The Cursed Deal ✓

Chapter 54

Faine twiddled the toothpick hanging from the corner of her mouth and propped her boots onto the table, crossing one leg over the other. Across that table—what he considered a desk—sat Eliphas with his furred hand clutching tightly onto a pen as he waited for Faine to speak. The paper underneath the side of his fist was already crinkled after he grabbed onto the corners to control his anger of having to do this as his assigned task for the day.

More than anything, she enjoyed watching him squirm.

Sinwolves, like gadigators and minotaur, were known for being larger than life itself. They didn't fit into small chairs and couldn't wiggle their way against a table without smooshing their entire bodies. It brought great humor to Faine that the chair he sat in, high-backed and rimmed with dragon wings, was barely visible. His shoulders scrunched together, hunched high against his back. Faine had watched him sit down minutes ago. Wiggling his way down to fit in the chair wasn't exactly the easiest thing to keep quiet about.

But while she was busy making up these jokes in her head, Eliphas had them already planned out. Something about her horns, another about her purple skin and dark lips, the strange fit of her golden-brown eyes against dark lashes and silver hair that transcended into black at the tips. Faine made out the list in her head but enjoyed the mocking conversation playing out within her skull.

Eliphas wasn't as...sickly to look at compared to the many other sinwolves she came across on journeys to and from one end of the kingdom to the other. Steelmaw Woods was always packed with them. Whether they came close or not, they were always watching. The terror happened when she spotted them through the trees, watching her, their bright eyes glowing against the dark branches of clustered pine.

Like the common trend sinwolves carried, Eliphas was no different. If Faine didn't know him to be supercilious and arrogant, she'd think his azure eyes were breathtakingly beautiful. The truth hidden underneath them was enough to make her look at anyone differently, whether the sinwolf or another creature ugly underneath skin.

Felirams had soft, silky skin while their opposites, the sinwolves, prided themselves in their scars and uneven tones of fur. The ears on the side of his head were not human, they appeared like that of a traditional wolf; pointed and slathered in their respective coats. Anything human about him was not such, the fur, the hunched posture, the molding of his snout—halfway human and halfway wolf—set their kind apart.

Rabid and foul beasts. Faine could hardly stand to look at him without snarling or outright vomiting.

In meetings like these, their two personalities clashed. Hard. Eliphas didn't want to ask the questions, Faine didn't desire to answer them, and the person left out of the loop and sitting silently, like a child, happened to be Ametrine. The most mature of them all, apparently. Faine had ample time to do this for hours on end, stare at him and wait for him to speak. Patience was her number one virtue.

Pissing people off was her second.

Eliphas, finally, huffed through his nostrils. "If you speak, the faster I can go back to doing something that actually matters," he droned.

"Celestia put you up to this believing you were the right man for the job." Faine pointed her toothpick at him and he grimaced. "After all, our fearless leader is too busy at the moment to deal with such fickle matters."

"Are you angered because she picked me and not you?" He narrowed his thin eyes.

Faine snorted. "You're wrong if you expect me to do everything. Someone like you, a beast with a mind and the ability to read and write, must ask the questions." She paused a moment and pursed her lips. "You possess the ability to read and write, don't you? Or did the notorious members of Steelmaw skip that lesson and go straight for teaching you how to rip off heads?"