Page 11 of His Emotional Support Snack

His arm snaps upward with blinding, impossible speed. Leather-clad fingers close around my throat.

The grip is a vice of skeletal, terrifying strength. The air supply cuts off instantly. My hands fly up, clawing desperately at his thick wrist, but the muscles beneath the leather are locked like iron. He hauls himself upward, his towering frame blocking the dying embers of the hearth, pinning me to the floorboards.

His head snaps toward me, eyes snapping open.

There is no aristocratic mockery in his gaze. No cold, calculating intellect. The pupils are blown wide, the irises blazing with a feral, unhinged fever. He stares at me, a dying, cornered beast ready to rip the throat from the intruder who dared to witness his vulnerability.

8

ZUIRVIH

Her throat rests fragile and pulse-quick beneath the leather of my glove.

A single contraction of my fingers will snap the bone.

Fever burns the logic from my brain, reducing the civilized master of Vhoig into a cornered, rotting animal striking blindly in the dark. The poison floods my system with white-hot agony, the poison screaming that an enemy has breached the sanctum. My vision blurs, the room tunneling as my chaotic magic misfires, sending useless purple sparks scattering across the woven rug.

I haul myself up, pinning her slighter frame to the floorboards. My erratic, wheezing breaths echo violently against the stone walls. I stare down into the face of the intruder, waiting for the frantic thrashing. The weeping pleas for mercy. The terror of a human caught in the grip of a monster.

Dark, unblinking eyes stare back at me.

She does not fight.

Her hands do not claw wildly at my restricting grip. Her nails do not rake against the leather. She lies perfectly still beneath the crushing weight of my chest, her chin tipped back to expose the vulnerability of her neck. The gold collar digs into her collarbone, a stark contrast to the pale, fragile skin.

Instead of fighting, she lifts her hands with slow, deliberate precision.

Calloused, rough fingers wrap gently over my wrist. She does not pry. She does not yank. She presses the pads of her thumbs against the pulse point just below the edge of my glove, anchoring her grip with a quiet, grounding pressure.

A silent, steadfast command. Let go.

The sheer audacity cuts through the haze of the fever.

I blink, the wild, feral fire in my vision receding enough to process the reality of the scene. The human pet. The lying stray from the Lowtown. Kneeling in the spilled Zhisk and corrupted blood, holding the wrist of the creature slowly crushing the life from her lungs.

A violent shudder wracks my frame. The grip on her throat falters.

I release her, snatching my hand back as if her skin carries a lethal burn. I collapse onto the rug beside her, the sudden movement tearing a wet, ragged cough from my lungs. Black blood spatters the polished marble. I brace my forearms against my knees, my chest heaving, the air whistling through the inflamed tissue of my windpipe.

"Explain your presence." The words scrape against my ruined vocal cords, emerging as a guttural, barely audible rasp. "Before I summon Jarek and have your head removed from your shoulders."

Esme pushes herself upright, rubbing the faint red marks rising on her neck. She does not scramble backward. She adjusts the hem of her thin linen nightgown, tucking her bare legs beneath her, and remains within arm’s reach. A dangerous proximity.

"You left the doors cracked." She states the fact with a dry, flat cadence. "In the Lowtown, an open door means the occupant is either dead or too weak to close it."

"A fatal miscalculation on my part." I wipe the dark fluid from my chin with the back of my glove. The weakness humbles me, stripping away the aristocratic veneer, leaving only the dying core of a Khuzuth lord. "You should have kept walking. Discovering a master in his vulnerability is a poor survival strategy."

"Your survival dictates my own." She tilts her head, her eyes assessing the violent tremor in my hands. "If you die tonight, Zatori breaches the estate by morning. My son and I will not survive the day. I cannot allow you to expire."

A hollow, broken laugh escapes my throat.

The sound is bitter, devoid of the mocking purr I use to terrorize the courts. The absurdity of it all. A human laborer, offering pragmatic protection to the monster holding her leash. She calculates my lifespan with the cold, unfeeling mathematics of a street survivor trading bread for safety.

"You harbor grand delusions, little rat." I lean my head back against the leg of the obsidian desk, the cold stone biting into my scalp. The poison throbs, the black veins on my throat pulsing with an erratic, chaotic rhythm. The poison strips the energy required to maintain the Deceiver’s mask. "You cannot save me. No one can."

"What is the poison?" Her voice drops, losing the biting edge, replaced by a morbid, sharp curiosity. Her gaze locks onto the putrid web crawling up my neck.

I should command her to leave. A Khuzuth does not confess weakness to a slave. The rules of Vhoig demand I summon the Miou guards and order her tongue cut out for witnessing the decay.