But I tasted it. Their blood. Their souls, rich and shimmering. Their confusion, their anger. And the one taste hovering above them all.
Imagine your father journeyed to Ikhtar, and brought you back some of their famed desserts. You must have had some by now, but I shall tell you of them anyway. They are moist, thick, jelly treats, rolled in sugar. Putting one in your mouth is like tasting joy itself. Imagine he brought these for you when you were only a child, and you ate them all in one night. The memory of them stays with you. Longing amplifies a delicious taste to something heavenly. By the time you are grown, you crave them more than any other, and no Hokkaran sweet can compare.
It is like that, Shizuka. It is like that.
So when I opened my mouth and let my tongue loll in the air to get a better taste, and you noticed me, you stared.
“Shefali?” you said. “Are you all right?”
There was one thing you did not notice.
I never put my boots back on.
What a small thing to forget. What an insignificant thing. Nowadays, forgetting my boots would not trouble me. I have more control, you see.
But I was sixteen then, newly changed, and smoke seared my nose. Bandits are fond of drinking; I think one of them fell into the fire. Burning flesh has such a distinct smell, Shizuka, so hard to ignore. My stomach churned, and my lips grew moist in anticipation.
Yes, I could hear it now: they were screaming for help. Someone fell in the flames. When I took a deep breath of the darkening smoke, I smelled him. I took in a bit of his soul, and I savored it as one savors finely charred meat.
Burning flesh. Bones snapping as you stepped on the fallen. Rubies in the air. It was all so heady, Shizuka, it was all so unreal.
I took a yearning step toward you, and I happened to step directly into a corpse’s wound. Still-warm organs growing cold; bone holding me in place.
Burning flesh.
Cherry-sweet blood.
If I had worn my boots, I think, and not felt that corpse’s innards, I would not have had such a reaction.
But there were four men left when my jaw unhinged.
The bow fell from my hands. I lurched forward. A howl pealed from my mouth, a sound I had no idea I could make. I do not know how high I jumped, but I tell you, it felt like flying.
Horror dawned on my victim’s face when I landed on him. His companions did not stay to watch. When I turned to laugh at them, to mock them, I saw only their backs as they ran into the woods.
“Do you see them?” I said into the bandit’s ear. Spittle dripped onto his collarbones. “They’re smarter than you are.”
With my feet on his shoulders, I took a handful of his hair. He tried to push me off, but my grip was iron, my grip was death itself.
I twisted at the hips until I heard a wet crack. The bandit crumpled. I jumped on top of his body, on my hands and knees. Red. I could see it beneath his skin; I could see it in rivers and lakes and streams. So close. Gods, it was so close and so bright.
Saliva dripped from my mouth onto the man’s broken neck. Yes. Yes, this is what I was made for, this moment before teeth met flesh.
Except someone stopped me.
Someone grabbed me by my braid and yanked.
I turned. Whoever interrupted me, whoever interrupted what they could not understand, would have to die as well. That was the way of things. There were mortals, there were gods, there were demons.
And then there was me.
The Not-You stood before me, baring blackened teeth, pointing at me with fingers so rotted, they were more bone than meat.
“You’re misbehaving,” it said, and as it advanced on me, maggots squirmed from its left eye. Soon they were bursting out through its iris. “This is not how I trained you, Steel-Eye!”
A crack of wrath. I beat my chest and roared, heedless of which bandits remained. “Trained me?” I said. “You do not train me!”
It took another step forward, its sickly gray tongue peeking out from between its lips. By now the maggots had devoured its left eye. The smile on its face was a twisted mirror of yours; all arrogance, all brash certainty.
“You are my dog,” it said. “You always have been. Why else do you follow, nipping at my heels, like a lost puppy?”
It shoved a finger into my chest.
“When I want someone dead, I say so, and there you are.”
It shoved me again.
“I give you orders. You carry them out. You get hurt and I get the credit.”
It cupped my face, squeezed in my cheeks.
“That is how our relationship works, Steel-Eye. How it has always worked. I am the Virgin Empress. You are the bitch.”
I grabbed it by the throat.
In an instant, we were on the ground. Beneath my hands, I felt bone and sinew. If I squeezed hard enough, I could end this. I could pop off the thing’s head and never be bothered by it again.
Kill. Kill, kill, kill, the only thing I’m good at, the only thing I have ever truly been good at. Kill it. Kill it and find freedom, find peace.
So I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, snarling all the while. Blood drained from the thing’s face. As I choked it, it turned blue, it struggled beneath me, it slapped and kicked and punched.
But when its right palm struck me, so, too, did reality.
I was choking you. Your pomegranate lips turned pale as bird’s eggs, your veins like rivers on the map of your skin. The look on your face, Shizuka. The anguish, the pain, the fear. You were so small and so delicate; my hands so large and monstrous and …
And I’d nearly killed you.
“Shefali?” you croaked. “Shefali, have you … have you returned?”
My jaw hung slack now, not in hunger, not in thirst, but in shame. It hit me hard as any hammer, winded me, left me hollow and broken. Prying my hands away from you felt like … they must’ve been someone else’s hands. Must have been. My own hands would never hurt you.
Let go. Let go.
When I finally pried them off your throat, my hands were frozen in place, sore and aching. Try as I might, I could not will them to relax.
I stared at you, stared at my hands. Shaking. I was shaking. You massaged your throat and tried to sit up. I moved to help you, but … but I couldn’t bring myself to touch you.
“It’s all right,” you said. “That wasn’t you.”
But it was not all right. And it was me.
No.
I needed to disappear. You’d be better off without me.
I shot to my feet. A faint glimmer of bronze caught my eye; the laughing fox mask Ren had asked for was strapped to a corpse’s face. I looked from it to you.
You were scrambling up. “Shefali?”
“It was me. I did it, Shizuka, it was me,” I said. “And I have to die.”
And I grabbed the mask, turned my back to you, and ran to my horse fast as I could. I knew you could not hope to follow. I knew you’d try anyway.
But I hoped you’d let me go. I hoped you’d let me just die, as I deserved. What else was I good for, what else could I do?
As I rode through the woods, I thought of how I’d do it.