Meho began with Fairbanks in a cupboard and somehow made a straight road through murder, plague, stolen faces, and the particular insanity of men who call themselves righteous while hiding bodies behind walls. She has a gift for finding the loose plank in any old horror.
Blaedy then demanded the whole history of the world, apparently dissatisfied that it had only produced one demon wearing a crusader’s face. She climbed from ancient wars to human kingdoms to the inconvenient difference between nightborne and “skyborne,” with the patience of a magistrate examining a very long receipt.
After all that, Blaedy offered me soup. I ate it before learning it contained undead ichor and sewer-rat bile. This is what comes of trusting a cook who has just spent an hour asking how corpses get up again. The onions were still decent.