I narrow my eyes. “You’re lying to me.”
“I think you need to calm down,” he says holding up both his hands.
“Don’ttell me to calm down. I demand some honesty. I’m your wife, you owe me that much at least.”
Victor looks like he is about to give in, but then his eyes flash with something I can’t quite place. It isn’t an emotion, more like a shimmer of green in his very deeply brown eyes.
I don’t know how to describe it except for a second it almost seems like something else was in there with Victor.
“Why are you so paranoid?” he demands.
“Because that’s exactly how my last marriage ended,” I blurt out. I inhale sharply as my words hang in the air between us. Victor stumbles back like I physically slapped him. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised myself. I’m not sure if I had intended to say that, but now that it’s out in the open there’s no point in continuing to be secretive. “Secrets got between us, and he wound up dead.” I tilt my head, forcing a smile to try to hide the pain behind an even tone and a nonchalant act. “We wouldn’t want that to happen again, now, would we?”
Victor’s mouth pops open in shock and I make the split-second decision to utilize that shock. Now is my chance to get the upper hand and force him to tell me what he is keeping from me. “What do you mean previous marriage?” he asks. “Talyria, what—”
I drop to the ground, swinging my leg out under his. Victor isn’t prepared in the least for my move, he hits the wooden boards in a second. I crawl onto him before he can have the chance to respond and pull his dagger out of his sheath.
He chokes on a breath, the breath obviously driven from his lungs. I tilt my head as I study him. “What? Did you really think that you were the first?” I ask.
His eyes find mine only now the green flash is gone, all that remains are soft brown orbs betraying a wounded nature, and I wonder if perhaps I went too far.
But then I remembered what Petrov did when he couldn’t accept me with all my imperfections, and I decide that it doesn’t matter that I hurt Victor. Better than he hurt me first.
And if he can’t accept me the way I am then it’s better to learn now.
“Marriage is built on trust,” I say as I press the dagger to his cheek. “I’ll have the truth out of you, or I will have nothing at all.”
Victor clenches his jaw as he regards me in a challenging manner as if daring me to cut him. I glance down at the knife. I hadn’t been expecting him to call my bluff. I certainly was not anticipating that he would be angry and hurt enough to not be afraid of me.
I think I need to get some help because I keep ending up in situations like this with my husbands, where I wind up pointing weapons at them.
But I’ve already showed my hand, I can’t pull back now. I stare down at him, wondering if I should give him a real quick shave to show him that I mean business when suddenly that green flash is back.
In a second, a small green tentacled creature is on my hand.
“What?” I gasp out as it wraps its suctioned tentacles around me.
Victor’s eyes round, and for the first time since I put a dagger to his cheek, he actually looks afraid. “Likho, don’t!” he cries out just as the creature pulls back its head and sinks a tiny beak into my skin.
“Ow!” I cry leaping back, losing my hold of the dagger as I do.
I stop a few paces away, holding my hand to my chest as the sea creature leaps from my arm and wraps its tentacles around my dagger. If I’m honest, it looks like the illustrations of krakens I have seen in bestiaries before the great collapse of my people. But much smaller.
And krakens are supposed to live in the water.
“What is that thing?” I hiss as Victor pushes to a sitting position, holding the side of his head. He looks at the miniature kraken then back at me. “Uh… this is Likho. He doesn’t like it when someone threatens me. Someone who isn’t him, that is.”
I furrow my brows. The name Likho sounds familiar. As I think about it, I realize that the name is from the pantheon of demigods. He is the demigod of chaos and ill fates. One of the winter months is named after him.
I always served Jarus, the demigod of shadows, just as my sister did, but I am aware of who Likho is. When I came of age, I was allowed to choose any demigod to be my patron. It was a Higher Elf custom that the Lowlanders and Lower Elves of the valley hated. They said that the demigods did not deserve our worship.
As if the gods did. The Lower Elves’ god was dead, what made him any more worthy than a demigod?
Victor holds out his hand and the kraken crawls onto it, leaving my dagger behind. The kraken grows smaller and flatter until it seems to be a mark on his skin, inked there but then even that fades until I’m left wondering if I ever saw it or if I’m perhaps going mad.
It’s just like Likho to make me doubt my sanity.
“No, I suppose I haven’t been entirely honest,” Victor says quietly. “But I don’t think you have either.”
