The Paradise Gate

Ch. 2 The Only Way to Get Rid of Temptation

The girl jumped, startled, and whirled around to face what was either an intruder or the results of her handiwork. It was anyone's guess which would be more dangerous.

For the second time in as many minutes, she realized she wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it was anything but what she got. What stood before her could be no sorcerer or wytch woman; their conjuring tricks marred them grossly, and any capable of an illusion so strong would be unable to hide their deformities.

There remained only one possibility. Her pulse jumped. Had it actually worked?

But there was just one problem: daemons, summoned spirits, bound constructs... call them what you will, but they didn't come out human. Flying cats, gargoyle-like gnomes, strange combinations of features both earthly and imagined were all common, but the only absolute certainty was that the forms they adopted on this side of the Aethral Gate were never humanoid.

Standing before her—well, more like towering over her— was the most stunningly orphic yet decidedly human figure she'd ever seen. He was a bruise-colored study in beauty. Hair so black it was near-blue reached down to his waist in an absurdly lush curtain of silk, shorter layers here and there framing his face and blowing in a breeze that was most decidedly not in the room. Pale skin like a china doll's carried blue notes underneath like berries hidden below a splash of milk.

Not ready to dare whatever dancing eyes were sure to match that mocking tone, the girl let her gaze drift downward. Extravagant robes of midnight blue silk with black brocade were wrapped and belted over a layer of ebon linen that just peeked out at the folds, and beneath that was a final layer of diaphanous cream that looked like it should be embarrassed to promise a satin caress when laid comparatively against the skin of his throat.

The long, black-tipped fingers of one hand were laid against his breast while the other disappeared to the small of his back as he presented her an entirely insouciant bow, yet she couldn't help notice the way the strands of his hair were so fine that they tumbled over his shoulder like sand through an hourglass when he dipped his head.

"Well, do you...approve?" he inquired politely.

Unable to avoid his gaze any longer, she finally looked up.

And promptly regretted it.

If someone with more money and time than sense or obligation set a thin screen of sapphires before a vase of violets and lit them from behind, then they might have come close to capturing the shade of this "reasonable facsimile's" eyes.

They were the widest she'd ever seen, almond shaped, and just slightly tipped up— perhaps only a hint more than her own— at the outer corners. There was a perpetual languor to the low resting mast of his lids, so that his natural mien was somewhere between a cat luxuriating in a sunbeam and a predator on the hunt.

The brows above were stark, thin, graceful slopes, like twin upward flicks of a master calligrapher's wrist.

The girl hadn't known that a nose could be elegant, but the proof was before her eyes. Had she been in a less flustered state of mind, she might have had the presence to wonder if the tip had been just barely turned up like that at first glance, or if he was already finding new and creative ways to needle her.

The gracefully elongated features and the strength of his own uncommonly foxlike jaw saved him from being too pretty and cradled him lovingly in the grasp of the sort of nigh-unbearable masculinity that makes young girls blush and smart women stutter.

"Erm, yes?" She wasn't sure why it had come out as a question. His smirk grew. He knew. Of course, he knew what he was doing to her, the bastard. "What are you?"