Page 12 of The Shape of Monsters
The numen.
It leans against the arched door, pink pupils glittering meanly. The room is dark; Lyric didn’t notice the change of light, caught in his slowly spiraling thoughts.
He stands, blocking the numen’s view of Iriset. He doesn’t know what to say to it, how to treat it. It wants him dead, and Lyric can’t blame it.
It wears a shape very like the one it wore Lyric’s whole life: masculine-forward, with long silvery hair—the same shade as Aharté’s moon, Lyric finally realizes. The numen’s raw river-fish pink features are long and sharp, perhaps a little too long, a little too sharp. It wears a silky fuchsia sleeveless robe over a black skirt and slippers. Black pearls hangfrom its ears and black rings adorn its fingers. There are delicate black combs in its hair, sweeping the silver-pink strands back from the temples and into loops. The numen looks like a weird but pampered bride.
“What do you want?” Lyric asks in mirané. It’s a relief to let the rhythms and syllables come.
The numen scoffs. “I am here for Iriset mé Isidor.”
It moves, and Lyric intercepts, grabbing its arm in a twist, shoving it away from the bed.
Laughing, it spins back. “Want to fight, little Seal? I can’t promise not to eat you.”
“Stay away from Iriset,” he says, refusing to back down.
“You are the one who nearly killed her on that altar, not I. I showed her what she’s capable of.”
Lyric doesn’t protest that her death wasn’t his desire. It’s not the numen’s business. He says, “The Moon-Eater called you Never. Is that your name?”
“A name. You can call me numen, since you never bothered before now.”
The truth is only as harsh as Lyric already knew it to be, so he nods. “You didn’t bring us here?”
The numen grins, displaying rows of thin alliraptor teeth in its human-shaped mouth. “She did,” it hisses.
Lyric glances at Iriset at the same time the numen does. “How?”
Its black diamond-shard eyes glow in the dim bedroom, fixed upon Iriset.
Moving his body to block even the gaze, Lyric asks, “What is a sunderer?”
“Let us wait until yourwifewakes, unless you are desperate to talk to me after all this time.” The numen stalks forward and Lyric holds his ground, lifting his chin to stare at those disquieting eyes. It is taller than him, and Lyric has no weapon.
The numen smiles, suddenly a middle-aged mirané auntie, orange silk cloth mask wrapped through wavy hair, palace-orange robes and slippers, harmless, familiar, gentle. “Better?”
Lyric shakes his head.
It rolls its eyes and puts fists on its round hips. “You can’t stop me.”
“Answer my questions.”
“Iriset mé Isidor is a sunderer, and she brought us here with a dart in her lung.”
Lyric guesses, “You don’t know how she did it, either.”
“She wasdying,” the numen sneers. “It was instinct.” Then it waits, looking softer, its mirané auntie’s face pulled into simple worry.
With a quiet grunt Lyric steps out of the way, but hovers as the numen perches beside Iriset and brushes hair back from her temple. Silver-pink crawls up its fingertips like they’re dipped in paint wherever it touches her, then the color swallows away.
It looks at Lyric with disdainful mirané-brown eyes, exactly like Lyric’s own. Like his mother’s. “She is healed, but the sundering must have exhausted her. There are signs of fraying throughout her design.”
“Fraying?” Lyric doesn’t like the panicked rising force skipping up his spine.
The numen shakes its head. “Rest and the ambient forces in this palace will be enough. She knits and soothes herself back together. Quicker than I expected.”
“The marriage knot,” Lyric says without thinking.
