Page 483 of Kingdoms of Night

“They must not have seen how scary normal men can get in comparison,” I mumbled sadly. “You’re not going to punish them, are you?”

“They are the reason you were in danger. I can’t let that slide.”

Guilt quivered low in my gut as I watched them pace close together, almost touching with each pass. “It wasn’t their fault. I was persistent.”

“What happens the next time you insist on what isn’t good for you?” In a gust of soft wind, he stood before me, outline a mass of flurrying edges, like brushstrokes of fresh ink sinking into the page. “What if I’m not there to catch you?”

It was too foreign to describe, having someone fear for my safety. My parents had always viewed me as more than capable of caring for myself and my sister, who in turn perceived me as far stronger than her by nature. But I wasn’t, I was only forced to hold myself in such a way to the point that I couldn’t do it anymore.

“Then I meet my end at my own fault.”

“And doom us all by leaving when you are needed the most,” he added, amplifying the guilt I felt. Except he didn’t express it in an angered or even chiding manner, it was almost lighthearted. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather fly than fall next time?”

Interest flared in me, spreading the rousing spark down from my head and to the rest of my worn-out body. “But I have no wings.”

Iltani slithered in, her scaly, serpentine body dragging past me with a gentle speed as she coiled behind her master. He petted the space between her horns. “You don’t, but she does.”

Hands over my mouth, I watched the wondrous creature with excitement. “I can ride her, like they do in the foreign tales back home?”

“Only after you are deemed healthy enough. Can’t have you falling off mid-air.”

“When can I expect to be cleared for flight?”

“Let’s give it until sundown.” Tamuz patted Iltani’s side and clucked his tongue at her, prompting her to shoot up with a flap of her wings and exit out a high window, catching the attention of those awaiting us.

“Just sundown?” I marveled at the ceilings, higher, but less decorative than before. The tops of doorways, hallways and markers of differing sections bore intricate works of plaster or even carving, textured bumps and floral abstract catching the daylight from the gaps above. “Shouldn’t it be afternoon by now?”

“Time here doesn’t flow as it does in your home. You’ll find that it takes days for night to fall.”

“Days?Then how do you chart a day here then?”

“By the turn of the Earth, and what side of it we see at given hours.” Hand on my back, he urged me forward towards the nervous-looking guard and maid. “Hopefully by then, we’ll have something close to an answer for my predicament.”

An answer to how I could not just love a being I couldn’t see, but express that crucial sentiment to him.

This was impossible. I might as well have been asked to sew up a gored man like a stuffed toy, treating his innards as stuffing.

At the top of a short flight, he helped me descend the steps. “Before I leave you, is there anything you need, something to remind you of home?”

A cursory consideration showed me nothing but the palace apartment I despised being held in, and the memories that rang off its walls. “Nothing worth retrieving or remembering it by. Why?”

“When I first left the Earth, I found myself longing for what I had left behind.”

There was something tender about how he expressed it, like he was reminiscing.

Oh, how I wished to see what expression he made at that moment. “You used to live there? What was that like?”

“A story for another time. Perhaps over dinner.”

Upon approach, they both bowed low enough for their noses to brush their toes.

“Suzianna, return your mistress to her quarters and do take care of her this time,” he ordered. “Baltasar, report to my quarters.”

Sharing a last, unsubtle look, Baltasar and Suzianna did as they were told, splitting to escort us each down opposing ends of the hall.

All the way back to my quarters, she apologized profusely, and I wanted to smack myself for putting her in such a position. “It wasn’t your fault at all.”

“I should have known better than to give you your tour so soon, especially because I was in your situation.” She bowed me into the room, buzzing with nervous energy. “If I’d just let Baltasar deny you, none of this would have happened.”

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