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There had been a pocket of time, shadowed and pure, like a hidden spring beneath the ground, in which it had been simple. The elegance of a finely worded curse; the lace-work pattern of nail marks she left against Halfrek’s thighs; the curl of satisfaction as men shrieked in the night.
They watched cities burn together and only sometimes were the cause. They’d led men to their deaths by lantern light, casting thin, menacing shadows against the bark of forest trees, used the flame to burn the bodies when they were through. They were myth, legend. Towns spun stories of them without name, of sirens and furies and sharp-faced demons that turned to pale beauties at first light. But then the world began to grow small, men’s minds scientific, and they began to not believe in the vengeance of beings beyond nature.
They delighted in proving them wrong.
They were hard and their teeth glinted like blades in the night and they had almost forgotten how to be delicate and easy, except in those private moments where Halfrek’s lips were soft and pink around her tinkling laugh, the cords of her corset falling undone, with the blood washed off and her hair loose and her eyes sparkling with a private joke, the slight edge of competition smoothed from her voice. She’d play with Anya’s pendant, the serpentine stone catching the candlelight, and murmur about what people deserved.
(Later, as she watched Halfrek burn for a human conscience she never asked for, she is reminded of the flames from Ternopil and wonders what anyone really deserves.)