Page 203 of The Spider Queen

“No. I can see fine, now that you mention it.” I paused. “How much magic do you think it would take to get clean?”

“Hmmm. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I kind of noticed.”

“Our spiders are good for little things—stop gaps, really. But they’re warriors. They protect and come when called. They’re not mages. They don’t have the power to create huge somethings from nothing.”

“Are they a part of us? Or are they their own entity?”

“Both and neither. They serve us because I am the rightful Guardian of the Bridge, and you are my mate.”

“Can you not call me that?” I asked. “I really hate that term.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It just sounds so…basic? Weird? Spidery?”

I could see Thane’s smile in the dark. “What would you want me to call you?”

“Girlfriend?”

He snorted. “You mean a bit more to me than that.”

“Right, right. So I guess fiancée is out, too.”

“Stop trying to use human words to describe what we are, Poppy. Humans don’t have a word for what we are.”

“Mate it is, I guess,” I said with a sigh. “You’re not going to want to…”

“What?”

“Do it in spider form?”

He snorted. “No. We’re not wolf shifters. Besides, if we do it in our animal forms, you might bite off my head. I’d rather keep my head where it is.”

“Wolf shifters? This turned into a really weird conversation.”

Thane laughed.

“I haven’t tried to shift into my spider form,” I said. “Not consciously, anyway. Am I even capable of it?”

“Try. Though I have to warn you, it’s completely jarring the first few times. And you don’t have as much control as you think you do.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, it takes time for your brain and body to align. When you take spider form the first few times, you feel out of place in both body and mind.”

I thought about when I’d shifted the first and only time. I’d glanced down, saw eight legs, and freaked the hell out. I’d tried to scream, but I could only hear the sound in my head. I’d had human emotions inside an animal body.

“I think I understand what you’re saying.”

“It’s kind of like being a newly changed vampire. All they want to do is feed, but it takes years to tamp that part down, and let the rational side be front and center.”

“Vampires, sure. I wonder if there will be a time when I stop being surprised at your revelations.”

“Give it a few hundred years,” he said with a laugh.

I sobered.