Was I truly scared of the men?
My actions in the bedroom told me the answer was no, with the notable exception of Zan. Him, I was scared shitless of. The rest of them, not so much. During my initial sprint from the bathroom, I’d been more terrified at finding the house occupied at all. The size of Kirin and Bennett was intimidating, while Abraxas had the snake half, which initially freaked me out. Waylon had a bad reputation behind his race, but I should know better than to judge someone by their ancestry by now. Ixaris knew mages were the most judgmental of all magical beings. We judged ourselves, each other, and certainly the other races who inhabited the fringes of the five regions. All other races avoided us for that reason.
After speaking to the men of the house, they all seemed… nice.
My uncle’s warning aside, there was no reason to fear them. Clearly my body didn’t feel purely fear, now that we’d come out on the other side of fight-or-flight mode. There was also arousal. Not just for Kirin. For Bennett, too. Waylon.
Thoughts drifting back to Abraxas, I remembered the all-consuming black of his eyes and the fork of his tongue. Never thought I could be attracted to a snake, but here we were, because if I hadn’t been in a full panic I would have thought he was sexy.
Solstice was going to laugh at me when I told her. Then, she’d ask if they had any friends and where she could find a monster of her own.
As I was wrestling a thick book down from the shelves, my quill pen slipped from my fingers and fell to the ground. Instinctively grabbing for it, I immediately realized my mistake. The sleek pen clattered onto the ground, faster than I reached for it, but the attempt had thrown my balance off. My body fell backwards off the ladder, attempts to grab onto the shelving to save myself unsuccessful.
In my split second moment of being suspended in the air, I did the math on my likelihood of surviving my clumsiness this time. I was five metres from the ground. If I landed on the floor, I would be sore and nursing broken bones, but alive. But if I landed on a table, or impaled on a lamp… this room wasn’t cluttered like Felix’s office, but it wasn’t empty. I may well end up dead, and I wouldn’t look down to know my fate before it happened.
Falling felt like it took forever, but when I hit, it didn’t hurt. What I’d hit was actually quite soft. And surrounding me.
Eyes flying open, I blinked up at a concerned Abraxas. “I tasted your terror. Are all humans this stupid, to fall from high places?”
I was cradled in his lower half, soft, scaled skin making a bed around me. The end of his tail draped over my lap, tucking me in. Even knowing he had enhanced senses, hearing he’d ‘tasted’ my fear was odd. “It’s only me. That’s stupid, I mean. I’m very clumsy. How did you get here fast enough to save me, if you only knew when I started to fall?”
He hadn’t been in the library with me. Even in my flow state, I would have noticed.
He pointed upward, his fingers slim and long, ending in sharp nails. “I have a nest.”
Sure enough, there was a hole in the upper part of the far wall, perfectly round and in his size. Abraxas was particularly fond of nests and unconventional pathways. I wasn’t complaining, considering he’d saved my life. “I didn’t know you were here. Sorry if I was disturbing you.”
I should slide out from his embrace. He was dangerous, the snake half especially, and if he switched our position by a mere few centimetres, he could squeeze me to death. However, I didn’t want to. And I had an excellent excuse — I didn’t know how I was supposed to disentangle myself without him doing it for me. “You’re much quieter than any of my housemates,” he said. “And they never apologize for disturbing me. I have not met many humans, but you don’t seem all bad.”
“I’m not technically a human,” I corrected. “I’m a witch.”
He shrugged. The tip of his tail stroked over my arm, so soft the touch felt ticklish. “Waylon says your magic is barely enough for you to be considered a witch.”
“But I am one.”
“Do you not like humans? Is that why you’re so adamantly opposed to being one?”
I had no answer to the question. Our society didn’t like humans. They viewed them as weak and useless for anything other than simple labour. Though we lived among them, I hadn’t met many because magic neighbourhoods in Asteria were separated from human ones. We each had our own libraries, businesses, and schools. But I’d never had a bad experience with a human. I’d just been trained from birth not to like them, similar to how I’d been told to avoid the other races who resided outside our cities.
“My magic shouldn’t be weak enough for me to pass as a human,” I said after a pause. “I try to forget about being the disgrace of the family and the weakest link, but everyone here is insistent on reminding me.”
The answer was deeper than I should have gone with someone I didn’t trust. But what was he going to do with the information? Anyone with a moderate level of knowledge on social cues could tell that was how I felt, if they peppered me with comments.
Abraxas reached out a hand, moving at a snail’s pace. I watched the way his arm muscles flexed, sleek and toned. With him moving so slowly, I didn’t flinch back when he placed a hand on my head. Then he patted me. Once, twice, and a third time, before pulling his hand back. “There, there. I am also the disgrace of my family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I do not need sympathy. My family is all dead, so they can no longer tell me how disgraceful I am.”
“How did they die?”
“They tried to kill me, so I killed them first.”
What was I supposed to say to that? Suspecting the residents of being killers was one thing. Knowing made me uncomfortable. “Why did they try to kill you?” I asked.
He shrugged, readjusting his tail so I was cocooned more fully within his scales. They were so comfortable, my eyes threatened to shut and catch up on some sleep. “They did not like that I wanted to go outside.”
I waited for him to elaborate. “Outside… where?”
