“So he is.” Her voice was smoke and velvet, a detail often overlooked in tales of her that focused instead on her misdeeds, her savagery. Perhaps it was because her accompanying smile was like bared teeth, her gaze sharp enough to be surgical. Then she laughed. This, too, offered no comfort – though it was relaxed, breathy…ironic, even. He knew who she was, and she knew that he knew, and this knowledge would not protect him.
What did protect him: he didn’t flinch.
It’s said that predators can smell fear. Croe couldn’t smell it, per se – not without intimate closeness, and acute terror to make a man more pungent – but she could sense it. This one, though…she couldn’t quite get a read on him. Not without employing magic, and where was the fun in that? She studied him, relying only on her powers of observation, resisting the pull of hypnosis and possession and the long list of other gifts that felt more like desires.
He was acting, but how much?
She cocked her head, birdlike, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Your fate depends on how willing you are to share,” she informed him casually. It could have meant anything – information, a cut of the drop – but her eyes settled on the cigarette in his hand, an eyebrow lifting. She did not say why she wanted it, wondered if he would care. Maybe he thought it was merely a test.
It was, of course more complicated than that. Cigarettes reminded her of someone.
“My friends know better than to run from me,” she answered at last, taking a few idle steps in his direction. A kind of truce: her hands remained constrained by her crossed arms, her dagger well out of reach. “Not that it matters. That one’s gone, for now, and I’m not working.”
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