Listen to me, you filthy pirate. Croe laughed harder. She was enjoying this a little too much – there were tears on her cheeks, and her abdomen burned from the convulsions. The way Lorraine was looking at her, like she was an incomprehensible force of chaos defying all reason, made Croe realize where her daughter may have gotten her manipulative streak. She’d always assumed it was Mallos. The realization drew a fresh howl of laughter out of her. What other revelations would she get to enjoy, on this formerly boring Monday afternoon?
Ooooh, threats! Croe loved threats, and orders, and the insinuation that someone else had more control over her life than she did.
”Win?” she giggled, wiping the moisture from the corners of her eyes. Her laughter ebbed, as much from exhaustion as anything, and for a moment the echo of it clung to her voice. And then it was gone. Her eyes went a flat black, hard as glass; her voiced turned to smoke and iron. ”Win what? He chose me. He loves me. Whatever game you decided we’re playing, I already won.” Her mouth split into a manic, cruel grin, the kind that betrayed an inner viciousness that would have given a lesser fairy pause. Lorraine wanted to talk to the pirate? Croe would give her the pirate. She leaned forward suddenly, bracing her elbows on her knees, her face so close to the goddess’s she could count her perfect black eyelashes. It was the kind of move that had gotten her stabbed in the past. Mallos had not reinforced that lesson in a way that stuck.
But Croe was much stronger, now. She was a master of Sentio, and the only one in this room that was in control.
”Shut the fuck up,” she commanded, magic pitching her voice lower and making it echo strangely around them. Lorraine shut up. Her expression was priceless. Much as Croe loved one of them, these Originals had a glaring problem in common: they all thought they could not be matched. But their numbers were depleted, immortal ones had survived where the “gods” had perished, new gods were being born. Croe was not immortal, but she had amassed enough power to defend herself against the likes of this bitch. Her head cocked slightly as she held the blond in the grip of hypnosis; when she spoke, her voice was businesslike. ”You don’t get to threaten me. You don’t get to show up uninvited in my life, my relationship, my office and parade around like you own the place. You don’t own me. You don’t scare me. You’re predictable, so you think everyone else is predictable. But you have no idea what I am capable of, Sebauzat.” Darkness seeped from her eyes, from her hands, in stark counterpoint to Lorraine’s cold light. It didn’t twine and coil, but pulsed like a swarm, seethed like cauldron foam. Croe would not be herded into Lorraine’s narrative like a sheep to be sheared. Croe was not a sheep, or a housewife, or even a pirate – she was fire, and shadow, and dagger. As if to emphasize the point, metal crept up and down her wrists, encasing them like armor, turning her fingernails into blades. ”My relationship with Mallos is just beginning. I’m not going anywhere. And no matter what you do, you can’t touch what we have. So I suggest you walk away, before you truly embarrass yourself.”
Her magic severed, then, or perhaps Lorraine finally broke free. Croe leaned back in her chair, expecting a furious tirade, or an attempted stabbing, or both. But for a moment, the goddess just stood, her skin so white she seemed carved from alabaster; a perfect facsimile of beauty. Hatred burned in her eyes like stars. “We’ll see,” she hissed into the dead silence between them. Then the office walls imploded, and Lorraine vanished with a pop.
Fortunately for Croe, she’d turned almost entirely to metal by that point. She shielded her vulnerable eyes with one plated arm. Most of the shards bounced harmlessly off of her, pinging like rain on a tin roof; her metal receded slowly, following the whorls of her tattoos. She brushed off the bits that stuck to her clothes and hair, picked out the ones that had embedded in her cheeks. She rose, stretched, observed that the computer she’d been working on had not fared quite so well, its screen crazed with little cracks and blotches of random color. She walked through what was once a wall and was now a doorway, her steps crunching over the glittering glass. A few analysts were standing in the hall, their mouths hanging open as they beheld the carnage, and then Alliannah was there, foremost among them. She did not say “what the fuck,” but her face did. The receptionist must have called her when the goddess of drama arrived.
”She started it,” Croe shrugged, her expression falling neatly back into a neutral mask. A little blood trickled over her jaw. ”I’ll write up a full report, once the computer’s fixed.”
The staff didn’t know what to make of their mistress’ expression, as she strode through the foyer. It was impossible to tell what she was feeling – there was a faint smile on her face, but the expression of her eyes was inscrutable. There was blood on her face, but the wounds had healed before her arrival. There were holes in her clothes. Something was stuck in the tread of her boot; it screeched on the marble with every step, leaving a dashed line of scratches that traced her path to the hall.
Needless to say, they gave her a wide berth. Nobody interrupted her on her way to Mallos’ office.
Croe entered wordlessly, closing and locking the door behind her. Mallos was sat at his desk, partly obscured by piles of paperwork – mostly in the outbox, she noticed with surprise. She deftly unlaced her boots and toed them off before padding quietly across the soft carpet, a little more sashay in her hips than was typical.
”I’m on unpaid leave,” she announced cheerfully, as she rounded the desk and straddled him, placing herself exactly in the way of whatever he’d been working on. ”Boss says I was very naughty.” She hooked an arm around his neck, raked his lower lip with her teeth, ground her hips roughly against him. ”So while I’m being so naughty, and you’re being so good,” she growled against his mouth, beginning to unbutton his shirt with her free hand, ”why don’t we do something…reckless.”
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