Image 1 of 3
Image 2 of 3
Image 3 of 3
Want to sample before you buy? Read on:
Eresh stands before the high glass window that wraps around most of the exterior of her sprawling Boston penthouse, overlooking a skyline dotted sparingly with tall towers like her own. Her arms and torso still ache from where, only a scant few nights ago, she took a hail of gunfire in her true form. Eresh rubs at the ache in her neck that’s also lingering as she heals. The process slow – her power greatly diminished from when she was a true goddess in Kengir, though still enough to keep her alive where others fell as mortals chose to invade Marrowmont. An incursion from multiple sides from which the city, too, is still recovering, as those who survived that night try to pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes and their lives. Which is why she’s here. Marrowmont has never been home. That lies in a dead city-state, gone to memory and legend; found, too, with her wife’s buried heart that she left in familiar soil long before that nation fell.
She dips one delicate finger into the cold drink in her hand to pluck out an ice chip and holds it to her back. Her grunt of animal relief loud in the richly appointed apartment, the tangle of plants around her offsetting their cool green against the rippling cobalt light from the pool behind her – her entire body bathed a luminous blue as she exhales slowly and lets some of the tension ease from her shoulders. While rivulets of water from the swiftly melting ice run down her shoulders and her spine as she sweeps the ice in long arcs across her upper back, the runoff soaking the lip of her deep-cut backless dress.
A knock sounds sharp and strong at her door. She leans her head back and closes her eyes as she calls over her shoulder: “It’s open.”
The latch clicks, and she can hear someone enter and shut the door behind them. The sensation of the ice heightened against her back as she lets herself drift. Secure in the knowledge she’s safe here. Even if she didn’t already know who it was come calling.
“Should you be leaving yourself so vulnerable?” calls Hulngal from across the length of the apartment – Eresh’s second home soundproofed; none of the business they discuss tonight will be gifted to unwelcome ears.
Eresh smiles as she opens her eyes and turns to face her guest. “I am never vulnerable,” says the once-goddess with a lopsided, fanged grin as she puts the ice chip down on a tray on a side table near the window. And slips through the sheltered jungle, sleek as a stalking panther and just as predatory, Hulngal waiting patiently just inside the threshold of her old friend’s home. Well. Once friends. Time has not been kind to what they once were to each other.
