Abruptly Cyrene was sitting down, head in her hands. “I just wanted… I mean, is it too much to ask…? That there might be people who think that just because I take up a bow and fight, and don’t just sit in a kitchen with my hair bundled up, that I might not actually be a fucking whore as a sideline? That I have to be giving it away?”

“Yeah, well, exactly, whatever,” said Lief as noncommittally as possible.

“I mean…” Cyrene drained a mug, and Nth guessed it was by no means her first of the evening. “It’s not as if I don’t… but does it have to make me someone’s exclusive possession if I…?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not the one who slept with Harathes that time.”

Abruptly she was standing again, albeit somewhat unsteadily. “Is that…? You’re asking to take your teeth home in a bag, you little weasel!”

“Enough, enough.” Lief raised his hands, and then realized that Nth had stood as well, and was looming protectively at his shoulder. Nth realized the fact at about the same time.

“Oh crap,” the thief got out, and then Cyrene had a knife out, locking eyes with her own reflection in the the round, dark lenses of Nth’s spectacles.

“And you, you monster, what are you looking at?” Cyrene demanded.

“Now wait, hold it, hold it.” Lief tried to step between them, and she took him by the shoulder and threw him onto the floor without any obvious effort. Nth twitched forward, and then stopped, held by invisible bands of iron.

Cyrene stared at him. “You can’t, can you?” she murmured. The knife wove in her hand. “Look at you, monster in human shape, eater of men, and you’re completely helpless. I could kill you. I could just kill you.”

4: The Light Stuff

“I COULD JUST KILL YOU.” And Cyrene’s gaze was becoming more and more intense, almost hungry.

It was true. Nth was fighting his own alien body, but the restrictions that Penthos had set over him were unbreakable.

“Kneel down,” Cyrene told him.

His knees folded. Everyone in the taproom was staring, but the woman was too angry and too drunk to care.

“Lower, head to the floor,” she told him. “If I kill you, you won’t even see it coming, not with any of your eyes. How about that, creature?”

He stared at the stone flags of the taproom floor, seeing them in minute detail, waiting.

“This is unworthy,” came Lief’s quiet voice. “You think Dion would like this, if she saw it?”

“She wouldn’t care.”

“I seriously hope that’s not true. Cyrene, look at yourself.”

There was a scrape of wood as she sat down again. Nth remained bowed, feeling abruptly ill as all the beer he had consumed turned into something malevolent within him.