"May I come in?" Caius asks, the doorframe pressing patterns into his spine.
"Only if you answer a question of mine," Athenodora says, swiping stray elf-locks from her eyes. Her hands are dusty and darting, filmed with the remains of the carnage she caused weeks ago, but her smile is moonlight and some semblance of order is being restored.
"The lady is playing the role of the sphinx on the road," he notes before glancing at the armful of colourful fabric she carries, wrinkled and bleeding feathers. "Cushions notwithstanding."
Athenodora's curved fingers and equally crooked grin are the only invitation he needs.
"What was it that you wished to ask?" he wonders, choosing a corner that is not swept with scrolls and cobwebs, over-turned candles and scattered silk.
"Why did you do this to me? How did you choose me amongst the thousands of mortals you have seen before?" she asks, sitting. He sinks beside her, until their knees touch like those of children sharing secrets.
"I doubt that you will like my reasons," Caius says, a taunt slashed into his sickle smile.
"Try me." Athenodora cannot help rising to a spoken challenge, his or otherwise. It is a quiet, delicate hubris.
"You were a beautiful mortal—cold and pale and—," he stumbles, seeking the words to describe a girl of thorns and horns, painted in drowning colours. "From the first, I wanted you for prey, to toy with and kill before dawn."
She considers the insinuation of her mortality, an end hardly and clumsily escaped. "And, to think, I was expecting some grand revelation," she tells him, her own grin turned teasing. "Really, Caius, you barely evade the edges of dullness."
"Perhaps," he concedes. "Nonetheless, I watched you for a while. Coaxing virgins into the shadows is not as simple as you would imagine."
Athenodora's laugh is liquid. "I never contemplated the task, to tell the truth. Charm seems to be a talent of mine."
He wavers for a moment, warding away an unpleasantly sentimental confession: if the Fates had inversed his tale with hers, he would have gladly followed her into the black and died flush against her flesh, his throat raw from bloody kisses.
"I have interrupted," she murmurs. "My apologies. Please continue this fascinating recitation of the time you nearly ate me."
He bites away a smile.
"I cannot pretend my observation of you was thorough," he admits, a quick gesture to hair and skin the shade of shattered bone indicating that he looks too strange to slip unnoticed amongst humans. "But even I could see you were deceptively sharp beneath your silence and sweetness. Too watchful. A little too brutal when it came to achieving your ends and utterly convinced of your own cleverness." Caius will confess that Athenodora hid her nature well, but the blemishes blossomed in unguarded moments.v
"If you are to be believed, the darkness I possessed ran parallel to yours," she says, subdued. "And I was not quite so flawed."
"Of course not," he agrees, his tone touched with playful pride. "The potential, however, was there."
Athenodora's fingers knit around her knees, and pewter lashes form twin moons upon her cheekbones. "Because of a child's misdeeds, you decided that I would be a suitable immortal? A lover worthy of pursuit? That is hardly fair."
"Some—and they are few and scattered—simply should not be human. They chafe at the confines of mortality and favour the shadows, where the edges of things aren't so clear and the darkness seeps through." Once again, he fears revealing too much of himself, the wordless knowledge of fissures and faults that follows him, unflinching. "Because that description suits you, I had hoped that you would be a peerless immortal."
"Why the past tense?" she wonders, impish.
"One does not hope for something he has already been granted. Too similar to avarice for my tastes."
Athenodora has, apparently, already reduced him to sticky affection and the raw, newborn nature of the sentiment lends him recklessness. He slips forward and catches her chin between roughened fingers. Soft is the first word that touches his mind, an odd, useless description that falls like feathers.
Any clinging vestiges of gentleness melt and become steam between them when their mouths collide. Athenodora tastes of the cold, leaving hoarfrost's burn on his tongue, and Caius' teeth mark her lips with shapes like tumbling ice. There is nothing lovely about the embrace, save for the stripped grace of symmetry.
"Let me be clear," she whispers, far too close. "I am not your wife—" her nails find his spine, "—your mate—" as pale palms brush the striations of his shoulders, "—or your lover." Certain that his attention is hers, Athenodora tears slim hands down his spine, rendering stung etchings that will not scar. "I am simply a girl foolish enough to want a monster."
Caius, his eyes like sacrificial obsidian, speaks only what lives in his mind.
"I would expect no less from you."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter turned out longer than I expected. Who knew Caius and Athenodora could be so chatty? Also, I apologize for the lateness of this update; for the first time I can lay the blame squarely on Fanfiction . net and its technical difficulties, instead of my own laziness.
As always, thank you to those who read, reviewed and favourited the previous chapter :)