L.

[Stand alone companion book to SoVL. Can be read before SoVL, but will spoil some plot points of SoVL, and vice versa.]

"Kill them," Faya whispered to me, always. "Kill them."

But we are both lovers, Faya and I. Aren't we? Above all. Though him the smarter, who does his killing by training little hornets to do it for him. Hard headed little bastards with hard hearts and cold eyes. Steel-willed soldiers with strong hands, all in a pretty sniveling row. Spit on it. Spit on it all.

I too have teeth, and long fingers. I too have a heart, and if I lack pragmatism, my arms are open. Vulnerable perhaps, but what is living? Come, Wasp, sting me upon my breast. Come, Nicolas, and whisper to me with your knife if it speaks to you.

Nothing worries me. I succumb gladly. I will be nothing what they tell me to be. I smile when Nicky says, "I have you now, what do you say?"

I say nothing because I have let this happen, and now it is mine. There is nowhere for him to hide. I will see him with unseeing eyes. I will know him by what he does at the shift in power. He will know that I am no longer afraid.

And so he fears me. And there is no longer any guessing.

"I do not know you," Nicky says, sniffing and wiping his face with his free hand, the other holds the knife. A streak of blood across his face. "Where has Laurent gone? Let me find him inside."

"I will freely give you what you want if you give me what I want."

"What do you want, Stranger?" he asks me. "I do not like it when you wear this face. Be tender to me. I will not trade with you. I am no instrument." My little same. My little shadow self.

"You do not want tenderness."

"I do, I promise," he says.

It is a lie. But he wants to please me, and it is a beginning.

-ch2.7

(note: If you can do better than my cover mock-up, by all means.)