Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

68

This was not how I expected the conversation to go. Cackling madly and declaring that I'd seen through his ruse, therefore enabling him to attack me without pretense, that wouldn't have surprised me. Or assuring me that I was safe and he would explain all, giving me whatever answers I wanted, that was just as believable. But what was this? He was pretending to be lost, pretending he knew nothing? That made him even more suspicious. Why would he do that unless he was trying to outfox my suspicions by deliberately appearing shady?

I was going to blow open my head with my own furious, frenzied thoughts. Why couldn't my life return to its original simplicity?

"... I don't know anything so I have nothing for you," I said with carefully engineered flatness. Reveal nothing, not a hint of emotion, not even a blink. "Like I said, I don't even know who you are."

He paused. For a moment, I thought — this is it, he was going to reveal himself or a clue I could use against him. I caught him off guard somehow, an accidental master maneuver to make his mask of innocence slip...

"I... don't remember either," he said slowly, eyes narrowing in budding confusion. His feathers twitched against his hair, inquisitive or alarmed, maybe both. Another small pause later, he lifted his chin to stare up at the lovely blue sky. "There was someone there when I closed my eyes... someone I was trying to get away from, but they found me. Or I went to them first...? I don't know. But I do know one thing."

He returned his attention to me. The sheer purity of his gaze took my breath away again, right when I thought I'd gotten a handle on myself. It was like he saw right through me, right into me, seeing and speaking to someone whose existence I didn't even know because they were buried too deep, far away.

He tilted his head slightly, peering at me.

"I remember you."

***

"Where are you going now?"

I considered ignoring his curious question at first, but he was just going to keep on following me anyway. No point in denying his existence when he was the only other living thing for miles and miles, and our voices the only things to break the silence other than the burbling of the endless, narrow river I walked alongside. The silence was somehow deathly even in this idyllic paradise, green grass and clear water and sunlight beaming everywhere. It was enough to make me secretly welcome his presence to break this surreal illusion that was simply too hollow to be real, like a computer-generated copy of a masterpiece lacking the spirit of it.

It was eerie. It was nerve-racking. It made me want to slow down and let the man walk by my side instead of leaving him to trail behind me.

"... Well, if neither of us knows where we are, then the first thing we should do is find a way out," I said stiffly. "If we follow the river, we won't get lost. Go in one direction until you find something, and then proceed from there."

"I've tried it. Both directions. It never ends... and we'll always come back to the same spot somehow even if we keep going the same way. That boulder, do you see it? We'll pass by it again soon. It's the third time now."

Shit. I knew it looked familiar. There were no real landmarks to this place, and that was the other thing that seemed so wrong about it. Granted, a random meadow and stream might not be easily discernible from a thousand others but seriously, nothing? I couldn't even name the kind of cattails in the water. If only I could suss out the species, I might have been able to figure out the approximate region...

But if none of this was real, it wouldn't matter anyway, I supposed.

"Okay, so this is a magical construct like I thought," I said aloud. I'd stopped walking to stare at the boulder he pointed at, mind racing. "Or we're both cursed, I guess. Disorientation hexes can do this, right?"