Twenty-Seven Pye
TWENTY-SEVEN
Pye
It seems easier for Avirin to broach the topic of “succubi” when it’s presented like this: academic, scientific, and impersonal.
She dedicates herself as she always does, scouring the books that Pye read weeks ago and uncovering others still.
She scrawls pages of notes, labeling inconsistencies and recurrences until she’s filled half a journal with research and questions.
When the day comes, Egan sits across the dinner table, and the paradox of it saturates the room.
There Avirin sits, looking fully human, dressed in her finest clothing as the lady of the house.
She is not out of place. She has done everything to follow social graces, yet she is the one fidgeting with her napkin.
Her brown eyes never land in one place for long, uncomfortable in her skin.
On the contrary, Egan’s all-black gaze is still. His horns slope elegantly through his hair, and he speaks with grace and confidence. Undoubtedly, his charms and manners are more refined than any of them, yet he has never been accepted by “polite society.”
Pye watches Avirin closely. She tries not to stare, but there’s no mistaking the way her eyes flick toward Egan’s face.
It must be strange seeing all those hidden pieces of herself now worn without shame.
It must be disconcerting that, no matter what effort she makes to follow the rules, she still feels just as unusual.
After a long moment of silence, Avirin finally finds her voice “Mr. Egan, I have been wondering…”
Her fingers curl around her silverware as she searches for the proper words. She clears her throat. Remembers her manners. Shakes her head. It is a never-ending performance, and Pye can see the frustration boiling inside of her, overwhelming her with a need to be “good” and “proper.”
She tries again. “With — succubi — if I may call you —”
She fumbles and looks toward Pye. They nod their encouragement, but Avirin looks down at her plate, trapped in the dance of choosing words without stumbling over their veiled meanings. “I apologize, I shouldn’t have —”
“It’s all right.” Egan sets down his glass.
“We need not be so formal, Avirin.” He smiles at the miniscule rebellion of her name.
“Enough of this life is already pushed into the shadows. I do not want to obscure it further. Ask me what you truly wish to know, and I will answer with the same honesty.”
For the first time, Avirin meets his eyes. Her lips press into a thin line, but she exhales slowly. No artifice. No pretense. “Is it true that we kill our lovers in our sleep?”
Egan’s head tilts, and Pye knows he wants to smile at Avirin’s concern, but he refrains. “No. The worst I’ve done in my sleep is ruin a perfectly good pillowcase with drool.”
Shakily, Avirin laughs, and the tension in her shoulders eases.
That is the first of many questions, and Egan answers all of them. Avirin doesn’t pull out her notebook once. It’s as if the thoughts have become embedded in her mind over the course of months, wearing grooves into her skull that her consciousness keeps rubbing up against.
Egan stays a day longer than he planned, sitting with Avirin in the garden until the very final minute. He squeezes her hand and promises to write, and when he leaves, Avirin watches from the window. Pye stands beside her as Egan’s horse disappears down the path. “What did you think of him?”
“He’s wonderful,” she answers, “And he’s not what I expected.”
“How so?”
Her head tilts in bemusement. “He does not fight what he is, yet it does not control him. His body has changed, yet the rest of him has not. Being a succubus has not made him lecherous, or greedy, or predatory. If anything, it has made him kind. Generous. Understanding.” Her mouth twists over some distant thought. “Surely it’s impossible.”
“What is?”
“All those books, and stories, and society…” Her brow furrows at her reflection, and it suddenly seems like she’s looking in a mirror. “Could they truly know nothing about what it means to be this way? Could they truly be so wrong?”
Pye meets her eyes in the glass. “I think they can be. I think they are.” He brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, exposing the whole of her face. “About many things.”
After Egan’s visit, Avirin grows more comfortable.
She still suppresses her succubus traits, but there is a newfound fortitude to her.
When they walk down to the orchard, Avirin instructs Pye on where they should begin.
When he misstates a fact, she gently corrects him. When he teases her, she fires back.
It’s becoming harder and harder to resist her. Pye meant what they told her that day by the stream, but gods, she is a sight to behold. Now Pye is the one who must retire to their room every afternoon, wrapping their fist around themself and imagining Avirin’s clever mouth against their ear.
The day she finally stops by Pye’s bedchamber, their control threatens to slip. It’s a completely innocent visit after dinner. Avirin lingers in the doorway and looks over his room. “Almost exactly as I pictured it.”
He chirps a laugh. No doubt she sees the open inkwell on his desk, the broken quill on the floor, the half-buttoned shirt hanging from the mirror. “I am, unfortunately, a servant to disorder.”
When she hums, her eyes land on his. “I’m certain we could find ways to make a bigger mess.”
A thousand images flash across his mind. Avirin, bent over the desk. Avirin, clutching at the curtains. Avirin, watching herself in the mirror. Avirin’s leg hooked over his shoulder, Avirin’s hair across his pillows, Avirin’s body draped in his sheets.
He doesn’t realize he’s moved closer until she looks up at him, her eyes as glossy as her lips. Pye wants to taste her. They want to bury their face between her legs. They reach for her waist and pull her into them, mouth seeking hers —
“My lady,” Emory sings down the corridor, “we’re starting a game of Quadrille!”
Both Pye and Avirin sigh against each other’s lips.
“I’ve asked her just to call me Avirin.” She smiles weakly. “But I did promise I would play.”
