A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,55
smooth, in a way that made her forehead taut as a canvas and seemed to pull on her eyes. It made her severe, and exquisite, and stunning at once.
“Neither are you yours, my dear,” she drawled, her accent crisp as apples and hollow as wind.
The anchor of rubble baubled along behind her, as significant as a neglected kite on a string. It was child's play in her wake.
“The shadows will eat the sun from your skin. The vampires will drain the wretched glow of blood from it. By your standards, you will be beautiful. Fair as any queen. Have you no thanks?”
Horror and bafflement clenched my brow. I could no sooner decipher her estranged riddles than put a tower back together from the rubble. She was a lunatic – but she was one with a distracting sense of power. I could not deny my own eyes. Something bigger was afoot here.
“You will taste your own folly, here, ripe where its sunken into the earth,” the golden woman went on. “When the water comes through, you will taste the bitterness of your own sorry reflection, what the mirror has always seen in you – the spit it would like to throw in your face every time it's forced to look at you. You will taste the terrible sweet tang of all you could have tasted your entire life, when it was attainable. You will taste the sweetness of the things you denied, and then they will turn sour on your tongue. You will taste–” And here, she grabbed for me, an iron fist around my forearm that was a shackle by itself, and her words melted faster than snowflakes on a stove.
Her eyes went to her hold, as if she felt something she had not expected in my bony, strong appendage.
And the coinciding thought that was floating like a wayward survivor on the doused tide of my mind at that moment: I have tasted it...
I did not know where the thought had washed in from, nor where the correlating ache of sadness hailed from, but as her attack of words stopped so did my resulting sentiments, and she and I were both left in a strange stalemate of uncertainty. Both had felt something.
It just seemed mine had been more fleeting, and hers more on the convicting side – for where I had let the feeling go as it saw fit, she was evidently still puzzling over hers.
She had taken it decidedly more personally.
Was she looking at the same thing I had felt?
I didn't care. My thoughts had reverted to my current state of affairs. I did not strain against her hold, for she was a beast in human form when it came to her bony clasp. She could crush me like the leaves at our feet, into a handful of crumblies. Instead, I scowled at her face, defiant against whatever it was about me that intrigued her.
But she was not interested in my defiance. Her face, halfway between fascinated and indifferent as ice, maintained its direction a moment longer before turning thoughtfully to something behind me.
The bridge. As if it were relevant in our exchange. Almost as if it was speaking to her.
I could only be thankful the shackle remained idle at her side. I could not guess what she was thinking.
“You have...” she started in bemusement, but didn't finish. But perhaps that was all that she meant.
A moment later, she released me, and sat upon a slab of rubble I had not noticed before. An epiphany seemed lodged in her mind, playing tricks around her head. It was suddenly like I wasn't there at all. Something about the bridge had overruled my importance.
I have... It echoed in my head, a humble trickle of agreement. But I rubbed my arm where she had clutched me, insecure.
“Tell me,” she prompted suddenly, looking at me. “Am I beautiful?”
It seemed such an unorthodox question given the circumstances, but then again the circumstances themselves were a puzzle to be reckoned with.
I swallowed, for my throat was dusty and sweaty at once. “Most assuredly.”
“They all say that.” She seemed un-impressed.
What did she want, for me to go into raving detail? To flatter her until she declared she'd had enough?
“Devastatingly so?” she pressed. “Enough to kill a man?”
I struggled, uncertain as to what she was searching for, wanting to say the right thing. “If he were so ready to die, perhaps.”