Page 14 of The Shape of Monsters
“Lyric?”
The groggy name is more of a groan, a question, and he turns back a piece at a time. Iriset’s eyes are closed, her nose wrinkled in a cute wince, and her arm stretched across the bed as if reaching for a companion only recently gone.
He says nothing.
Slowly, she smiles a little bit and pats the empty bed. Drawing both of her hands to her face, she rubs at her eyes and smooshes her cheeks, then yawns wide enough her jaw cracks.
“Ugh,” she says, and that’s when she opens her eyes.
The sun slanting through the balcony door catches the vivid glass-brown of them, and she blinks several times, looking up at the honeycomb ceiling in confusion.
Lyric walks to the inset table and crouches to gather the jug of water and a cup. He sits on the edge of the bed, causing it to sway. “Here.”
As he pours water, he feels her stare. “Can you sit up?” He hears the distance in his voice, like he’s talking to a stranger. He’s never known anyone as well as her, and yet. Has he ever known her at all?
Iriset makes all sorts of uncomfortable faces as she leans up and the blankets fall into her lap. Her hair spills everywhere and she shoves it back. Lyric puts the cup in her hand and resists the urge to press his fist against his sternum where the marriage knot feels like it’s strangling itself.
She drinks and holds the cup out for more.
Lyric shakes his head, taking it. “You’ve been asleep for two days and should go slowly.”
In the corner of his eye he sees her lick her lips, then glance all around. “What happened? I remember…” She shivers, hunching over herself. “Ugh, what’s wrong with the forces in here? It feels so prickly.”
Iriset tries to get up toward the balcony and Lyric goes swiftly around to the other side of the bed to catch her elbow as her knees give out. She falls against him, clinging to his forearms, her hair soft on his chin and jaw. She smells like the sugar sage bath soap. For a moment, she leans into his chest, her forehead plunks into his neck.
Suddenly she goes rigid and pushes away from him, one hand scrambling to grab at her ribs. Lyric releases her left arm but holds on as she twitches and sways, dragging up the long tunic he put her in. It bunches under her arm, and her dexterous fingers explore the ribs around the tight cap of the array. Beneath it is a faded smear of new skin that can’t even be called a scar. Her shoulders heave with startled gasps, her fingers dig in, puckering skin.
“Breathe,” Lyric says, and her head snaps up, her wide-eyed stare tinged wild.
“Iriset,” he commands quietly. “Breathe.” He pries her hand away from her ribs and sets it over his chest to demonstrate. She struggles, shaky for three rounds. He can see flecks of topaz and smoky quartz in her eyes and he remembers doing this twice with her: once in the Color Can Be Loud Garden, once in Singix’s private chambers when he thought Iriset was dead. Lyric lets go.
Hugging herself, Iriset says, “I remember the Moon-Eater’s Temple, the numen—where is it? What happened? Where are we? Why do the forces feel so wrong?”
Lyric doesn’t answer that question, because he doesn’t know. Though he feels it, too. “We’re in the Moon-Eater’s fortress,” he says.
Iriset screws her face up.
He nudges her toward the balcony and follows her as she carefully steps out. Her eyes are drawn to the nearest tower with its eye-searing orange flowering vines, the ones that grow in tangles. And he watches her follow the course of three birds that fly more like butterflies, drifting on a current of breeze. A water feature shoots a perfect arc of water and she startles. Then with a little laugh she grasps the railing and leans out, over the expansive rock and water gardens and undulating trees that are green and blue like the ocean is said to be.
Lyric reaches over and gently puts his first two fingers under herchin, tilting it up and south toward the hazy crescent moon that is not where it’s supposed to be. Tagging along behind the sun.
He feels the moment she sees it. She rocks back against him, fingers grasping back at his hips as her heel steps on his toe.
“Oh red moon,” she murmurs.
“Wrong moon,” he says, meaning it to be distant but it snaps out with a sharp edge of contained fury.
Iriset shakes her head, his anger flowing around her as if it never existed. She’s in her own head, and Lyric recognizes that expression: the calculations she’s making, the random pieces of information she draws together to create an accurate pattern. “The moon doesn’t move,” she finally says.
“Now it does.”
“Now,” she repeats, staring at that moon. Lyric’s gaze follows. He still catches himself staring at the moon more often than not.
“You mean ‘when,’” she says. “The moon moved before the Holy Syr unraveled the Moon-Eater, you told me that.” She turns around to look at him, open and verging on delight. “And you said we’re in the Moon-Eater’s fortress. We’re centuries ago?” Iriset laughs, high and uncertain. “That’s what happened?”
“The numen said you did it.”
Stunned, Iriset pulls her head back, her eyes flicking side to side as she thinks. “That isn’t what I was trying to do.”
