If I still had eyebrows, I would've arched one at her.

I know I had a reputation for stabbing people in the back, but every single time it was justified. It was with purpose.

What stories about me have been circulating behind my back? I've never considered myself the duplicitous sort. I lack the subtlety and patience for such things. Did Ulroke still have that much of a revenge hard-on after I buried him under the Sanctum for a year--again, fully justified, considering that he was about to send us all to our deaths in a second war with the Ixians--that he would poison the mind of his second-in-command with lies about me?

And who the fuck did she think she was threatening me? Me? ME?!

It didn't matter that she was some relic of a long-forgotten race of spirits, or elementals, or incarnations, or whatever. Those are a bent copper a dozen, and just as worthless.

I had no interest in "fucking" her. But if push came to shove, I'd tear her still-beating heart out of her chest and eat it in front of her before she could lay a finger on me.

...but I digress.

"Sure, whatever," I muttered before I turned my attention back towards this petite woman, this Zavine, who floated in the tank before us. "If she can translate the book, then we might find something in it that'll give you a reason to care. It might tell us something about this... this transformation you seem to be going under. Maybe even tell us how to diffuse this 'bomb'. So, how am I getting her back to my compound in Corone? Are we unplugging this contraption and pulling her out? Or are we bringing the whole thing?