My mind wasn’t made up yet.
Either way, I needed to find him and figure out how to use Perception, and avoid using the Sun Skinscript. That jerk had argued me down to three Skinscripts, and proceeded to give me a useless one?
He’d seduced me for months, absolutely ravaged my mouth and left my body in complete disarray yesterday, and then fled like a thief into a night market.
I threw clothes on without bothering to look at them.
I was going to hunt him down and wring the truth out of him.
It didn’t take long to find him. He was sitting alone at a secluded bench in the courtyard sharpening a dagger against a whetstone, the pre-dawn light painting him in cool tones. His clothes were the same ones he’d worn yesterday, the rip in his pants from where he’d sliced himself precisely stitched back together.
It wasn’t right that he looked so unbothered after last night.
I caught a glimpse of Yeshar ducking into the Medic center out of the corner of my eye, and waited until he was gone. He didn’t look injured.
“What the hell,” I hissed at Zevrial, keeping my voice low enough only he would hear. “Seriously? Sun?”
He didn’t even bother to look up from his task. “And Perception. You’re welcome.”
“This is a joke at my expense, right? After spending so much time lecturing me about staying alive, you turn around and give me a glyph that will kill me if I ever use it.”
His lips tilted up. “You aren’t naive enough to believe everything they tell you in lessons is the full truth.” He slid his dagger back into its sheath. “The Sun glyph isn’t an immediate death sentence.”
Oh goodie.
“Terrific. I can be slowly roasted alive each time I accidentally use it.”
“Sun works like a drug. It’s addictive as fuck to use, which is why almost everyone who uses it can’t stop until it’s too late and their guts are fried.”
Better and better.
I managed to squeeze the words out through my clenched teeth. “You gave me a drug-glyph?”
His eyebrows slashed down with anger. “I gave you the fucking most powerful known glyph. But I’m sure you’ll find some way to stay pissed at me about that.”
I gaped at him. “You gave me a potentially lethal glyph, and no clue how to avoid using it. Then you have the audacity to claim I’m using it to start a fight with you?”
“If the shoe fits.”
Punching an instructor had to be against the rules, but I wanted very badly to do it anyway. “How do I use it?”
He scoffed. “They really don’t teach anything these days, do they?” I waited, refusing to rise to his baiting. Each word he said was languid as if I was mentally challenged. “You use it likesending a mirror missive. Just think about what you want to happen.”
Focusing on Perception, I tried it out on him. A faint warmth flared to life on my right inner thigh.
He had discreet bags under his eyes, and his posture was slouched more than usual. He didn’t look like he’d bathed since yesterday either. And he was even more irritable today than he had been then.
He wasn’t yawning and he hadn’t rubbed at his eyes at all since I’d stormed out here, but I’d wager my next meal he hadn’t slept well. It made a dark part of me feel better to know he was suffering too. And I hadn’t noticed any of this without Perception.
I stopped focusing.
All I had to do was not think about using the Sun’s power and it couldn’t kill me. Easy enough.
I sat beside him. “Why?”
One dark eyebrow went up on his handsome face. “Why what?”
Why did you leave last night? Why did you kiss me? Why did you stop?
