“And how did you … obtain it? Did my little morsel steal it?” She draws a whiff of the air. “Smells stolen …”
“It is. I stole it from his sleepsuite when I was seventeen.”
Figured if he noticed, his hate toward me would feel at least a tiny bit justified.
He didn’t.
The trogg’s head snaps the other way, the motion so unnatural looking, I’m equally as repulsed as I am concerned for her safety. She sniffs again—long and hard—and I decide her lungs are somehow bigger than her willowy body suggests.
“This is richer, little morsel.” She waves the bangle at me, her face carving into the most terrifying smile I’ve ever seen. “Just.”
I grind my teeth together, surprised they don’t shatter. “You can also have the catch chain on the bangle. I don’t need that.”
I think.
Her chest shakes with a haunting shriek that slowly tapers off before she garnishes me with a gleeful stare. “Deal.”
A warm, prickly wave of relief washes over me.
She plucks the chain free before throwing me the bangle. I catch it, my three-legged chair toppling onto the ground without my weight keeping it vertical.
I toss the málmr at her, and she snags it by the string, dangles it from her wrist, then flicks the tiny chain into her mouth like a grain of sand. Shrill crunching ensues, and I picture teeth cracking. Her eyes widen so much I think they might all pop out of her head and pepper the pile of memory-excrement coiled on the ground by her nest.
She stops midchew, releasing another clamorous laugh. “Oh … you are a naughty little morsel, aren’t you?”
Ice snaps through my veins.
I clamp the bangle around my wrist. “Don’t remember using it. Just remember what it does.”
“Interesting,” she murmurs, followed by another jarring tip of her head while she chews.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
“Does my little morsel want to know its secrets?”
“Pass,” I say, watching her pull a thread from one of her right palms—so much brighter than any other draped across the cavern’s ceiling. “Definite pass.”
“Such pretty, pretty secrets,” she purrs, her words pinching my nerves.
Think it’s time I get the fuck out of here.
Shaking off the tension climbing my spine, I drag my chair back to the pile, passing her a dubious stare. “You’re not going to eat me on my way out, are you?”
Hard to say, but I think she frowns. “Course not, little morsel. I don’t eat those I strike bargains with. Only the ones I don’t.”
“And how many have you struck bargains with?”
Still dragging the bright thread from her palm, she rubs her chin with a spare hand, appearing to think long and hard. “Six,” she announces, lifting Pah’s málmr to her nose and drawing another deep sniff. “Including you.”
“Right.” I glance at the steadily growing pile of slurpy string glowing brighter than a Moonplume egg. “Lucky me.”
I give her a wave she doesn’t appear to notice, too transfixed on her task. Or maybe she does and she just doesn’t care?
Probably the latter.
I move around the piles of trash, arm heavy with the bangle I once won from a deeply troubled Mindweft who claimed she knew how to speak the language of Aether. That she’d studied the Book of Voyd in length and knew the secret to our insignificant existence.
She told me the bangle would serve me in two ways. That both would be painful but necessary.
Don’t remember the first, so can’t speak for that.
Probably won’t want to remember the second, either.
He came back.
He didn’t explain why he’d left, nor did I ask, nor admit how much I’d missed him.
Too much.
Like one of my ribs had been snapped free, leaving an ache right over my heart.
He had a fresh scar on his arm—the one he uses to strum. He was also wearing a necklace. A long braided piece of leather attached to a flat, circular pendant. A silver Moonplume and a reddish-black Sabersythe bound together, their jagged and sweeping bits fitting against each other.
From what I understand, only one Sabersythe has silver scales, and she lives in Gondragh. Nobody has been able to get close enough to climb on her back and attempt to tame her—and honestly, I hope they never do.
I ate my meal in silence, watching Kaan play his instrument with that pendant hanging proudly against his chest …
Wondering.
I wanted to touch it. Weigh it in my palm. Ask him where it came from. All things that are absolutely none of my business.