Page 6 of To Clutch a Razor
Or maybe as if she doesn’t trust him around them. And really, can he blame her, after all the things he’s done—not just to her people, but toher family,specifically?
“I didn’t mean you should take me,” he clarifies. “I meant you should go alone. Get some… junk food.”
It’s hard for him to get used to, thinking of other people’s fear as a meal. But he can tell when he gets a good one. He feels sated, almost giddy. The more fear he eats, the more fearless he becomes. Reckless, like he could climb a tallbuilding or leap off a bridge. He was alarmed by this at first, but it’s gotten easier to control.
The first few days, he went searching for it. There are some places where people are always afraid. The first place he went was the hospital waiting room, where he sat steeped in anxiety for hours. The next day, he went to a sports bar, where some kind of important fight was on every television set. There, he found a blend of anxiety, apprehension, eagerness. All shades of fear.
So there’s been no shortage of food, even though he hasn’t been to the Crow.
“I’m being silly,” Ala says.
“You’re not being silly,” Dymitr says. “You don’t want to tell a family of zmoras that you’re harboring a Knight. There’s nothing silly about that.”
Ala stabs at her soup with her spoon, even though it’s an ineffectual tool for stabbing. She scowls at him. “You’re not a Knight. And you saved my life. I just need some time to—”
Some time to believe I’ve really changed,he supplies, and the thought twists his insides. And really, should she believe it? He’s done very little to earn her trust, and a great deal to break it.
Dymitr touches her wrist, lightly. She tenses at the contact, and he can’t tell if it’s because a part of her is still afraid of him, or if she just doesn’t like to be touched. Either way, he withdraws his hand.
“Just because I helped you with that curse doesn’t meanyou owe me something,” he says. “And it doesn’t mean everything’s all better now.”
He says it too darkly, thinking about his sword, fixed to Baba Jaga’s wall.
Ala stares down at her soup. She brings a spoonful of the broth up to her mouth, and blows on it. Then she asks, without looking at him: “What did she say?”
She doesn’t need to specify whosheis. There’s only oneshethat Ala would be reluctant to name: Baba Jaga.
“The price of my sword is thirty-three deaths. One for each vertebra.” And he chokes a little as he adds: “Beginning with my grandmother.”
Ala lets the soup drip back into the bowl. She doesn’t look surprised. The look in her eyes is unreadable. “I thought it might be something like that.”
“And I spoke to an old contact about what will happen to me if I don’t pay that price,” he says. “It’s… bad.”
“Death?”
“Madness.”
They’re both quiet for a while. She knows better than anyone what it is to inch closer and closer to losing yourself, but he doesn’t want to bring it up—doesn’t want to suggest that it’s the same thing.
They start eating in silence. Ala has the furrowed brow she gets when she’s thinking something through. And Dymitr, well. He’s used to eating when he feels terrible. After every mission. Before every mission. And eventually… between every mission, too. He hasn’t feltease at the dinner table since he was a child. Since before he split his soul.
“My parents didn’t act like parents,” he says, when the silence has gone on too long for him to bear. “They preferred to be… working. Away from each other, and away from us. So my grandmother raised me instead.” He can’t bring himself to look at Ala. “She was the first person to tell me she loved me.”
Ala reaches out and puts her hands on top of his. He only realizes then that he’s been clenching his hands together so hard he’s lost the feeling in his fingers.
“I know she deserves to die,” he says. “But I would rather give my own life than be the one to do it. I would rather lose my mind.”
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
She coaxes his hands away from each other, and presses them flat to the table. Then she picks up their bowls and carries them to the sink.
“We’ll think of something,” she says. “We’re not giving up yet. Not even close.”
He doesn’t reply.
3A NEW HUNT
Lidia Kostka, matriarch of the Kostka strzygas, traces the edge of her glass of whiskey with her fingertip. Assembled around her are her favorites of the Kostka cousins—which is to say, the ones Nikodem Kostka is most wary of. Their owl eyes shine at him from every direction, some yellow, some black, and some, like his own, burnt orange, like the edge of a flame. At the slightest hint of a threat from him, they could all change into their hidden forms, taking on beaks and talons and feathery wings.
