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The blade she pressed to my throat proved just how much I’d underestimated this strange creature. Determination made her brows furrow. Sweat dotted her temples. Blown pupils and her bottom lip tremblingjustenough to see made her a glorious and deadly sight.
I’d seen it a hundred times before.
Though never so fragile and unsure as this.
The novelty of it made me smirk, leaning into the metal’s sharp edge.
“What do you plan to do now?” I asked. “Cut me?”
She half shrugged, not lowering the blade a fraction. “Depends. You’re a god, so I don’t imagine it’s that easy to kill you.” She imagined correctly, not that I would tell her as much. “Then again, getting cut to pieces isn’t fun for anyone. Well, unless you’re doing the cutting.”
This was familiar. Her ruthless irreverence. As if she were talking about the weather instead of murder.
Gold dribbled down the handle.
I hadn’t realized she cut me until the evidence was touching her fingers. Flashes of a past I couldn’t forget assaulted me.
Knives to my throat. Cunt wrapped around my cock. Nails scratching down my chest.
We’d fucked hard as we fought.
The daydream vanished when she spoke. “You said you were taking me to my family.” Her voice quivered—barely, but it was there.Vulnerability. She might be the same, but she was also different. “What did you mean by that?”
I sighed, leaning back from the blade.
She was going to ask questions. It was inevitable. I’d barely figured out how to answer them when I’d found her. “You’re from Arcadia. Your family is here—”
“I’ve never been here,” she challenged. “Not once. I was born on Earth.”
Of course she was. I’d felt it the day she returned.
I always did.
This was the first time that feeling was merely an echo of feeling. A far cry from every past life. She hadn’t been here in Arcadia, but she was still back all the same.
“Your blood is from this realm. Your magic. There is family here, your family, and they’ve been looking for you ever since they lost you.” It was the truth. Every. Single. Word.
Her eyes narrowed mistrustfully, but I could see it. The wheels turning. The temptation.
She wanted tobelong. She always had.
“Why didn’t they come for me if they knew I existed?”
“They couldn’t,” I said. “Earth is no friend to peacocks.”
Her lips pressed together. She didn’t disagree. There had been a Great Sacrifice on Earth twenty-four years ago. I knew of it. She was born shortly after the battle where her kind were slaughtered. She’d likely been raised either by some unknowing people or wild creatures, though I wasn’t sure which to believe just yet.
“And you?” Her head cocked. “How didyouknow where I was?”
I laughed, pressing against the weapon’s edge. My blood ran freely, without care. “Darling, I am agod. I can easily find a measly peacock shifter.”
Righteous fire ignited in her brown eyes, hints of gold flashing in their depths.
Her knife pulled away, and disappointment licked my skin. The tiny cut healed shut before she lowered the blade to her side. “Which brings us back to my original point, oh Entitled One. Why would you, ‘a god-king’,” she repeated, using her fingers to make quotation marks in derision, “humble yourself to look for a ‘measly peacock shifter’?”
“Because it’s my duty,” I uttered in all seriousness.
Dubious eyes stared at me, trying and failing to look inside the gaping void of my soul. I knew her powers. “It won’t work,” I said, calling her out on it. She didn’t shrink or blush with embarrassment.
