Page 71 of The Book That Held Her Heart

The Escape swung at Livira again. She made no attempt to block it. That would only add strength to the blow. The limb broke across her, splashing down, black drops rolling over her like water from a bird’s feathers.

“Back!” Livira thrust her hands at the creature in a gesture of negation.The black nightmare retreated several steps. “Out!” It turned unwillingly towards the wrecked doorway.

For a moment Livira stood, panting with effort, her whole body a knot of tension although her mind was doing the work. A shard of pain struck between her eyes, and rather than struggle for further mastery she simply spread her hands. The remainder of the Escape collapsed as if it had only ever been a liquid and the vessel holding it had suddenly vanished.

Livira stood, breathing hard. The tavern room lay in ruins, the majority of its patrons having fled out the back. The Escape was now an oil pool, reflecting nothing, rendered insensitive by Livira’s will that it should be so.

Some of those felled in the exodus but not badly injured began to pick themselves up. The canith with the foul-smelling pipe emerged from the shadows of the furthest corner. She tilted her head, the grey straggles of her mane falling across her face but not obscuring the dark-eyed curiosity in her stare. Laying a hand on both Livira and Carlotte, she started to steer them towards the wreckage of the entrance and the thinning mists outside. “Come with me. Quickly.” She kept her growl low. “There’s someone you should meet. Unless you want to stay and explain this to the death’s heads.”

Good sex, like good comedy, is primarily a matter of timing and chemistry. The similarities end when considering the ideal size of the audience.

The Ping Pong Ball, by Ansell Dam

Chapter 31

Arpix

Arpix lay comfortably trapped between Clovis and the mattress, with enough of the canith draped across him to make escape a difficult business. His body felt wrung out, a wet cloth that had been twisted to squeeze out the last drop. A strange combination of sated and bruised. Clovis, now fast asleep and growling softly, had shown both the energy and strength of her species. And of course, her warrior training had accentuated both. She had also been unexpectedly tender though, and Arpix’s fears that human anatomy would be incompatible with her needs or inadequate to meet them, appeared to have been unwarranted, at least to judge by her reaction at the time and her current state.

Quite how long his body would stand up to the punishment, he wasn’t sure. He thought he’d probably need a week to recover. On the other hand, the message didn’t seem to have reached all quarters, and certain parts of him seemed to be eager for round two.

Arpix relaxed, wishing only that the mattress was thicker and the boards beneath less hard. The sun had risen, and its light strained through the shutters. It had sounded like a wild night down in the tavern room below them, but they’d both had other things on their minds, and little short of actual fire would have diverted them from it—mere smoke would not have qualified.

“We’ve come a long way from the library.” Arpix murmured the words to himself. He tried to imagine what the people from his past would havemade of his present. It would have seemed as unbelievable to them as it did to him. And yet here he was, with a gently snoring, slightly furry canith, puffing stray strands of her crimson mane away from his mouth.

Of all of it: the growing excitement, the ecstasy of union, the satisfaction of consummation, it was this part, or more accurately the part before Clovis had fallen asleep, that he found himself loving the most. The gentle communion of lying together, wrapped in each other, each feeling the other’s breathing, a whispered conversation of inconsequential words and vital emotion.

The sounds of the street reached in, wagons creaking by, the rattle of carts, voices raised in conversation. It felt much busier outside now than when they’d arrived. A man shouted a greeting. Someone dropped something, possibly an empty barrel.

Clovis stretched, yawning mightily to show an array of teeth that still surprised Arpix. She lifted up over him on all fours. The six breasts had been a surprise too, though with each pair considerably smaller than the one above it the lowest pair at the bottom of her ribcage were hardly there at all. “I’ll never get used to this night-and-day stuff.”

“It takes a while. I lived in the library long enough to forget darkness existed.” Arpix wriggled clear and reached for his robes before the canith got any ideas. “We need to find Evar. And the others.” Evar would be enough for Arpix. And then the book, and then Livira. Mayland and his plans could stay lost.

“Or we could go find this king who took the book. ThisOanold.” She spoke his name like a curse. “The others will be looking for him too, and I’ll bet he’s easier to find than they are. Kings live in castles, yes?”

“Palaces normally, at least when they’re in their capitals. But Oanold fell here like we did. He’s not going to be king.”

Clovis stood, still naked, still stretching. “Mayland said he would fall into himself. Into whoever he was here.” She looked around for the leathers she’d scattered the evening before. “And I’m ready to bet he’s this shitty potentate whose guards were trying to have you hanged.”

“He might not even exist here. I mean we don’t. Or at least…do we?”

Clovis shrugged. “If there’s another me, the bitch can’t have you.”

Arpix couldn’t help but snort with laughter at that. He tied the cordaround his waist. Clovis somehow made him a different person. Normal-Arpix wasn’t a snorter. “We came here because we followed Oanold. But something brought Oanold here, it means something to him. Maybe because there was a version of him living out a life in this place. In a palace.”

“We’ll go after this potentate,” Clovis said. “Even if I’m wrong, it sounds like I’d be doing everyone a favour if I twisted his head off. And I bet I’m not wrong. This Oanold, this human king, he had his soldiers kill my people without cause or mercy. That sort of evil doesn’t change. That hunger doesn’t go away. He’ll claw his way to the top. And that’s how I’ll find him.”

Arpix held his tongue. Nobody had said the potentate wasn’t a canith. He let it slide. Oanold’s deeds had inflicted wounds that ran through the whole of Clovis’s life. She couldn’t be argued out of them. And besides, Oanoldwasa monster, a devil wrapped in human skin. The terror Arpix had felt beneath the man’s indifferent cruelty would return to him every day of his life.

He kept his counsel until Clovis had finished dressing. “He’ll have soldiers. Hundreds of them. A literal army. I mean—I saw a whole army march past me yesterday. We can’t just stroll into his palace and challenge him.”

“Of course not.” Clovis tightened her belt.

Arpix relaxed.

“We scout first. Then attack.” She aimed for the door. “Come on. Let’s see if there’s a back way out of here.”

They left theinn via a dirty yard at the rear where carts came to unload casks of ale into the cellar and drive off with empties. A patch of mud allowed Clovis to tone down the distinctive red of her mane with a handful of grime. At her suggestion Arpix led the way and she trailed him at a discreet distance. The authorities would be looking for the pair of them, and whilst humans and canith kept close quarters in the city, Arpix had yet to see any holding hands.

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