Page 53 of Snow

I reel back through my memories trying to pinpoint the night on which it must have happened.

Kim is kneeling down, trailing his index finger through the tar. He raises it to the half-light of the lanterns and squints at it. Something has changed inside the demon hunter, that much is obvious. When he bit into Zephyra’s heart, and managed not to vomit onto his brown leather shoes, I saw it in his eyes; he is ready to embrace his destiny.

He is going to fight back against the urge to be normal.

He is a fool.

He has a choice the rest of us don’t; we are what we are. We cannot choose to be less. He can. He can choose to be human. He can run to the furthest corner of the world and hide there, away from his destiny.

But it seems he has developed a taste for destruction. Ending the Venatrix demon made him feel superhuman. And I suppose now he needs a new purpose.

It has always surprised me that humans are so purpose-driven when they are here for such a short time. Perhaps it is because they are here for such a short time.

I don’t know.

All I know is that Kim is not the same man he was when we first met.

I point to the remains of the demon. “You know much about the Solaris?”

Kim shrugs and stands up. “I know they stun their host, then enter through the mouth. The teeth on their tentacles sort of scrape the insides of the person out. They eat them as they go, taking over their body so they can wear it like a suit.” He blinks apologetically. “Sorry, she was your friend.”

He hesitates over the word ‘friend’. I don’t blame him. I am not the type to have friends.

But I do not correct him.

I suppose, if I were to have had a friend, Miranda would have been that person.

But we both knew the limits of our relationship.

“I didn’t sense anything different when she returned from Zephyra’s clutches,” I mutter.

“It must have happened before she was taken.” Kim tilts his head. “A while before… around the time the scepter went missing. Maybe even before that, if the Solaris didn’t want you to suspect anything.”

I pace the room, trying to recall what Miranda was like over the past few months. I did not pay attention. I was distracted. Yes, she was a little vacant. A little robotic perhaps. A little wary of me, even? But people are always wary of me. I was grumpy and intolerant, aware that I’d soon need to do something to thwart Zephyra’s attempts to widen her FHB empire.

And I was spending too much time watching Luna.

She met Steven six months ago. Quickly, he became a fixture in her life, and I knew from the moment I laid eyes on the man that he was going to be trouble.

I growl and lick my fangs.

I let this happen. I did not watch Miranda closely enough. Perhaps I am not watching Luna closely enough.

“Where is the scepter?” I ask, refusing to enter into a debate about how long Miranda was missing for.

This creature was the one that engineered the whole thing. It took the scepter from me and used its disappearance to lure Nova here so it could drain her blood. The scepter was insignificant, but it would have wanted to keep it safe; it knew that allowing it into the wrong hands could spell the end of all of us.

“I don’t know,” Kim says. “But it can’t be far. It wouldn’t have risked letting it out of its sight.”

“Then search the room. Quickly.”

I move fast. Like lightning. There is still the whisper of Nova’s blood lingering in my veins. I wonder whether she might leave me with some when she goes, and then I hate myself for wondering such a thing. I do not need phoenix blood in order to rule this city.

But it was so very strong…

I find the scepter with barely any effort at all. When I pull it out of a small wooden chest at the foot of Miranda’s bed, I raise it up into the air and laugh. Utterly ludicrous. All this time, it was here under our noses and we had people on the other side of the world trying to help us find it.

I hold it tightly in my hands.