Page 151 of A Soul to Embrace

“I’m almost thirty-eight and feel fucking old.” When she licked her mouth in agitation, his response obviously not good enough, he groaned and threw his arms wide against the ground. “I don’t know what else you want to know. I only like to read because it makes me smarter. I hate hunting; I find it boring because I’m so good at it. I once liked travelling this realm because it has its own beauty that is unique in comparison to Nyl’theria, but I’ve seen it all now. Why don’t you tell me something about you?”

“But I don’t have anything to tell you. I don’t remember much from before you made me eat all those humans. You know everything about me.”

His eyes squinted at her, his white upper and lower lashes touching before settling back open. He sighed as he said, “I should have expected that answer.”

Hmm. What else can I ask him then?It appeared he needed direction.I don’t want to ask about any females.Just the idea had her sight wanting to shift to bright green from a nasty emotion nipping at her chest.I think if I ask about Merikh, it will upset him.If he thought so fondly about him, then Zylah imagined what happened between them would only aggrieve him because his friend was no longer in his life.

She did have something she wanted to know, but she was uneasy about asking.But if he tells me everything... then he will see how much I care about him.How willing she was to forgive and forget whatever he’d done in the past.

“Is there anything pertaining to Mavka you haven’t told me?”

Her sight shifted to a reddish pink when he gave her a suspicious glare. He said nothing for a short while, and she thought he wouldn’t answer.

He threw his head back against the pillow. “I guess the only thing missing would be that I and my human companion emotionally tortured one of your kind over the course of a hundred and eighty years.” He lifted a single finger, as if telling her to wait. “But, in my defence, he was the source of much of his own suffering.”

She tilted her head on his chest. “What do you mean?”

“Orpheus, the wolf-skulled Mavka, would seek a human offering every ten years. My companion didn’t like this. I don’t know if it was just because she hated him or if she was jealous – she was weirdly sensitive about the whole thing. We only stole six out of however many there were. He killed and ate many of them on his own, or they foolishly ran away into the Veil like idiots.”

“You stole his human companions?”

“Yes.” He shrugged, then looked in disinterest at the ceiling. “I’ve already explained, in part, why she hated him, but wedidleave him alone the rest of the time. I couldn’t enter his protective salt circle when he was there, as all my threatening energy towards him would prevent me from doing so. Since he rarely left it, choosing to wallow in his own self-pity, he was essentially untouchable.”

“What... did you do to those humans?” Zylah asked, swallowing thickly.

“She told them she wanted to save them and would take them home.”

Why did Zylah get this terrible, foreboding chill down her spine? “What did she really want?”

“She didn’t care. She passed them on to me and would just watch my viewing rings to see how Orpheus fared in their absence.” He cupped his mouth and turned his head to the side. “I had no interest in eating them since the idea of eating something that can speak to me, beg and plead, actually leaves me with a sour taste. But they were food for my army to further reach their completion. I saw it as no different to what I did to help you. Human life is meaningless to me.”

“It’s meaningful to me,” Zylah grumbled, turning her skull away with red flickering in her sight.

A singular laugh hummed behind his closed lips. “I think it’s cute when you pout like that.”

And just like that, her annoyance faded and her sight shifted to reddish pink in bashful embarrassment.

“I don’t think I’m cute,” she muttered, hiding her orbs with a hand when the colour deepened. She liked that he kept calling her that.

“Why not? You want to convince me I’m capable of kindness, yet you won’t allow yourself something so simple.”

“I don’t know.” Zylah shrugged. “I have a skull, and I’m aware this is unusual. I am big, and I am scary. I’ve always known that.”

She actually thought many would find her skull ugly, especially since many creatures, humans and Demons, screamed at it.

Two warm and calloused hands cupped the sides of her jaw, and he forced her head forward. She lowered her hands to look at him.

“You are beautiful how you are. Unlike me, you are pretty on the inside and the outside.” Then he let her head go and it plonked back onto his chest.

Strange flutters quivered her belly, and she covered her face with her arms to fully hide it. She didn’t like how deftly his words made her chest squeeze in tenderness. How she felt about him conflicted with how she viewed what he’d done, and she wondered if it was wrong of her to harbour such affection for someone like him.

He wasn’t good; she could see that. She alsostilldidn’t care, so long as he never directed all the malice he was capable of on her. She wasn’t innocent, she’d killed many creatures, and she didn’t even remember their faces.

She wanted to think he would change after he got what he wanted, and that he would stop this needless killing and bloodshed when he’d ended his war. She thought if that was possible, she’d be truly happy.

“What happened to your female companion?” Zylah asked, wanting to get away from the heart-stuttering conversation revolving around herself.

“Orpheus’ bride ran a sword through her chest,” he answered quietly.

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