Page 16 of Fate & Monsters
“That’s for soup,” he snapped.
I dropped it.
The silence stretched thin.
He watched, smirking, as he enjoyed my confusion.
Once again, his appearance astounded me. As he ate, I had more freedom to examine him. His fur stood as dark as a starless night, and his horns rose before curving back. He had longer ears, almost covered by a mane of long black hair that fell over his shoulders. In my periphery, I spotted his long tail swishing inches above the floor; the only outward sign of his mood, but one I wasn’t familiar with reading.
This beast, this supposed prince, had an intriguing presence about him. Something captivating and otherworldly. Even with the spans of mortal lives I’d lived, I had never seen anything, or anyone, quite like him. He looked almost preternaturally refined in a monstrous way, with an undercurrent of unspoken depravity at his core. Unnerving and haunting with an appearance mimicking the humans’ depictions of devils.
I moved slowly, imitating his choice as he picked a three-pronged utensil to stab at the vegetables. I knew I was holding it wrong when his nose scrunched upon watching me shove cabbages and sliced carrots into my mouth. But the flavors of the food burst on my tongue and my hunger encouraged me to stuff my face until my cheeks were swollen and my jaw ached from chewing.
“Is there something wrong with you?” he barked.
I swallowed my mouthful before nodding. “Oh, yes. Many things.” I bent to consume another chunk of steamed, buttered potato. “Do you want alist?”
“A list?” he trailed off as if dazed. His hand lowered until his utensil clinked on his plate, then he shook his head as if hoping his errant thoughts would be flung from his ears. “What sort of woman are you?”
“I…”I’m not. I choked the admission down. “I’m not sure.”
“A baffling one, certainly.” He leaned on the edge of the table, one hand stroking his chin. “Do you still refuse to tell me your name?”
He leaned back in his seat, intensely observing me as I shoved a particularly lumpy potato around the plate.
“I truly don’t have a name.”
“That you remember?”
“No. At all. I’ve never had one.” A pinch of exasperation wove into my voice. I didn’t want to talk about myself when there was nothing to tell. “And I don’t know wherehereis. What is this place?”
He submitted to the change in topic.
“This is my home, my castle.” Some of the tension in his shoulders eased, and the beast relaxed into his chair. A wave of candlelight played across his face, enhancing the inhuman nature of his features. “This realm is not like the one you’re from. Far, far from it, in fact.”
“Obviously. Tell me something I don’t know.”
His upper lip curled, briefly baring his sharp teeth. A passing flash of annoyance. “We arein Infernus. A world adjacent to your own but divorced from the same rules and creatures.”
“Infernus.” I tasted the word on my tongue. I set my utensil down. The world blurred at the edges as my vision hyper focused on the opposite wall.
“How did you get here?” Mavros tapped a claw-tipped finger on the table to the rhythm of my heartbeat.Tap. Tap. Tap.It thrummed in my ears, crowding out my thoughts.
“A magical accident,” I replied. Some truths I needed to keep close.
The beast nodded slowly, and my gaze darted to the light gleaming on the ridges of his horns. My heart sank and my stomach twisted itself into knots.
“From what I’ve read, that seems to be the case with most of these incidents.”
That sparked my curiosity. “This has happened before?”
His fingers stilled, the tapping ceasing as his throat bobbed with a hard swallow. A fresh wave of tension radiated from him, feeling much like the buzzing hum of humans’ infernal electrical contraptions. My chair creaked when I shifted in my seat.
“Sometimes. It’s rare.” Then his stare returned to me, glinting with somethingcalculating and voracious. Goosebumps rippled over my arms. “Since you have nowhere else to go, I can offer you my home. You must reside here with me where it’s safest for you.”
An asphyxiating sense of dread reached up from my nauseated guts and clawed at the back of my throat. The vulnerable sense of mortality in my chest, already tender and bruised, abused itself in the agony of my fate. Forever warped, twisted into the body of a thing that would die, lost to myself—my spirit rotting and corroding through my fingers, slipping away like sand. Acidic, hot tears cut at the corners of my eyes and threatened to spill.
“This… this is a nightmare,” I said, voice thin and reedy.
