Page 40 of Reflections of Silence

“You mope loudly, my friend,” Dolion murmured, dangling his line as the dusk turned to full night and light lit a few ofthe swamp houses buried deep within the bayou’s depths. “Loud enough to damage my chances of a meal.”

“You should eat something real, for a change.” I turned my back to him, and the river. Perhaps one of his pet alligators would take a leg off and leave me to bleed out for an eternity stuffed beneath a log. The ignominious end I deserved.

“And boring,” Dolion commented. “She hasn’t left you yet.”

“Because you are the perfect courtesan,” I snapped, turning back to face him in full. “I love? What the fuck sort of wizardry do you call that?”

My gargoyle snapped his line and leaned his head back, letting one leg dangle in the water, his flesh changing to stone on command.

I envied him the control over his nature, the display more than anything I currently had.

“It is a simple truth. I love, or I don’t exist at all. You know how a stone birth works,” he said, his tone tinged with impatience for the first time. “This is not a conversation we need to have again, my friend.”

Regret swamped me. “You’re right. It’s not.”

Dolion’s attempt to turn entirely to stone on me halted mid-progress. “Did you just apologize to me, Sebastian?”

I offered him the ghost of a smile, a little of my earlier pain easing. “The damage she’s already done to me.”

My smile was returned. “To us both.”

His line jiggled. I shifted back, knowing he wanted no interruption to his nightly fun, but kept an eye on him, lest the evening didn’t quite go the way he expected.

A single bubble marred the surface around his line, and less than a breath later the water exploded around his stone form as the alligator launched itself at the man it saw sitting on the riverbank.

What it didn’t expect was the blade in Dolion’s stone fist to gut it, neck to groin along its pale flesh as it rose from the water, nor the man’s plaintive voice as he curled thick arms around its ridged back, while its lifeforce spilled on the earth where he had sat a moment before.

“A little help? This will feed the servants for a full week.”

“More, if they ration as they should.”

“It’s not like you are short of a penny.”

“Still counting in a coin you were never born to, I see.”

Our banter continued as I helped Dolion drag the beast from the waters, glistening intestines trailing its demise. His deft hands made short work of the meat while I skinned the behemoth in a single pull.

“Do you want me to save you anything?” Dolion eyed the night’s catch with a professional gaze, albeit a hungry one.

My gut clenched on nothingness. “This sort of fare doesn’t appeal to me.”

His yellow eyes rose to meet mine. “Ah. But there is a sort that will, back in the house,” he murmured.

“Perhaps.” I shrugged off the need to sprint back to see her, wrap my body around hers.

Not that she’d crave me the way she should. Or rather that she would, but her feelings weren’t her own. My chest bore down on an empty cavity at the thought of holding her, kissing her sweet lips turned up to mine, the way she let me take from her…all false.

She’d be up soon, if I knew her adjusted nightly routine. Seeking me, but I wouldn’t be there tonight. And she needed to learn that, too. I had…other work. “I need to see her.” I nodded in the direction of the lights beyond the rippling waters, and the remains of the impressive carcass.

Dolion snorted. “As you will. Make sure I get a belt, this time.”

I smiled and wrapped the skin into a bundled, hefting it beneath my arm as I pushed through the under growth away from the house.

Dolion’s voice gave me pause.

“What do I say if she asks after you?”

I mulled it over for a few steps. “Tell her she is her own person.” I turned back, a pathetic excuse on my lips, but Dolion was already gone. My lips turned up. He’d tell her whatever story he saw fit, something sappy and as equally pathetic asI love, no doubt.

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