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April 29 - May 1, 2023
The little serpent was so very lonely. She slithered right into those lovely, elegant fingers. She did not even see the claws.
“The human and the cripple,” he murmured. “The others should be trembling in pure fucking terror.”
He was on his knees, staring up at me. And that—the way he looked at me—was the first thing that felt real. Real, and raw, and… and confusing. Because he looked at me in sheer awe—like I was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Like I was a fucking goddess.
“You don’t think I see how hard you’ve worked to hold onto your humanity? You’re more human than I am, Raihn. You’ve kept every part of it that makes you value the things in this shitty world that no one else here does. You’ve kept the compassion. It doesn’t matter if your blood runs black now. That hasn’t changed you.”
Because now he looked at me like I was more than that—like I was human. Somehow, that meant more.
“I’ve lived through some injustices in the last couple of centuries. Seen some fucking travesties. But one of the biggest, Oraya, is that anyone taught you that you should become anything other than exactly what you are.”
“That wasn’t how I’d imagined making you come for the first time,”
STOP
“Fuck you,” I managed. “You wish I would.”
“I would beg,” he murmured. “For you, I would. You have fucking destroyed me, Oraya. Do you know that?”
“One night. I don’t plan on wasting any of it. I have a list, remember.”
When I first met Raihn, I thought we would never understand each other. But now, for the first time, I felt like someone was really seeing me—seeing the world as I did.
I hated him. And I loved him. And I couldn’t even try to deny how beautiful he was, with his life-marked face doused in the flickering light of our world falling to ash.
