Page 191 of Skalterra By Nightmare
I recoiled at the title.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Call me lady.”
“I’m bound to the service of you and your family. To call you anything else would be improper.”
I was sitting in a torn collegiate hoodie and a ripped pencil skirt. My hair was knotted, and my eyelashes patchy. I’d been rejected by my biological father, tanked my school interview, and released an imprisoned Magician so powerful they called her a “god”, putting two separate realities at risk of collapse.
The title “Lady” was anything but proper.
“If you’re bound to my service, do you have to obey me?”
“Yes, my Lady.” He emphasized the title just to annoy me.
“Then I demand you call me anything except that.”
His shoulders heaved.
“Such as?”
“Anything you like. Just not ‘Lady’.”
“Ever-enduring pain in my ass, then.”
Heat rose in my face, and I brought the water skein back to my lips.
“It’s a bit of a mouthful,” I said between tentative sips. He fell silent again, dutifully watching the hall outside my room. I studied his back, wondering if the man in front of me could really be the friend who had comforted me on a paddleboard and held me as I cried over my father. “Look at me.”
He ignored me, and I set the water skein down.
“You have to obey.”
He pivoted slowly, turning his bright orange gaze on me. His pale skin was still bruised around one of his eyes, and a cut on his chin had been bandaged.
For the first time, after a month of fighting in this world and finding comfort in each other’s friendship in the next, we took each other in with our real faces.
I tried to find Liam in his, but it was harder up close with his dark hair and black sclera that looked like the eyes of a monster.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
“It’s going to take more than a new hair color for me to forget you, Blue.”
“I don’t mean my Nightmare.”
He blinked slowly, and I thought he’d fallen silent again, but then he lifted a hand and unfurled his fingers.
Liam’s chicken glowed a dull blue in the dark of the room.
“What is this?” He kept a serious frown fixed to his face, but the tiniest hint of panic laced his tone and shook his voice.
“It’s a chicken.”
“I know.” He broke off, still staring at the little statue. “I’ve never been to Keldori.”
“But you remember it.”
