God,she really wanted to see what Cerberus looked like under his helmet.
“We need food and water,” she said, a little too shrilly. “But I’m not hungry or thirsty, I assume it’s this place.”
Cerberus nodded.
Okay.
“We need clothes and toiletries, and light, real light. There’s so little light here. Water for bathing and drinking, oh and probably freedom. Maybe a pistol? A six-pack of Coors Light?” Her nostrils flared. “You know, the basics?”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah, that’s all. Freedom, shelter, sustenance, space, se—” Nope she wasn’t going there.
“Don’t move,” he said, standing up.
“Why?”
The room went dark.
The flurry of her heart turned into a full-blown pound. This wasn’t the type of darkness one normally encountered, this was the absolute absence of light itself. It was heavy. So heavy she bowed under its weight.
Then someone grabbed her arm, steadying her, and she nearly screamed. The light returned. Still muted, but it was back. Cerberus let go of her and stepped away, and a gasp escaped her lips.
The rocky cave-like room had been replaced with sleek obsidian walls, obsidian furniture, and dangerous luxury. There was a table laden with fruits, a large tub with steaming water, mirrors that hung on the wall, and large cushions scattered along the ground. One of Cerberus’s hounds came out from the shadows, yawned, and settled on top of one of the cushions, while another loudly drank the bathwater.
All of it looked like it’d been pulled straight from the darkness itself. All except the golden light streaming from the dozen candles placed about.
The paintings along the walls that made her head hurt, the bed, the chair, and the large terrace were all that remained from before.
Cyane wandered the space, amazed, touching the surfaces as if they’d fade away without her contact. “Is this all for me?”
“Is it enough?”
“I…” She turned to face him. His burning eyes had never left her. His attention was doing things to her, worryingly things. She curled her fingers into the blanket still around her shoulders. “I’ve never had a room before.”
“Never?”
Cyane licked her lips. “We shared rooms at Claudette’s, the place where I grew up, and once I’d been placed into foster care, I shared a room with another foster kid in the same house I was in.” College had been dorms, and now she was here. She shook her head. “But this isn’t really mine, is it? It’s yours?”
“I spend most of my time here watching the realm below. The vantage point is opportune.”
“All alone?”
“I have my companions.” Right then, hundreds of black dogs peered in from around the shadowed edges of the room before pulling back and disappearing.
Cyane’s eyes widened. Where had all those dogs come from? How— She shook her head. She’d seen and experienced so many things she couldn’t explain already, she should know not to question them by now.
“Who is Claudette?” Cerberus asked, curiously.
Cyane turned her face back to him. “A woman who ran a religious school for orphaned girls.”
“Why were you there?”
She suddenly wished she hadn’t said anything. What could she say really to that? “I don’t know,” she whispered honestly. “I wish I knew.”
Silence fell between them, and she shuffled back and forth on her feet as Cerberus continued to stare at her. She hated talking about her life.
Cerberus knew who his parents were, much of the world had at least read about his myth once. He could scream his ancestry to the skies and be grounded by the knowledge he had.
