“Tiss—”
“Please, just help me understand.” I shake my head. “I can’t stop thinking about losing control. Stabbing you. Draining Sadrie. I feel like I’m suffocating. What if it means—”
“There aren't any mistakes during the lottery,” he says. “The process isn’t actually sortilege at all.”
I blink back my surprise. “It isn’t?”
“No.” He fixes me with that unnerving, level gaze of his. “The spheres are old. Probably as old as the temple itself. They’re made of solid gold, and all of them are identical.” He hesitates,as if considering how to word the next part. “They’re Altered with illusion magic—an illusion that changes the spheres’ outward appearance. It’s triggered by touch.”
Understanding breaks over me in a warm wave. “Which is why they wanted our gloves off.”
“That’s right. The spheres turn white when a mage touches them and black when in contact with a demun. But it has to be skin contact, or it won’t work properly.”
The relief flowing through me isindescribable.
“What color sphere did you draw, Tiss?”
“White,” I say, feeling as if I can breathe for the first time all night.
“Better?”
“Much,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” His tone is indulgent.
Listening to the hypnoticpopand hiss of the fire, I realize this is the first time in far too long that I’ve felt comfortable in my skin. Finally, “Can I ask you a question that might be… personal?”
“I can’t guarantee I’ll answer, but go ahead.”
“Sometimes you’re different. You, ah— Hmm.” I stop myself and try again: “Like today. You’re wearing trousers. When you do, you seem much more masculine. But the rest of the time you’re quitefeminine…”
He rakes crooked fingers through his dark hair, looking almost amused at my flustered state. “I have a mutable soul, Tiss.”
“Mutable soul?”
“It means sometimes my gender aligns with my biological sex. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I sort offlowfrom being a woman to a man.”
“Do you have a different name you prefer when you’re a man?”
“El, if it’s just you and me. But Elodie is always fine.”
El.I incline my head, taking in the angle of his jaw and his high cheekbones. With his hair down, his features are much softer, but I like it both ways. “Would you like to be referred to as ‘he’ instead of ‘she,’ El?”
“That’s up to you,” he shrugs. “Whatever you’re comfortable with. I’m still me. But it’s risky to make a habit of changing my pronouns whenever you notice my gender has shifted. Do me a favor and don’t go switching them in front of Sadrie or Cordelia, either.”
“Understood. I would never,” I say. “Still, I don’t want to offend, if I can help it.”
“You’re not going to offend me.” The flickering smile becomes a grin, warming me like the sun breaking through clouds. “‘She’ and Elodie arealwaysfine, no matter what. ‘He’ is fine when I’m El, and we’re on our own. If you’re unsure, you can always ask, although you seem fairly attuned to my shifts already.”
A comfortable quiet expands between us, breathing like a living thing. Not quite ready to return to my rooms and sensing his reluctance to dismiss me, I take in the snapping fire in the copper bowl and the cedar beams spanning the ceiling. The dyed wool rug beneath our feet.
We sat close like this, on this same settee, the first day I met him.
My gaze drifts to his sculpted mouth, his lips slightly parted, and I’m suddenly dangerously close to succumbing to the memory of their softness; the firm hunger behind the kiss before it was over much too soon.
Or the vicious appetite with which that sculpted mouth devoured mine in the fissure, my own hunger swallowing me in response.
Watching me a little too carefully, he says, “I’m not trying to scare you, but you’re right to worry about your monster coming back. It will. When it does, it’ll be hungry.”
