Esme has come up every day to call me to lunch or dinner. Each time, her voice carried more worry than the time before. She asked what was wrong, whether I was sick, whether I was all right, and all I gave her was silence because I couldn’t trust my own voice. Smelling her so close, just behind the door, the scent of her skin and her hair, made it hard to hold back.
In the middle of the day, she comes knocking again, and this time, she doesn’t stop.
“Osric.” The handle rattles hard. “I know you’re in there. Open the door.”
I stand still and wait for her to give up.
She pounds on the wood with her fist instead.
“You’re going to answer me right now. Are you alive, dead, or just rude enough to ignore your guests in your own house?”
There’s no waiting her out. Not today. I hear the determination in her voice.
I tip the last of the tincture into the cup of water by the bed and drink it down. In the bathroom, I splash water on my faceand grip the basin until my hands stop shaking. In the mirror, I see what she’s about to see. My eyes have gone fully black, edge to edge, no blue left in them at all.
I unbolt the door and open it.
Esme gasps and steps back. Her hand comes up toward her collarbone and stops halfway there.
I know why. I look less like the male who bought her, and more like the thing everyone in Haara fears I’ll become.
Two trays are on the floor beside her feet. The meal on one of them is old, gone stale, the other is fresh, steam rising off the stew. She’s carried food up for two days, hoping I’d eat. That makes me want her more, which in turn makes me want her out of the house right now.
She recovers fast. Her chin lifts, and her voice turns sharp to cover the unease at the sight of me.
“I was taking the old one away,” she says, “and bringing you another. Since, apparently, starving yourself is what you consider polite host behavior.”
“I’ll carry them down.” My voice comes out rough from disuse.
I crouch, stack the old tray under the fresh one, and lift both. Holding my breath so I don’t inhale her scent, I walk around her and start toward the stairs.
Fear, I know how to read. I learned as a city guard, part of my job being to scrutinize every person, Scorpii or not, who came through the Lower Gate of Haara, or stepped through the portal in the portal chamber.
However, between her gasping at the sight of my eyes and scolding me in a sharp voice, I think I noticed something other than fear. It’s very likely that I’m being delusional. No, she’s afraid of me, and that’s about it.
She follows me down the stairs, closer than I’d like.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks. “And don’t say nothing. People who are fine don’t bolt their doors and stop eating.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Your eyes are black.”
“I know.”
“That’s not an answer. Do you need a healer? Is there such a thing as a Scorpii healer? Because I’ll go find one myself, if I have to.”
A smile pulls at the corner of my lips at her display of stubbornness.
“I don’t need a healer.”
“Then what do you need? Because from where I’m standing, you need several things, and food is the least of them.”
“I need you to stop asking.”
“Yes, well,” she says, “we don’t always get what we want.”
Darina is wiping the counter when we come into the kitchen. This girl never stops moving. She always keeps her hands busy.
