Page 110 of The Deer and the Dragon
I exhaled slowly, closing my eyes.
“Where’s Caliban?”
Azrames leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, smoke and ash the only scent in the car. “Hello to you, too, Marmar. Don’t worry; the Prince is just doing reconnaissance for exit points as a fox on the property. He’s pretty sure he can reverse-engineer their wards if he can figure them out from the exterior. I’m confident he’ll be able to sniff them out. How’d it go in there?”
I swallowed, voice trembling slightly as I said, “Caliban’s going to be really mad at me.”
Az’s voice went from friendly to strained in a second. “I have a feeling that I am, too. What did you do?”
I started shaking before I could even spit it out. Each breath came out more jagged than the one before as fear pricked through me. “I fucked up, Az. I fucked up.”
“Tell me.”
I closed my eyes as I explained what had happened and what I’d done.
“Fuck,” he swore, flinching away from the information with closed eyes. He didn’t reopen them as he said, “You’re hers.”
“No,” I insisted. “It wasn’t a bond; it was just lab work and a book agreement—”
“You’re hers, Marlow,” he repeated.
“No,” I emphasized, agitated that he wasn’t listening. “I’m just going to write a book. That’s all! I have to write a book on mythology anyway! It’s my career! Sowhatif it’s about her? It doesn’t matter. Maybe I would have done book four on them anyway; who’s to say? And bloodwork is standard practice. It doesn’t mean anything. It—”
“You’re hers.”
Thrice. It took three repetitions for me to truly hear him. I fell silent for the next few minutes, staring at the gray assassin in the back of the car. I hadn’t even started the car. Instead, we let the quiet press down on us until the passenger door opened. I jumped. Caliban slid into the seat and immediately to me, scooping me against him as much as he was able between the two front seats. He released me and frowned.
He cradled my face with one hand again, but I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t. His voice stayed low. “I was coming back with a good report on the back staircase, but something tells me you do not have good news, Love.”
From the back seat, Azrames said, “What are the two ways to break a terraformed seal?”
Caliban frowned. He looked at Az, confused at the change in conversation. “Either someone who could freely come and go would have to destroy the seal’s integrity, or it would have to be done by the seal’s maker…one way or another.”
Azrames nodded slowly before saying, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we’re down to one option.”
It was worry, not anger, that filled Caliban’s voice as he his eyes fixed on me. “What did you do?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, face falling into my hands to cover my shame. The car crunched in on me, suffocating me, enveloping me in pain and darkness as I hid from Caliban, disappearing into my own self-loathing.
From the back seat, Azrames said, “I hope you’re ready to kill a goddess.”
I handed my keys to the valet driver of the downtown hotel I’d spotted while readying myself to meet the goddess. When a bell boy inquired about my bags, I informed him that I traveled light. The concierge had me checked in and sent to my room within a few short minutes. If I only had a night left of freedom, I sure as shit wasn’t spending it among the mold and dried cum stains of the Bellfield Inn. If wehadn’t arrived in town on foot, without a phone, and in the middle of the night and stopped, I wouldn’t have allowed us to settle for the first bed-bug-infested site we’d found. Still, I supposed it was a good thing we had. Thanks to the human roach’s encounter with Azrames, the clerk’s reign of terror had come to an end.
Tonight, I would sleep on clean, soft sheets.
Tonight, I would order bacon cheeseburgers with extra fries through room service and drink four bottles of beer from the well-stocked mini fridge.
Tonight, I would draw a bubble bath and drift off in the water while resting against someone who was very invested in keeping me alive. At least, that was the plan. I wished the others could see what I saw reflected back in the glossy, golden elevator banks as I approached in my designer clothes flanked on either side by gorgeous, otherworldly men. I was having a celebrity moment, and the pedestrians were missing out.
I punched the button to summon an elevator and sighed when the glow of the red device informed me that the elevator was on the twelfth floor. I missed my apartment and the always-ready modes of transportation.
“Well, lovebirds,” Az said, breaking the quiet. He looked at a human couple patiently waiting for another elevator, and I knew he was advising me not to respond. “I’d love to give you two some alone time, but as much as I know you want time together, I suspect you also want to survive the next forty-eight hours.”
Caliban slipped his arm around my back, resting his hand on my hip. He rubbed a thumb on my hip bone while he said, “Planning comes first.” Then to me, he said, “We have nothing but time after that.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he squeezed my hip to remind me that it wasn’t in my best interest to talk to the air. I narrowed my eyes, disagreeing. I was quite confident that talking to the air was exactly the right move to get the humancouple to select a different elevator. The moment the elevator dinged, I decided they couldn’t tell me what to do.
“I can’t wait to stand on the roof and talk to the birds,” I said to myself, “and sing them all of my favorite songs!” I saw the couple beside me halt as I pressed the button to close the door. “In fact, I think I’ll practice those songs now.Doe, a deer, a female deer…”
