“Come.” Vargr beckoned.
Following him violated her sense of being herself and not his. Still she followed, up the sweeping carpeted stairs to a hotel room with an equally grand bathtub and glassed-in shower. A huge selection of clothes was piled on the king-size bed, mostly women’s clothing. He gestured.
“Choose something, if you wish to. We’re both dirty as hell.”
Cyn hesitated. Sexy? Flirting outrageously was power of a sort, whether he wanted her to or not.
She showered, dried herself on the softest, fluffiest white towel ever. A floor-length mirror reflected her in shades of red, as if she were demon not human, then the lights flickered on, and she heard the hum of machinery.
“Don’t worry! It’s just someone’s cranked up a generator, Cyn.”
Nice of him to say. She frowned at this new pink-skinned woman with the wet hair curling over and sticking to her front, at the water rivulets running from them and over her breasts. She turned, checking out her figure, her ample if muscular rear, and decided she’d done well, considering she should be dead.
She would definitely dress sexy.
Red sparks caught her attention.
The glints drifting to the surface in her irises startled her more than the power coming on. This was not thehershe’d been born as, that much she was sure of.
Cyn used her forefinger to drag down the lower lid of her right eye.
Those spots were not accidental, or the doing of a Ghoul Lord. She had nanomachines too. Even Eeyore of little brain would know this. Or was that Bear of little brain?
It shouldn’t be difficult to convince this council she was like them.
Unless they feared her too much? What could possibly do that? The Ghoul Lords, of course. It was why Vargr wanted to conceal her origins… her recent dangerous origins.
The lying didn’t bother her. That was practical. Something else did, but she couldn’t quite decide what it was.
“Get a move on in there!” Vargr yelled.
She raised her chin, thinking.
In a way, she was proud of being the only escapee in five years. Hiding herself was the act of a pussy.
A rush of heat flushed her system, made her heart thud, made her bare her teeth at herself. She planted her palm and splayed fingers on the cool glass.
“I am a fucking tiger.”
That bold statement had sprung from nowhere. A thought jumped out. She couldn’t have nanomachine tiger bits, could she?
“Nooo. Idiot.” She shook her head, disparaging her own question then shrugged. She was going to find out, with or without the help of these beasters.
And… if she had nanites, which those red spots pretty much shouted she did, then logically she was going to change into something same as all the others, same as Vargr. What though?
Something bad-ass. Yeah.
“Fuck yeah,” she whispered.
Cyn walked out naked to pick something from the pile, chose a short-skirted goth dress that morphed into something else at the back. Red bows and lacing ran down the spine in an imitation of a corset.
The cooler temperature outside, on the building edges, made her pick thin black leggings too. She slipped everything on, then shoved aside the clothes and sat on the bed to lace up her ankle boots with the practical grip on the bottom—if she had to run or kick, she was doing it right.
“You aren’t washing?”
Vargr, shoulder to the wall, had watched her every move. “No. Later, I will.”
He tossed a book he’d been reading onto the bed.The Doors of Stoneby Patrick Rothfuss. It bounced on the taut quilt that featured a blue dragon wound around a tower.
