Page 66 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“Heavens,” she said, before bursting into laughter. “Do all of you do that?” she turned asking the Adriatian.

He glanced shortly in my direction before answering nonchalantly, “I am not particularly fond of cheese, it would be very unlikely for me to do that.”

“No,” I spoke, and he looked over at me. “You would probably recite the holy Caelus liber, chapter one hundred on how to slay an ybris and then jollily plunge a knife in my chest.”

“Chapter forty as well, murder and the deprecations of the soul.”

“Oh yes,” I purred, lowering my lids halfway. “You turn me on when you speak religion to me, Adriatian.”

His eyes narrowed on me, his features twitching in revulsion and ire. So very satisfying.

I stood and sat at the table, lids heavy with sleep as I sprawled my upper body atop the table. “Sing it to me. Sing me the lines in Caelus liber where murdering my family was deemed holy.”

He did not answer, not for a long time, and I slightly raised my heavy head to find him staring at me. “Aren’t gods ambiguous in their ways? You do something wrong, but it might be a justifiable sort of wrong, you do something right, but it might be a dubious sort of right. Why does a right or a wrong need to be justified if it is a right and a wrong? You kill and that is wrong, you kill with pretext of eliminating the greater evil and that is right? Isn’t killing just killing, isn’t it just the simple wrong? Doesn’t that make you the same as I?”

His face clean of any expression as he answered, “Yes.”

“Then don’t look at me like looking at me is heresy.”

He stared at me, and I stared at him. I hated that stare but his silence was delightful.

“How do you wish I look at you?”

“Not at all.”

“I am ordered not to leave you out of sight, it is not a request I can comply.”

“You were my punishment,” I said, making my head comfortable over my bloodless arms. “At least don’t behave as one. Look at me, do not stare at your beliefs of me.”

Chapter 16

Heirs and Heroes

Kilian

A week. A full seven days. I’d heard enough offences, snarky remarks and received enough glares I’d grown the thickest skin. I was not one easily offended, but her insults always found way to affect me.

Look at me, do not stare at your beliefs of me. How could I, when all she did was prove them right.

She blasted out of her room, all ready for carnage. Upon second of meeting corridor air, she frowned, sniffing around. This woman was odd in all human and inhuman sense, a human façade and inhuman force of words and presence. She rarely slept and if she did it was in the oddest of places. She hated people, any that wasn’t the cook or her friends, she especially hated children. Her skills in chess were terrible, she had selective eating, that is if she even ate at all. Sigh. I could count her vices to infinity.

She spun round, looking all puzzled, and then begun slowly reaching to me till she had gotten close enough I could tell apart strands of her hair. What was she doing?

I put two fingers on her forehead and pushed her head back.

She blinked slow and then glanced up to where I touched her.

Retracting my fingers, I took a step back and said, “Speak from there, offend from there, ask from there.”

She gradually frowned. “Are you ordering me now?”

“Setting boundaries, Your Highness.”

I had said nothing entertaining, yet she smirked. “Many of your sort try and settle these…boundaries but probably wish to wake up in the other side of my bed. Is it that hard for you, enough that you have to set boundaries?” She stuck her bottom lip out and fluttered her lashes with taunt.

A nerve jumped on my temple, but I held composure. “It must be a big bed, to hold your egomaniac murderous ways and my dislike of you along with us squished in there too.”

“King size,” she said, flashing me a sharp smile.