Taste a Thousand Deaths (Marionettes of Myth #3)

Chapter Two

Warmth percolated her system, easing the burden she'd carried for some time. When he disappeared for extended periods as he had in the past, Ave held her breath. She could only let it go when she saw him again, intact and okay.

She pointed at his chest, frowning. "You scared the living shit out of me, you turd."

He smoothed his wild black hair from the antique pearl of his face, but his hair wasn't wild in the caveman sense. It was more wild like it needed to be trimmed, like it was almost too long to be short, always in his eyes and always out of place. "What? But my entrances haven't changed in a hundred-thirty-four years, and—that's not what you meant, is it?"

"No." She swung open the cupboard and plucked another mug, then her feet carried her to the pantry to fish out a second teabag. "Where have you been? I thought something happened to you."

He resigned himself to stand in place, his towering body hunched and arms hovering with an itch to do something as he watched her steep the teas in both mugs. "Nothing happened...I just couldn't exactly—well," he lifted his head with the slightest sign of indignation, "you've been busy with other company."

"So this is my fault?" She twisted on him, eyebrows raised. "Because Ave has a guy over, that means she never wants to hear from Orion again, is that it?"

"No—that's—that's not it. That's not what I said." He cowered again, the way a cat reeled from a smack on the nose. An old scar on his neck caught the light, marred flesh that extended past his collar and along his shoulder as if a wild animal had tried to rip out his artery. He had told her about it once, a long time ago. "You're—Do you want me to show up with him around? You think he'd like that? Have you even tried to explain the mystical man who shows up in the middle of the night to feed your cats real cat food instead of that canned meat paste that people somehow think passes for food?"

As a matter of fact, she had tried to explain that.

And it had gone just as fantastically as he suspected.

She pressed her lips together and moved to the fridge. The cold air inside couldn't compete with the winter filtering in from the kitchen, but she was quick when she swiped the small quart of cream. It was one of the few indulgences she allowed herself, despite a mostly vegan upbringing. But even now, she dropped a generous helping into a mug that wasn't for her.

When she gave him the milky tea, she met his eyes. "Just don't turn this into another forty years of silence, okay?"

His brow furrowed, electric green eyes with their slit pupils taking a long inventory of her face before he accepted the gift. His hands practically dwarfed the mug. "I left you because you weren't alone anymore."

There was so much wrong with that, mostly because she had been alone. No matter how crowded her relationship with Yuuhi had been, she'd still been lonely.

But instead of dropping her gaze, she held onto his even tighter. "I could have a circus living with me, and I could have more friends than I'll ever know what to do with. That doesn't mean I wouldn't make room for Orion, too."

When his eyelids lowered, it was as if a sigh had left him, stealing away a few ounces of his tension. But the breath never did pass his lips, and the moment was short-lived when his gaze left her face for the floor.

Something toiled in his mind, some memory that left a bitter taste in his mouth. She could see the way his face tightened with the distant thoughts before he set the mug down on the counter and faced her.