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Things with names didn’t turn up cracked and ground against the rocky shoreline. Things with names survived. He would be a Thing with a name.
Power was sweeter than apples. It was cheaper than water, and sustained the soul twice as well.
Monster was the best, his favourite word. The first half was a kiss, the second a hiss.
That wasn’t all that was red: he’d been sprayed across the face by Johann’s blood in a clear, brilliant arc—ear to ear, like a carnival grin. Johann found something about that attractive: his blood marring that immaculate facade.
“Do not call me Doc,” Florian said, light toned. “I’m an accountant.” Johann grinned. “Right. So what’s the prognosis, sweetheart?”
“You’re a hiccup, or a flinch. Something that tripped and fell off the carriage, which continues on as if it’s forgotten you.
“What I found is that I was still hoping for a longer fall.”
I have seen the inside of Johann’s stomach. His guts are the colour of rhubarb custard.
I am taking the mathematical shape of you.” “Yeah, well, if that’s all you wanted, you just had to ask, honeydew. You don’t need to add three plus six to get me out of my clothes.”
Florian dipped his forefinger into the pool of blood in Johann’s palm and licked it, smiling with bloodstained teeth. “This city has some very hefty debts to settle.”
There was a metaphor in that, Johann thought, about a city consuming itself,
Johann had to clutch a hand to his throat to keep the flash of affection that rocked through him caged in his esophagus where it belonged. Oh, Florian was a pretty little thing. Too pretty, too aware of the length of his eyelashes and the feminine tilt of his jawline. No one would expect that boyish half smile, that nervous wringing of the wrist, to conceal a monster.
“What a perfect and unexpected gift for the child that never grew old.” He rapped a finger against Johann’s chest. “A toy that cannot be broken.”
the harbour was a womb, not a shroud.
I am Hallandrette’s favourite son and I will devour your bones as surely as she does when her unloved children are cast into the ocean.”
“Don’t pretend that your melodramatic ego isn’t flattered by the idea that I might exist to soothe your broken psyche.”
She wanted to comb the beach and look at aberrations. “No one practises looking at them,” she said, “and so they can’t see them when they walk among us.”
It was important to Mother to be beautiful.
Death is kind. It’s only life that holds suffering.
Annihilation is a fire that cleanses what it burns. For a corrupted world, apocalypse is the only hope for redemption.”
Unwise to dream of death in a world where someone has the power to make those dreams come true.”
Such a thing would not kill Johann, but it might be nice to stay that way for a while—until the spring came to melt the top layer of frost-glaze and flowers grew from Florian’s rib cage. A wedding, of sorts.
Is this it? Johann wondered. The longer fall I was looking for? To know that I was summoned up from the dark ether to do a monster’s deeds for Hallandrette’s truest son? And when our work is done, I will carry him to the bottom of the sea, where we both belong. Deep beneath the silt our bones will turn to salt.
“The Mage Hunter, right? You want me to—” Johann did his favourite knifey gesture.
“Why should I? It’s not as if you’re ever going to tell me no.”
“That these are eggs laid from the mouth of the goddess Hallandrette, that they awaken when filled with tragedy.” “They’re Elendhaven’s answer to death. No unjust passing goes unpunished here at the edge of the earth.”
He became used to them: to the smell and the bloat, to the rot and the strange colours a human being turned when there was no soul inside of them.
That cruel lady, the goddess Hallandrette. She had sent him the wrong gift.
