Page 99 of Kill the Beast
He hesitated. “Or… we could hash it out over a pint, sometime? Say, next week?”
“Yeah, okay,” Lyssa said, surprising herself. The old anger was still there, burrowed deep in the chasms of her heart, but there was a new voice inside her now, urging her to give him a chance. It sounded suspiciously similar to a certain ruffle-shirted asshole, and it was impossible to ignore.
“Really?” Her father seemed as surprised as she was, but beneath his confusion was a tentative sort of hope.
“Sure,” she said. “It’d be nice to talk about Eddie with someone who loved him like I did.”
Part of her still hated him for what he had done. But maybe he deserved a bit of the mercy she had shown Alderic. After all, the world wasn’t black-and-white, and her father wasn’t her enemy, despite all of the mistakes he had made.
He was simply human, just as she was.
÷ ÷ ÷
“Did you and your father have a nice chat?” Alderic asked Lyssa when she finally found him in the overcrowded night-market, at a stall selling embroidered socks. He already had two shopping bags looped over his arm, and was currently scrutinizing the stitching on the toe of a powder-blue sock decorated with white poodles.
“We did, actually,” Lyssa replied, reaching down to scratch behind Brandy’s ear. The bullmastiff leaned into it and heaved a blissful sigh. Or maybe the sigh was directed at Alderic.Poodles?
Alderic returned the sock to its display, picked up a pair that featured a repeating pattern of marigolds. “And you didn’t stab him this time?”
She snorted. “No, I did not stab him. We’re… going to get a drink next week,” she said, with a clench of nerves in her stomach.
Alderic eyed her sidelong as he handed the marigold socks to the stall-owner, along with a few more coins than the advertised price. The corner of his lips curved in a barely suppressed smile, and Lyssa flushed.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He took his purchase and thanked the stall-owner with a gracious smile, moving aside to make room for the next customer. “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“I’m proud of you,” he said as he tucked his new socks into one of his shopping bags.
Lyssa’s flush deepened. “Oh, shut up,” she said, though there was no real bite to her words.
Now he wasn’t eventryingto suppress his smile. “What? Am I not allowed to—”
“No, you are not.” It still felt strange, this sensation of a new Lyssa beginning to displace the old one. Even thinking about it too much overwhelmed her. The last thing she wanted to do wastalkabout it. “Did you get that waistcoat?” she asked, in a desperate attempt to change the subject. Fortunately, it worked.
Alderic held up his arm and shook it, rustling the bags. “And three more, besides.”
She made a sound of disgust, looking to the sky like she was praying for patience, but the grin on his face was worth all the waistcoats in the world. “Then let’s go home, before you find anything else.”
“Home,” he repeated, drawing the word out. As if he liked the feel of it on his tongue.
“Home” was still the Witch’s Wood, for now. Maybe Lyssa would move into the house in Sunnyside one day, but she wasn’t quite ready for that yet. There were already too many changes to contend with, too much upheaval in the life she had known. Her lumpy bed in the smithy’s loft was an anchor she found she was surprisingly reluctant to part with.
She and Alderic pushed their way through the crowded night-market toward the painted banner suspended over the exit. The air was filled with laughter and discordant music and the scent of grilled meat. When they emerged onto Wright, the street just outside the block designated for the market, it felt eerily abandoned—and ten degrees colder, without the press of bodies surrounding them. Spring might have arrived in Ibyrnika, but the nights were still frigid, and would be for a few more weeks, at least.
Alderic rummaged around in one of his shopping bags and produced a little brown paper sack full of taffy.
“For me?” Lyssa asked when he held it out to her.
“Toshare,” he said as she popped one into her mouth. Lemon chiffon. Alderic, for his part, fussed for far too long over which flavor to choose—Lyssa was on her third piece before he’d decided on peppermint.
They walked side by side back to the memorial park. Brandy trotted dejectedly at their heels, sulking becausehedidn’t get any taffy. When they got to the end of the winding concrete path at the back wall, Lyssa took out her chalk.
“So,” Alderic said as she formed the first line, the word weighted in a way that she knew whatever he was about to say was important.
She paused in her Door-drawing and turned to face him. “So?”
