Page 116 of Pareidolia

“Oh, no, it’s not that simple.” I don’t know why the moth monster standing in front of me thinks any of this is simple, but…

“It is. I can just—” He catches hold of my wrist as I start to move around him, jerking hard enough that a sharp spike of pain rips along my shoulder, and a strange, excited feeling tears somewhere lower.

What the fuck?

“You took me into you. You’re in my forest… my wings are tattooed on your skin.” He wraps those long fingers around my throat again and I feel it—a spark of something dancing across my nerve endings. Sensation. Feelings I’ve never felt before. It’s right there, almost in my grasp.

Somehow. Impossibly.

“I didn’t⁠—”

“You stole my shadows, little monster. That means you’re mine.”

CHAPTER 6

NOX

Mine.

Mine.

It’s a word I never considered the weight of before. The world and all the emotions in it are mine—I’ve never questioned that. The shadows that have come into existence since I first created this body from the darkness that covered the world and the essence of the humans dying in it are my children.

But…

Mine.

Mine isn’t a word I know when it means something I want to keep… and I want to keep the glow beneath this human’s skin.

I want to keep the cool emotions that feel like they could feed me until the stars in the sky go dark.

I want⁠—

“Do you even have a name? You could at least tell a man that before you go around throwing words like mine in my face.” The human wrenches out of my grasp as he spits the words out, like my claws didn’t leave little rivulets of blood on his throat.

It’s so strange to hear him speak, to feel the honesty behind the words and actions as he straightens himself in front of me. I’ve had a few humans throughout my centuries who tried to put on a brave face, but it was never truthful. It was cloyingly sweet, too saccharine on my tongue and wrapped around the bitter taste of fear.

But these emotions are real… that honesty spills into the deep well that is my hunger. It fills me up one syllable at a time.

A drop drop drop that I can hear echoing in my depths and making space, making room.

Lingering.

“A name?”

I’d been asked what I was, what I’d wanted, but I couldn’t recall a time that a human had ever asked me for a name.

“Yeah, you know… something I can call you? Mothy? Merv?” He grins, and I’m once again caught up in how fascinating and novel his amusement is. “Murphy?”

“Nox,” I finally give. What would he think, I wonder, if he realized that it was a name I’d made in this moment, just for him?

His brows come together in a line of blond that doesn’t tell me anything. Humans are usually so easy to read.

So easy to frighten or lure.

So easy to promise them whatever they want if they come into the forest.

But he isn’t.