Page 28 of Mischief Maker
“We still ought to get rid of it,” she says, eyeing the box warily. “Anyway, I have a surprise to celebrate!”
She practically runs to the cellar to retrieve her prize. When she returns, she’s carrying two big water skins. I watch with curiosity, my damned tail flicking wildly in anticipation. She pours the liquid in the skin into a cup, and I’m overtaken by the marvelous scent of wine.
Oh, and it is sweet, as sweet as my girl’s cunt. My mouth is watering by the time she hands me the cup.
“You’re quiet,” she says, appearing a little nervous. “I thought you liked wine?”
“I don’t like wine,” I tell her, taking it from her hand like it is a fragile baby rabbit. “I love it.”
I drain the cup in a few quick gulps, relishing the way the wine slides down my tongue and into my belly, where it begins warming me from the inside out.
Clearly pleased by my reaction, Faela pours a cup of her own and sips it slowly and pointedly. Right. Wine is for enjoying at a more reasonable speed. But the taste reminds me of a time long past, when I enjoyed the company of other immortals and half-immortals, and we had great, wondrous orgies in the hall of the gods.
Faela and I sit outside that night, lying in the lush green grass with her legs sprawled across mine. We each take a sip of wine now and then, and there’s a pleasant, buzzing haze descending on me.
“Kireth?” she asks, and I realize neither of us has spoken in a while. I wonder what she’s thinking about.
“Mmhmm?” I could lie in this spot, having wine with my sweet girl, until the end of time.
“Do you know why that curse was here?” she asks, and sits up a little. “I’ve always wondered what you did when you left and came back with the potion.”
Oh. That. If there was anything I’d rather less think about.
I’m not sure how much to tell her. Outright lying feels wrong—not to my good Faela. But there are many undignified points in the story on my part. Ultimately, what happened here is my fault, isn’t it?
The death of her mother. The struggle and the strife on the farm.
That’s an ugly thought, to know I am to blame for all this. What would my sweet girl do if she learned the truth? She would be devastated. She might even dismiss me and send me back to my temple.
I can’t have that.
“I went and saw my mother,” I confess. I slide closer to her, bringing her head onto my chest so she’s using me as a pillow and I can play with her hair while I drink more wine.
Faela tilts her chin up to look at me. “Your mother? Who is that?”
“The goddess Lucia. Well, ‘mother’ is the best approximation of our relationship.” I snort. She was really a terrible mother in that sense of the word.
“Wait, the goddess? She gave birth to you?”
Again I laugh. Talking with mortals about the affairs of gods has always amused me because they are so certain that their experience is universal.
“She made me,” I explain, and go on to tell her how Lucia carved me from stone fully formed and breathed life into my lungs.
“So you’ve always been this way?” Faela asks.
It depends on whether she means in body or in mind. Certainly nothing has changed on the outside, but I feel as if the interior Kireth I am now is nowhere near the one I was only a few months ago. I have discovered a whole new plane of existence here, separate from either the mortal or the immortal one.
Instead, I just nod. “Always.”
“Hmm,” she says, and returns to lying back against me. “So Lucia decided to help us?”
“She recognized the curse when I described it and gave me the recipe.”
“That was very kind of her,” Faela says, and there’s a little twinge in her voice like she senses there are some words missing. “I didn’t realize that gods were so selfless.”
“We are mother and son,” I say by way of explanation. “More wine?” I am eager to change the subject.
Faela hands me her cup without a word and falls back on the grass to look up at the stars as I fetch us refills. We consume more and more of the delicious nectar until we are rolled up together and giggling, and I’m kissing her face all over. She wails with protest as she laughs, trying to escape.
