just fine as they are.”

“Four,” I said, and she blinked in confusion. “The extra.”

“Ah. You must have been a tree in your past life.”

“There is no such thing as a past life.”

“To the unblessed there is, perhaps I wish to pursue their way of living, they seem happy. A different, unjudgmental sort of happy.”

“You’re blessed.”

“Correction,” she said. “I am cursed.”

I felt a frown bunch on my brow. “Snow.”