Page 34 of Creatures that Breathe

She switches her attention to my knuckles, clearing blood from cuts. Red blood. Dark and flat. Human blood.

“And you’re not free?” I ask.

“How badly are you hurt?” she asks as she pushes back my sleeves, exposing my tattoos. Sidestepping the question.

I smother a wince when she dabs my torn wrist. “Pain is temporary.”

She snorts. “I’d heard rumors about your skills in battle, but you were ...” She leans in, bringing honeysuckle and rain. “They don’t do you justice.”

“I’m not used to such an enraptured audience.” Not usually trying to show off.

“Would you have hit him, if he didn’t step on me?”

“No.” I would’ve let him tire out like a puppy mid zoomies.

“Thank you,” she says, back to wiping gravel from my cuts. “For defending me. Not that I needed it. I had a plan to make him regret involving me.”

“Another glorious plan.” I picture her in the ring, holding my gun between a pinched thumb and pointer, wobbly voice threatening to shoot. “Let me in on it.”

Mischief dances in her smile. “I can’t just give that information away. I might need to put thumb tacks in your shoes someday.”

“Punch me instead.” I flip my hand to grip hers, fold her fingers around the stained napkin. “Like this.”

She laughs, light and breathless. “No. Gods no. That’s the worst plan since ... not the birth of Gaia, but certainly the invention of marriage.”

“It’s absolutely not.”

“Yes it is,” she insists. “You haven’t thought it through at all.”

“I haven’t?” I’m smiling, leaning forward, desperate for her sharp return.

“No!” She’s irate, pale eyes inches from mine. “How would it work precisely? Do I summon a step stool at the same place I acquire a spine and when my knuckles shatter against your steel jaw, do I muffle the scream of pain or is crying at you integral to your ultimate humiliation?”

She makes an adorable know it all. “Find a spine?” I ask.

“Metaphorically. Holding an actual spine seems ...” She shudders.

“Unhygienic?”

“Bony.”

My mouth twitches. “If you pay extra.”

She studies me like she’s not sure whether I’m a threat or a joke, head tilted, wisps of navy hair falling across her forehead.

“I’m not a violent creature,” she says. “But a sweaty foot touched my hand. There should be a special forest of punishment for that in Tartarus.”

“And you claim to have no spine.”

Her cheeks flush. “Technically—”

“Technically,” I cut in. “You stole the watch of Lev Mikhailov’s dead father off his wrist. You extorted me, you entered my name into the cutthroat of the Ballasts.” I catch her chin in one hand, lifting her face to mine. “You offered yourself to me. And you did it all in a bright pink coat and blue hair and no one stopped you. Perhaps the Gods have left you alone, Leni, because you’re ten steps ahead of them.”

The flush spreads over her cheeks and down her throat, whether from embarrassment of being caught or some other emotion, I can’t tell.

“Whose name did you enter in the Ballasts?“ I ask, skipping over the obvious why did you enter my name, for genuine curiosity.

It couldn’t be as vague as the Blackguard, but there wasn’t enough time for her to gather my name and then provide it to the showrunner before I arrived. Unless she’s working with Hermes.

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