Page 8 of The Mask Falling

He waited until I had finished my next mouthful before he said, “I would vomit.”

A surprised laugh burst out of me. “You’re joking.”

“I think we can agree that humor is not my forte.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You have a firm handle onunintentionalhumor.” A gust of wind blew my hair into my eyes. “So you’d throw up if you tried to eat. But you can drink.”

“Nothing thicker than broth. I cannot digest solid food.”

“Do you not have a stomach?”

“I do not know which organs I possess in your terms. Rephaim have never consented to physical examination by humans. Nashira prefers to keep our anatomy a well-guarded secret.”

“Right. Otherwise we might be able to design weapons that can harm you.”

“Precisely.”

I had so much to learn about the Rephaim. Now I had Warden to myself, I meant to caulk the gaps in my knowledge.

“Well,” I said, “I’m sorry you’ll never know the joy of cake. But more for me, I suppose.”

“Indeed.”

I polished off the rest of my slice. Comfortably full, I lay back on the rug to stargaze, watching my breath rise like steam from a kettle.

It felt like eons since my nineteenth birthday. A year ago, Nick had baked me a strawberry cake and served it for breakfast, and Jaxon had afforded me nineteen minutes off to eat it (“What could be a better gift than a day of hard work for your mime-lord, darling?”). Later, Nick had given me an exquisite chatelaine he had wrangled at the black market and a stack of records for my collection, and we had gone out with Eliza for a slap-up supper.

We had been happy then, in the corner of the world we had scratched out for ourselves. I had been able to close my eyes to the real Scion and pick a living from the bones it tossed me.

Warden lay on the rug beside me and folded his arms under his head. It was such a relaxed, human posture, I had to look again.

“Thank you for this,” I said to him. “And for everything you’ve done since we arrived. I know I haven’t been much company.”

“You are not here to entertain me.”

One had to wonder what he really thought about birthdays. To an immortal, it must seem masochistic, to celebrate each step of my journey to the grave. Still, it was sweet of him to play along.

A row of three stars flickered right above the safe house. “Rephaim are named after stars. Their old names, I mean,” I murmured. “Why is that?”

“Most humans cannot speak our true names. Since your kind have long associated stars with the divine, Nashira decreed that we would use their names here.”

“Did you all choose your own?”

“After consulting the æther,” Warden said. “On the subject of my name, I never did invite you to call me by it.”

“Arcturus?”

“Yes. Warden is a title—a title that was stripped from me, at that,” he said. “We have known each other for almost a year. If you wish, you are welcome to call me Arcturus.”

He had a point. I should have stopped calling him Warden months ago, but to me, it had become a name. Or perhaps I had used it to draw a line between us—a tissue of formality that kept me from growing too close to him. Whatever the reason, it was long past time.

“I’d like that,” I said. “Arcturus.”

Another siren in the distance. Somewhere in the night, Nashira Sargas was considering her next move.

I had always had a healthy fear of her power and her reach. I had always known that, in the end, she was the one we would have to defeat to win this war. Yet before my imprisonment, Nashira had never kept me up at night. There had always been a reassuring sense of distance.

No longer. I had seen the fire in her eyes when I escaped her clutches for the second time. After everything I had done to defy her, I had also refused to break. I had refused to be silent. I had refused to die. She would never give up her pursuit.

---