Page 34 of Phoenix's Fire

"Why?" Zasen asked.

Ayla turned to him. "Because they're from here. We always thought they were Righteous women who'd been possessed. Women who'd allowed evil to corrupt them." She paused, grunting a little. "Moles, I mean." Then she huffed in annoyance. "It's so hard to keep it all straight, and those shitters are not Righteous!"

"Fuckers," Rymar corrected without thinking.

"But doesn't that word mean sex?" she asked.

"Not in the same way," I hurried to explain. "Sometimes fucking is used negatively. Think of it like someone who doesn't care about anything else and is horrible."

"Like the Moles," she grumbled. "Okay, that makes more sense, but it's just hard. I keep messing it up!"

"Trust me, I understand," I assured her. "Switching between English, Vestrian, the terms you used, and the ones we did? I kept thinking I was confusing you, Ayla."

"But you didn't," she hurried to assure me.

Which made me smile. "Just like calling them Righteous no longer confuses us," I promised. "Ayla, weknowyou don't think they're good or wholesome. We also know that's the term you grew up using. It's fine."

"Yeah?" she asked meekly, looking at Zasen to make sure.

I wanted to groan at that, but it was stupid. This was my own problem, and I certainly didn't need to dump it on her. But when I shoved my tail to the ground, I realized Rymar was watching me.

While Zasen reassured Ayla about the words she used, Rymar looked from my tail up to my face, and his gaze was pointed. Yep, I was being a fucking moron, and he knew it.

But I went back to work soon. Ayla was already leaning more on Zasen than me, and if she spent all day with him, would she even remember I existed? Not to mention how being broke, brown, and boring weren't exactly the best qualities in a person - not even as a friend.

I wanted to do something to make her look at me the way she used to. Instead, her attention was torn between learning how to kill and helping her friend - and I understood. I truly did, yet old habits died hard. That was part of what made it so easy for me to understand why Ayla reverted to her manners when she was lost or confused.

For me, I reverted to feeling like I was being pushed out. Back when I'd first met Zasen, Rymar, and Tasult, I'd been so excited to have popular friends. That they hung out with all the beautiful girls had been a very nice bonus. Then I'd realized having impressive friends didn't change a thing about me.

But these guys liked me for who I was. They'd included me because we werefriends, and now we were a sort of family of our own. I couldn't even imagine a life without them, and I hoped I'd never have to. I also didn't want to lose Ayla to the bigger, stronger, richer, or better-looking guy either.

"So," Zasen was saying, "maybe bring up the women in quarantine as proof of how the men lied to you women?"

"But what if she's afraid Gideon will come for her?" Ayla countered. "I want her to feel safe here first."

"So play it by ear," Rymar suggested.

"We trust you," I told her, pulling my mind back to her problems instead of my own. "You also need to explain Vestrian to her and that no one will understand her." I smiled. "If she'll give me a chance, I'll teach her like I did you, but it will have to be in the evenings."

"Yeah?" Ayla asked. "And maybe you can show me how to teach someone?"

"Of course," I assured her. "Do you still have those books I gave you?"

Her eyes dropped to the ground. "Yeah." She sounded oddly shy about that for some reason.

"Well, if you want to loan the English version of a story to Meri, we can get the Vestrian copy so she can compare them."

"Like my first one?" she asked. "But do I have to give her that one? It's the first thing I got in Lorsa."

"You can just loan it to her," I said. "Or I can find a copy of another one if you'd like?"

"In English?" Zasen asked, sounding dubious.

"I'll find one if Ayla wants it," I said, but the words came out just a little too emphatically.

"I can loan her my book," Ayla assured me. "Meri is very careful with things, so it'll be okay. And then she can bring it and we can talk about the story, right? And I'll read it again in Vestrian, just so I learn how to read easier, because that's still the hard part."

"And it should help her realize that falling down a rabbit hole isn't as horrible as she first thought," Rymar added.