Page 67 of Phoenix Falling
“That got your attention, huh?” My voice was my own, full of gravel as if I’d smoked a pack a day for the past fifty years. I never let anyone hear that sound. Here and now, though, I was fully Rissa, more fully than I’d been since I’d been changed so long ago. Even the scars that savaged my neck were on full display. “This is me,” I told him, then pointed at my scars. “This is what your kind made me. Is this what you wanted to see? Is it, Sun?”
His gaze was fixated on my neck.
“Ugly, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
The voice wasn’t Sun’s; the reassurance hadn’t come from him. That voice was female. I tipped my head to look around his wide shoulders and caught sight of a blonde warrior at the door to the room. She was staring at me as if she’d seen a ghost.
“It is,” I assured her. Waved a hand at Sun. “Look at his face; it’ll tell you the truth.”
“We all bear scars,” she said as she moved into the room and shut the door.
“You need to leave, Lyris,” Sun said.
Without blinking, she barged toward us. “Get fucked, my king.”
It took a moment for her words to process through my brain; then I gasped. “King?”
The one I knew as Hollywood stepped forward warningly. To guard the woman or Sun, I wasn’t sure. “Lyris.”
She snapped a glare at him. “I have purview over the women, Demetri.” She jerked back to focus on Sun. “I should’ve been called immediately.”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Sun snarled.
“It sure as hell does. She’s an Archai female; that makes her my concern.”
An Archai female? No, no I was not.
Sun didn’t give me time to protest. “She’smylo—”
He choked himself off. What had he been about to say? Love? Lover? But no, he wouldn’t want to admit to either of those.
Just to throw fuel on the fire—because that’s who I was—I volunteered, “Fuck buddy?”
“He’s not the only one,” Cale muttered from across the room.
It was my turn to sneer then. Anything to ignore the beast directly in front of me, heaving with rage. “You wish.”
Cale frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Cale,” the hooded one warned.
“Grim,” Cale said back. The name definitely fit.
I couldn’t hold back a satisfied grin. “It means my gift works in mysterious ways, jackass,” refusing to admit to any more than that. I wasn’t about to tell them I could make them imagine doing anything with me, seeing me do anything. They’d probably kill me on the spot.
“Spill it, Rissa,” Grim said.
“Risk. My name is Risk,” I told the room. That was the story I was choosing, here and now, and I refused to admit to another one.
“You are Archai, aren’t you?” the woman, Lyris, asked.
I shrugged. The truth was, I still didn’t know what I was. “I definitely don’t turn into an animal.” I could admit that much.
Sun jerked back. “You know we’re shape-shifters?”
Again with the shrug. “You guys aren’t as good at hiding things as you seem to think. You or the other side.” I didn’t tell him Arik had bitten me, so I’d figured they were vampires until recently.