“Go,” Pye chuckles and unravels his hold on her. “I could stand to get this room, and my head, in order.”
When she steps away, her fingertips trail down his arm before she finally moves toward the sitting room.
Pye rests his head back against the doorframe before he locks himself in his room for an entire hour. He makes no progress on the mess in his room or his mind.
There is one other place in this cottage that Avirin has not visited. Since the two of them began spending their evenings together, Pye has not returned to it, either. It calls to him tonight when his head is filled with thoughts of her, an abundance of merry little sprites that keep him company.
In the fading light, Pye wanders down the hall and enters the studio. When he lights the oil lamp on the table, everything is as he left it. Stained rags hang from an easel beside a box filled with brushes. On the other side, a glass of murky water sits between crayons and blocks of paint.
Pye turns the easel toward them and picks up a pastel.
It is as natural as breathing. Color fills the empty canvas.
His fingers earn their stripes, greens and blues and grays blending together.
He gets lost in it, smearing and shadowing and highlighting until a blurry picture takes full shape before him.
“I wondered what secrets this room held.”
When Pye turns, Avirin stands in the doorway. Outside, the sun is long gone, leaving them both shrouded in night.
Pye bows to invite her in. “Please, uncover them all.”
She eases the door shut, her eyes roving the supplies. “You’re an artist,” she says reverently, like she treasures this information. “I am glad to see you in your element.”
The corners of Pye’s lips turn up as he lengthens the wick of the oil lamp. “I hope we have many years to discover such things about each other.”
She gives them a meaningful look and steps closer, soaking up the picture before them like she wants to familiarize herself with every detail.
On the canvas, a summer storm is rolling in, casting the hillside in a gray haze.
In the distance, a cottage sits surrounded by a speckling of flowers.
In the foreground, a willow tree blows in the wind, its branches parting to reveal a woman stretched beneath it.
She lies in the grass, fingers tucked between the pages of a book.
Her eyes are closed. Brown hair haloes her face alongside the horns sprouting from her head, her round cheek resting on her arm. She is calm. She is at peace.
“There are many places that I love,” Pye murmurs. “Places I like to visit. Places my mind wanders to in daydreams. It gladdens me to imagine you there with me.”
Avirin’s lips part.
Pye reaches behind her for their sketchbook.
When they offer it to her, she tries to decipher their expression before she opens the cover.
The first few pages are mundane — flowers from the garden, the orchard at sunrise — but then a woman’s profile appears.
The sketch is rough and unfinished, but her face is full with an unimpressed knit between her brows.
The next image of her is more refined, black eyes wide with surprise, her hand covering her mouth.
Soon, the sketchbook becomes only pictures of her.
Of Avirin. She is in every corner of every page, her face repeated a hundred different times.
One version of her rolls her eyes and tries to hide a smile.
Another lowers her lashes and gasps. Still another looks up from beneath her wedding veil with horns framing her face.
“This is what Cascade meant,” Avirin breathes. “When she said…”
Oh, she looks just like the drawings!
Delicately, Avirin traces the pencil marks until a smear of lead colors her finger. Her eyes seem to glisten in the dim light as she looks over herself in miniature. “Do you remember our first lesson?” she asks suddenly. “When you lead me away from the promenade and into the alcove?”
Pye remembers it well. It was the first time they were alone together. The first time they almost kissed. The first time she revealed what she was and trusted him to keep her secret.
“You asked me to choose a word,” she continues. “A code. Something I could say if I wished for things to stop.”
“Honey.” Pye grins. She’d looked into the picnic basket and chosen the first thing she saw.
Avirin nods. “But I have not told you why I chose that word. It was not only because it was simple. Because it was there.”
Pye’s brow furrows. She sets the sketchbook aside, and when she steps closer, a thundercloud rumbles between them. Something electric lifts goosebumps on Pye’s arms, heightened when Avirin meets his gaze.
“I chose that word because it reminded me of you.”
She lifts a hand toward his jaw, and instinctively, his mouth drags a kiss against her palm.
“Warm,” she murmurs. “Sweet. Leaving remnants on everything it touches.” Her thumb follows the freckles across his yellow skin. “You made me feel safe even then. During our first lesson, and every moment thereafter.”
It steals his breath. He leans his face into her touch, but there is something larger brewing behind her gaze.
“I have spent so long performing for an audience,” she murmurs.
“The ton has never wanted me, but I never questioned if I wanted it.” Her thoughts flash across her face like lightning inside a cloud, illuminated for the first time.
“I do not desire to be on that stage. I do not want to wear that mask any longer.”
Pye thrums with energy. This is the first time Avirin has spoken so openly, unconstrained by doubt or expectation. Never has she been so certain. So unapologetic. So in control of her own fate.
“You want me to be happy,” she whispers. “To be intentional. To take whichever lovers I choose. Is that right?” Her voice is calm, but it is threaded with unmistakable conviction.
Pye’s heart thuds. “More than anything.”
When she licks her lips, her pupils spread to fully engulf her eyes.
She does not blink the black away. She does not lower her gaze.
“Then come to my room.” She lifts on her toes, and Pye leans in to meet her kiss, but she never gives it to them.
She merely brushes the edge of their mouth and presses a brass key into his palm.
Pye bites back a whine.
Her lips curl at the corners. “Let me show you how happy you’ve made me.”