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"Loneliness is relative, my dear."
"Relative? Is that what we're calling it now?” I spat. “Because I call it being a grade-A asshole."
He laughed again, a sound that grated against my nerves, and then swept an arm dramatically over the countertop cluttered with breakfast fixings. "But even assholes need to eat," he cracked eggs into a pan in a way that made me want to crack his skull.
"Looking forward to the day you poison yourself," I muttered under my breath and watched as he pranced to the rhythm of his own madness.
"Ah, but today is not that day." He winked at me, and I resisted the urge to vomit.
How could someone so vile manage to move like that?
"Where's the goddamn spatula?" Oswin mumbled to himself and rummaged through drawers. A mild annoyance flickered across his features—a rare crack in his otherwise unfazed attitude.
"Maybe check your ego, plenty of room in there." Bitterness oozed from my every word.
"Feisty," he said without looking back. Then, with a dramatic pause, he rolled up his sleeve, revealing a myriad of ink sprawled across his skin. Tattoos danced along his arm: symbols, numbers, objects—all likely steeped in stories I didn't give a damn about.
He pressed a finger against a particular tattoo—a spatula etched near his elbow—and it shimmered under his touch. With a swift motion, like he was tearing reality itself, he plucked it free from his skin, leaving behind no mark, no blood, just the perverse magic that seemed to ooze from his pores.
"Magic spatula," he announced with a magician's flair and twirled it in his fingers. "Saves time."
"Show-off." I sneered, but inside, my stomach twisted with a cocktail of awe and revulsion.
"Jealousy doesn't suit you," he taunted and flipped an omelet with a flick of his wrist.
"Neither does kidnapping, but here we are."
"Touché." His voice remained light, but I caught the smallest shadow of something darker cross his face. For a moment, I thought I saw him for what he really was—a man haunted by ghosts of his own making.
"What else you got? A rabbit under your hat? Or maybe just more bullshit?"
"You'd be surprised what I can pull out when the need arises," he said with a wink.
"Please." I rolled my eyes. "What? Did you die in a fucking cooking accident? Is that why you've got that tattooed? Because that's the only way we get these damned things, isn't it?”
Dying sucks enough without coming back branded by shitty household cutlery.
"Ah, but it's not about the object, Averill," he said and slid the omelet onto a plate with. "It's about the moment. The significance. And trust me," he leaned closer and his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, "a spatula can be very significant."
"Fuck significance." I fought against the restraints and the leather bit into my skin. "And fuck your cryptic bullshit. You think you're so clever, don't you? With your goddamn parlor tricks and your stupid, smartass grin."
"Language, darling," he chided, but the smirk on his face told me he loved every syllable of my anger.
"Go to hell. And take your fucking breakfast with you."
"Temper, temper," he tutted, but his eyes gleamed with something close to respect—or was it a challenge? "All this fire, and yet here you are, my pretty little phoenix. All tied up and nowhere to fly."
He slid the plate across the granite countertop and made my stomach growl despite my anger. The aroma of crispy bacon and perfectly scrambled eggs wafted up to me and taunted my senses. I watched, ravenous more for freedom than food, as he approached with a kitchen knife that caught the light like a wink from fate.
"Time to eat," Oswin declared, his voice smooth as the blade he used to saw through the leather straps that bound my wrists. My skin tingled with the return of blood flow. I rubbed at the red marks left behind and glared up at him.
"What's your angle, Oswin? Feeding the prisoner before the execution?"
He ignored my jab and moved to my ankles with casual precision. The clink of metal and leather seemed too intimate in the expansive space. "Eat, Averill," he urged and cut away the last of my restraints. "Or don't. But I'd hate for the story to go cold along with your breakfast."
"Oh, you're telling fucking bedtime tales now?"
"Only the ones with twisted endings."
