“… stop, you’re frightening me…”
“… I THINK YOU TOO STUPID TO BE FRIGHTENED OF ME, LITTLE MOGGY. BUT ONE TURN, I SHALL TEACH YOU THERE IS A PRICE FOR OWNING TOO MUCH MOUTH AND NOT ENOUGH TEETH…”
“… tell me, dear mongrel, do you practice these blunt little threats when you’re alone, or do you simply improvise…?”
Mia frowned, her tolerance of the not-cat’s sarcasm at an all-time low.
“Mister Kindly, go watch the Nest. Come fetch me if Furian stirs.”
“… you send me away…?”
“… O, MY HEART BLEEDS…”
“… we have no hearts, you idiotic mutt…”
“… BE SURE TO REMIND ME OF THAT, WHEN I AM EATING YOURS…”
The shadowcat hissed, and the shadowwolf growled. But with a ripple in the black about her feet, Mia felt her passenger depart. She knelt and ran her hands through Eclipse, fancying the slightest whisper of cool velvet beneath her fingertips.
“All is well?”
Eclipse’s hackles were still up, but under Mia’s touch, she slowly quietened. Licking her mistress’s hand with a translucent tongue, the shadowwolf spoke softly.
“… IT IS WELL. BETTER NOW THAT YOU ARE HERE. HOW ARE YOUR WOUNDS…?”
Mia touched the bandage at her face, grimacing. “Well enough.”
“… YOU SEEM SAD…?”
“Perhaps a little.”
“… DO WE NEED TO HURT ANYONE…?”
“I need you to stay here, Eclipse. Keep watch on the street, aye?”
“… AS YOU WISH…”
Mia smiled, began trudging down the alleyway, glad at least one of her daemons was content to do what it was told. As she walked farther and farther away, climbed up the downspout to the balcony outside Ashlinn’s window, she felt Eclipse’s hold on her begin to fade, and butterflies begin creeping into her belly. It was still an unfamiliar sensation, cold and sickly and slick. It made her feel small. It made her feel weak.
Black Mother, she loathed being afraid.
She crouched by the window, fist poised over the glass. The hateful sensation of lice crawling in her belly. Cold sweat stinging in the stitches at her cheek. Gritting her teeth, she dragged up the nerve from the bottom of her feet and knocked softly.
The window opened and Ashlinn stood there, bathed in the burning sunslight. For a moment, Mia forgot the blood, the death, the fear, simply drinking in the sight of her. This girl who’d risked her life again—gathering information in Whitekeep, weakening the Exile’s blades to even the odds, following Mia across the Republic and back without flinching.
“O, Goddess,” Ashlinn breathed, pressing her lips to Mia’s own.
Mia closed her eyes, slipping her arms about Ashlinn’s waist, letting the girl shower her face with kisses. Taking her by the hand, Ash led Mia to the bed, pulled her down and threw her arms about her, squeezing tight. Despite the ache of her cracked ribs, the pain of the last few turns, Mia breathed easier, inhaling lavender and the scent of henna in Ashlinn’s hair. Simply being held and holding in turn.
“I missed you,” Ash breathed.
“… I missed you, too.”
They kissed again, long and blissful and soft. Ashlinn pulled her closer, face buried in her neck. They lay like that for an age, bodies fitting together like the strangest of puzzle pieces. Of all the places she expected to find herself on her road, wrapped up in this girl’s arms was the last. The warmest. The sweetest.
After a long, peaceful nothing, Ash finally pulled back from Mia’s arms, looked her over, from the top of her head to the shadow beneath her.
“Where’s Mister Mockery?” she asked.
“I sent him back to the keep,” Mia sighed.
“He didn’t like that, I’ll wager.”
Mia shrugged, toying with the end of one of Ashlinn’s braids. “He was pissing me off. He’s always got something sarcastic to say. Always questioning. Always pushing. He’s never just … nice.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Ash smiled.
Mia raised an eyebrow, fixed Ashlinn in a withering stare. “O, really?”
“Truth is the sharpest knife, Corvere,” Ash grinned.
“You wound me, Dona. I’m fucking lovable, I’ll have you know.”
Ash grinned. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually.”
“How fucking lovable I am?”
“No,” Ashlinn rolled her eyes. “About your passengers. How different they are. Spending all this time traveling with Eclipse, I’ve gotten to know her quite well. She and Mister Congeniality are like truelight and truedark. He’s sarcastic, mean-spirited, a fucking pain in the arse. Eclipse is simpler, more direct. She doesn’t question. And I realized those traits are a lot like you and Lord Cassius. You said yourself he never sought the truth of what it was to be darkin.”
“You think…”
“I don’t think anything,” Ash shrugged. “It’s just interesting. Maybe a passenger inherits the mannerisms of the darkin they first imprint upon?”
Mia chewed on that for a moment, and it tasted like sense. Thinking on it honestly, her two passengers were an awful lot like the ones they’d first rode with. The shadowcat’s bitter, black humor and biting wit. The shadowwolf’s unquestioning loyalty, her propensity for violent solutions to any situation.
Could it be Mister Kindly was just a dark reflection of her?
And if that were true, weren’t his thoughts the best measure of what she thought?
… they are not your friends, mia …
“I was worried about you,” Ashlinn whispered. “During the venatus at Whitekeep. I’m sorry I missed that second set of blades. That was stupid of me.”
Mia blinked, thoughts coming back into focus. Looking into Ashlinn’s eyes.
Wondering …
“Sneaking around down there unseen can’t have been easy,” she finally said. “And it turned out well enough in the end.”
Ash sucked her lip. “She hurt you.”
“I’m all right,” Mia sighed. “Cracked ribs. A few scratches.”
Ashlinn leaned up on her elbow, ran gentle fingertips over the bandage on Mia’s brow and cheek.
“Didn’t look like a scratch when she opened you up.”
“It’s fine, Ash.”
“… Show me.”
Mia shook her head, belly churning. “Ashlinn, I don—”
“Mia,” Ash said softly, taking her hand. “Show me.”
The fear. Welling in her belly like poison. She wanted Mister Kindly and Eclipse back, right now. Life was so much easier with no regard for consequence, no thought for pain. Her passengers were what made her strong, allowed her to be a terror of the sands, to spare no thought for hurting or being hurt in kind. She was steel when they were inside her. Without them …
Without them, what am I?
For all her talk of preferring to look dangerous rather than pretty, she was still afraid of what she looked like beneath that bandage. Of what she’d see in Ashlinn’s eyes when she took it off. But just as swift, she felt her old temper rising. The anger that had been her companion through all the years between the turn her father was killed and this one. What did she care how she looked?