Undone

“Right,” she finally said. “So, you’re here to take your little lost sheep back where she belongs?”

He looked revolted. “Cassiel? We do not want her back. Do as you wish with her.”

I had never been an enemy of Bordan, but at that moment, I felt rage slowly building. “I will not be given,” I said. “I am not property.”

Bordan didn’t even accord me the respect of having heard my words. “She is no longer one of us. No longer Dji

“She’s dying,” Joa

“It’s her choice.” Bordan’s eyes flickered for a moment into the blue of a gas flame. “She knows how to gain Ashan’s favor. If she does the thing he asks of her, she will be welcome among us again.”

“Oh yeah?” Joa

Bordan only smiled.

Joa

“No,” I said. My throat felt tight and dry. “No, I do not want to do it.”

“Settles that.” She turned her attention back to the other Dji

Bordan looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or kill her. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t know Cassiel at all. She is not some stray cat that will befriend you if you feed her.”

“Well, true, she’s more like a tiger. But I already trust her one hell of a lot more than I ever will Ashan. Because I do know him, bucko.”

“This is a senseless waste of time,” Bordan said. The fire had faded out of his eyes, and he looked a little taken aback. Clearly, he hadn’t been among humans much, either—or if he had, he hadn’t been prepared for the experience of Joa

“Bullshit,” Joa

“What?” Bordan looked completely confused now.

Her tone chilled. “Get out of my house,” she said. “Now. And tell Ashan any future visitors should make appointments with my social secretary. Oh, wait—don’t have one. So tell him to just start holding his breath until I get back to him.”

Bordan’s skin took on a hard glitter, like the ice on the tub of ice cream, and his eyes had an obsidian glitter sharp enough to cut. “You mock me.”

“Well, you may not have a sense of humor, but don’t let anybody tell you you’re not perceptive.” He didn’t seem to know how to take that response. Joa

I looked at her, still speechless. She was different to my eyes in that moment—strong, confident, and utterly sure of herself. Not a Dji

Bordan might have been her superior in raw power, but only if he was allowed to strike. And I could see, from the way he bowed his head, he was far from free to do so. “As you wish,” he said. “Keep the traitor. But if you do, know the risk you take. We may not be as forgiving in the future.”

“We’ll see,” Joa

I could have told her, but it was a thing I strove to suppress. A shame I couldn’t bear to let surface, except in brief, painful surges.

Bordan couldn’t answer because he wouldn’t know. It was not a thing that Ashan would ever allow to be common knowledge, not to the other Dji

“If this is your decision,” Bordan said, “you may live with it. And, in time, regret it.”

Without another look in my direction, Bordan vanished, and took my last lingering hope with him. I would not be accepted back among the Old Dji

I could never be truly human, either.

In the lingering silence after, Joa

I had never tasted wine before, and the strong smell of it nauseated me. I wet my lips with it and put it aside, revolted. Everything seemed wrong suddenly. My skin felt tight around my body, my borrowed clothes rough and abrasive as sandpaper. The light was too harsh, the room cluttered and full of sharp edges. I reached blindly for a chair and dropped into it, covering my eyes. I was shaking, and there was a pressure building inside of me, as if I might somehow inexplicably burst.

Instead, I felt wetness bleed from my eyes and flow down my cheeks. I wiped at it in confusion and saw tears on my pale hands.

“No,” I said. “No, I am not human. I do not cry like some helpless . . . animal!”

But I continued to sob, undone before the burning power of my own despair, and it made me angrier than ever. When Joa

She dealt me a sharp, stinging blow across the face. I cried out from the surge of pain, clapped my hand to my burning cheek, and stared at her in astonishment. My nose was ru

“Stop acting like an ass,” she said. “You’re alive. You’re not lost, and you’re not dying. Ashan won’t take you back—well, boohoo. I’ve met the guy, and frankly I consider that a bonus. If you want to survive, you’re, going to need us. You need the Wardens. Stop being an idiot.”

Was I being an idiot? I felt like one, but only because I lacked the power to hit back. I glared at her, willing her to feel my anger. She did not seem impressed, but then, I’d heard the stories. . . . She had faced down Ashan and won. She had defeated Demons.

My feeble anger did not precisely terrify her.

“I don’t need your Wardens,” I said flatly. “I don’t need humans. I will never need them.”

“Guess what, Cupcake. You not only need Wardens—you might as well get used to the concept of needing humans, too, because you are one,” Joa

Joa

“What?”

“Blow out through your nose. C’mon, you’re a bad-ass Dji

I blew, feeling humiliated and filthy and desperately angry about it. Then I got another tissue and blew my nose again, by myself, and felt some of the stinging in my eyes subside.

Joa

“Ice cream’s melting,” she said. “Bring the wine.”

I suspected later that she deliberately failed to warn me about the effects of the alcohol.