Connections

[Oriena]

She did not move. Her brain felt bleached by feral instinct, her chest tight with the breath which forced its way in and out in those moments of fraught silence. It wasn’t that Nox posed a threat. It was the surprise of him being here, and the way he’d grabbed her in a place she’d rip hearts from chests to protect.

“And go fucking where you moron.”

She dabbed her lip, frowned, let the sigh blow hard. Behind her the door opened a fraction, even though she’d told Dezhda to stay inside. She stepped out fully, one hand braced on Oriena’s arm as she peered at the disturbance on her threshold. She still spoke in Russian, and Oriena answered in kind, softened by the touch. She glanced down at the rosary wound in her mama’s hand afterwards, but she didn’t flinch when the hand rose to slap her sharply across the cheek. That was for a kiss across a threshold – bad luck and disrespect both. And on a day when the sky was falling.

Dezhda looked at Nox afterwards, her expression inscrutable. Then she said something else, to which Ori only replied “Da, mama,” before the woman turned, knocked on her own door jamb, and returned inside. Oriena still didn’t move for a moment more. Her eyes were dark, not anger now, but something flatter. He already saw more than she’d have ever consented to.

“I’m to apologise for biting you,” she said, smile sour, words tight and dry. “And she says you should come in.”