Page 2 of Horns & Heart
Chapter2
“Did the beast scare you?”he repeated, much slower this time.
“W-what?”
He was still looking at me, all over.All over.
He stopped trying to skin me with his gaze alone and turned a little—not so much that he was looking away from me, but far enough to block the exit with his bulk, almost like he knew I’d try to run…if there’d been anywhere to run to.
“The monster.”He pointed with his thumb.His hands were remarkably human looking.“Did it scare you?”
I swallowed, but my throat was still dry.Like, really, really dry.“It was going to eat me.”
“Yes.You would have been easy pickings.”The pupils of his cat eyes had widened and now almost eclipsed the dark indigo irises.“You’ll be safer now, with me.You won’t have to be scared.Would you like that?”
“I… No!I don’t even know you, and you’re…you’re…blue all over!”
That wasn’t the problem.It was actually kind of a nice color, come to think of it.The problem was the licking of the lips.I didn’t want to even consider what he was planning on doing with me.
He tilted his head to the side and those massive horns almost touched the wall of the changing room.
“You can call me Inkiri.”He put the stress on the second syllable of his name and rolled the R.“And you?”
I licked my lips.My mouth was so dry.Oh, the things I’d do for fancy coffee.And the things I’d do not to think about fancy coffee in a life-and-death situation such as this.
I glanced past him, but there was no way to get out of the damn corner I’d backed myself into, even without the curtain.If I was lucky, he really wouldn’t want to eat me.I wasn’t naive enough to think he was offering me anything for free though, and if he hadn’t let his gaze roam all over me to judge how tender I was…well.He’d want something else with me then.That wasn’t going to happen, but for now, I had no option but to play along.
I raised my chin as if this were an audition with a bunch of scary production people staring at me.“I’m Rory.”
He nodded.His horns moved and caught the faint light.It looked impressive.“Good.Now we know each other, and you can come with me, Rory.”
“Right.Okay.That should be okay.”
It absolutely wasn’t.His logic left a lot to be desired, but he had a sword and knew how to use it, so I was going to keep my complaints to myself for now.
Inkiri seemed to see my agreement as an invitation, and with no hesitation whatsoever, he leaned forward, disentangled me from the curtain by simply tearing it apart, and pulled me up along with him.He was a good head taller than me, or more than a head.And his arching horns made him taller still.
“Hey!”I flinched, because my calf was still cramping and hurting like someone had rammed an ice pick into my leg.
“Are you injured?Is that why you were hiding in here?”
Inkiri looked at me as if he were trying to figure out what was wrong with me, where I was broken.I had looked at myself in the mirror like that a few times over the past two years.I’d come up empty apart from the obvious stuff, but maybe he would see something I hadn’t.
I did my best to display a look of painful normalcy.Functionality.Yes, I was super functional, and definitely not the type of person who cried himself to sleep half of the time.
“It’s just a cramp.I’m fine.”I reached over to grab my backpack, which I’d shoved into a corner so the purple monster wouldn’t see it.
Inkiri was still blocking the exit, and he gave me what seemed like a thoughtful look.
“Do you have a uterus?”was the gem that eventually came out of his mouth, and I just…turned red as a cabbage, was what I did.
“Why would—I’m a dude, okay?”It occurred to me that he probably didn’t understand human anatomy, which was actually comforting, because it meant he’d never butchered a human.Or…done anything else that required a human to be naked.“I’m fully male all the way.From how you speak the language, you must’ve been here a while.Why would you think I have a uterus?”
Inkiri tilted his head to the other side, once more narrowly avoiding the changing room wall with those ibex horns.They were a deep midnight blue, and their tips looked sharp enough to take out an eye.
“It’s difficult to tell just from looking at a human.You said you had a cramp, and I know some women suffer from that.You also look frail, and human women—especially those with uteri—can appear so because they are smaller and not as broad.You look frail, and it says ‘women’s fashion’ on the signs over there.I was reasonably sure you had a uterus.Does the assumption embarrass you?”
Oh, was I ever sorry for causing the apocalypse and bringing this discussion upon myself.So very, very sorry.
