believed I was ready to know, a crease of annoyance still written between your

Ever gallant, ever pacing the stage of your own design, saying your right words.

cold,” you murmured, still chasing my kiss. Your lips traced the curve of my chin, the slope of my throat. I sat awkwardly in the bath as you retrieved a heavy housecoat and held it up for me, turning your face away behind the cloth. I stood and let you wrap me up, squeeze the water from my hair inch by precious inch. We left the bloodied

the dying, daubing my forehead with a cool washcloth, washing me and dressing me, and trimming my hair every night

You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night’s fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of debts being wiped clean.

swallowing hard. “Thank you. And thank you for handing those monsters over to me.” “I would deliver a dozen men a day to feed your appetite if you asked me. I would round up every man, woman, or child who ever said a harsh word to you and trot them out for you on their hands and knees on a short leash.” “Thank you,” I said, quiet as a prayer. “Do

I had never experienced the kind of agony that leaves the mind coiled and poised to lash out at the first opportunity. I would carry that viper inside me for years, letting it out intermittently to rip the wicked to pieces. But that day, I had not yet befriended the serpent within. It seemed to me a strange interloper, a frightening thing,

detail, running your fingernail down the page as you noted them. I drifted closer, sensing a subtle shift in your mood. A tide had turned. You had come to some sort of conclusion. “Who in the village knows that you’re here?” you asked, not

In Persia, they chart the course of blood through the body, operate on the livers of live men, perform feats of engineering that seem like alchemy to the untrained eye. The Greeks and Romans knew sciences that have been utterly lost to time.”