Page 50 of An Inheritance of Monsters

Socks? I had enough socks to clothe an army. Bits of shiny glass and rocks were piled in mountains that spilled over into each other.

I knew Juno particularly liked the rocks; I’d spent a long time selecting which marble to bring to her.

She took one step, then another, hundreds of dusty, discarded coins clinking under her bare feet. One hand reached out and she touched a tottering mountain of books.

I had many, many books. Notebooks, diaries, and journals.

And necklaces hanging on the wall, glimmering like stars. And rings, and cups, an old silver spoon, and other random things I had no names for, but they had meant something to someone, once.

But in the back of the cavern, arranged around my nest of collected blankets, I kept the most important treasures of all.

“This is my home,” I told her proudly, spreading my arms wide. “I have collected these things for many years.Are you impressed?”

Juno looked back at me, her mouth still slightly open. “I’m absolutely amazed. I had no idea people lost this much stuff under their beds.”

“Humans can be very careless,” I agreed.

My mate gazed at a stack of leatherbound books with ribbons sticking from their yellow pages, and started to walk towards it, but she did not yet understand.

She was mine; now she would be tended to like a proper mate.

“Come with me, my little one.” I picked her up again, carrying her past the treasures. She would have all the time in existence to explore them later. “You must be cared for.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, but despite the arch of her eyebrow, she wrapped her arms around me again.

I liked the feeling of her warmth against my neck and chest; she was like a little bird, cradled against me, as delicate as feathers.

The twinkling lights of my cavern faded as we traversed the tunnel system, and when I stepped out onto a beach of black sand, Juno gasped.

“What is it, my mate?”

She was craning her head around, looking up and down the beach. “I think… I’ve seen this spot before. When Zirin was taking me to the grotto. So that means that the layout of Duskwood Island itself must somehow align to this island in the Void.”

“Yes. They are imitations of each other.” I was pleased that my mate was smart. She had not been raised here, but she was quickly coming to understand the things the island women grew up with. “One cannot exist without the other.”

But I had barely finished speaking before she went as stiff as a board in my arms.

“Juno?”

She pointed at one of the idols that protected the island. “They’re here, too?”

I did not understand why her hand was trembling. I followed her gaze, focusing on the weathered, mossy idol that had been raised by the first human female to enter the Void.

“Yes?”

Juno’s lips had flattened into a thin line. I did not like this look on my mate’s face, not when she should be sated and pleased.

“Those are the only objects I have seen that exist inbothworlds.”

I shook my head, my ears flicking back in displeasure. I was failing to impress my mate with all my treasures and attention.

“I will clean you,” I told her. “You may look at the idol after I have done my duty to you.”

These were the right words.

Juno relaxed in my arms again, looking up at me with a crooked little smile on her full lips. “What do you mean by ‘your duty’? We humans don’t have mates. At least, not in the same way you do.”

A sigh tried to escape me and I held it back. It was not my Juno’s fault that she was ignorant.

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