Page 200 of Starside

I give him my best smile. “No. When I kill you, it will be with my blade.”

“I would expect nothing less, Aris,” he says, before uncorking the bottle with his teeth, then downing it.

I take a shaking breath. I still haven’t gotten used to it. Matching that ruinous voice with an equally ruinous face.

As beautiful and deadly as a blade. I feel like a fool watching it, like being mesmerized by the shine of a sword right before it stabs me through the heart.

“What?” he demands, eyes narrowing at my focus on him.

I swallow. “You look disgusting,” I say, hoping saying the words might make them true.

“Lovely words, Aris,” he drawls. He looks me up and down with a curl of distaste on his lips. “But that’s not what you were saying yesterday.”

My cheeks burn. He does remember, then. “Forget the vial,” I grumble. “Maybe I’ll just let you die.”

At that, he chuckles. I’m momentarily stunned by the sound, by the way his lips curve. I must be losing my mind. It must be a side effect of the poison that was in my body for just a few seconds.

I turn on my heel and leave, before he can see the blush spreading across my face.

In my room, I stare at myself in the mirror. Now that I’m clean, I can see more than I did before. I look … different. Still too thin. Cheekbones just a little too sharp. But there’s a hardness to my eyes. A fierce determination.

There are cuts down my cheeks. I wash them, then turn my attention to my hair. After my bath, I put it in my single braid, that I now unravel. There’s a brush. I take my time combing through it, and blink, a memory taking over my reflection.

My mom, brushing my hair.

“Why, Aris, are there so many tangles?” Her voice is playful, but I can see the worry in her eyes. I’m not supposed to leave the house. Playing outside, with my markings, is a risk.

“It was just for a moment,” I say. “We—we just played with the neighbor boy.”

My mom sighs. “You are not like other children.”

My lip trembles. “But I am. Only these make me different. And they—they don’t mean anything.”

My mother looks at me, and in her eyes, for the first time, I see fear. “Aris,” she says, and the way she says my name sounds like home. “They mean far more than I hope you’ll ever know.”

My hair snags, pulling me from the memory. Quickly, I braid my hair into a crown, the way my mother used to before bed. I haven’t done it in years. I’m surprised my fingers remember the movements, but they do. They do.

An attendant must have walked in without me noticing, because there’s a dress waiting on the bed. It has long sleeves and is long enough to touch the floor. I frown, wondering why I would need a dress to sleep in, before I touch the fabric.

It’s thin, and soft as a blanket.

It melts against my skin like a lullaby. In the drawers, I find a scarf, which I wrap around my neck, just in case another attendant decides to walk in without knocking. I crawl into the cloud of a bed, through the silky curtains. I lay in the center and tuck my sword in next to me.

I fall asleep wrapped around it, trying not to think of the poisoned demon in the barn.

I fail.

Late into the night, I’m still tossing and turning, thinking about the way he collapsed from the poison. The way he sucked it from my skin.

We hate each other. This is an arrangement.

So why am I crawling out of bed and opening the door? Why am I intent on checking to see if the medicine is working?

In the darkness, the castle is truly like a beast. I can almost hear it breathing. Whispering.

I run a hand along one of the halls as I move down it, and it’s almost like the silver in the stone is moving with me.

Through nothing short of a miracle, I find the kitchens. Mercifully, they’re empty. I put as much food as I can in a large napkin, then wander until I find the center staircase. It’s only then that I realize I’ve forgotten shoes.