"What do you mean you're not going to help me inside?"
Eira hovered at eye level, wings beating in that lazy, deliberate rhythm she used when she wanted to look bored on purpose. Void-black eyes flat. Patient.
The patience of a being who'd already made her decision and was now waiting for the slower species to catch up.
"I mean exactly that," she said, voice bright and cutting. "I'll drop you there. But not inside the house."
Phei stared at her.
He stared at her the way you stare at a vending machine that just ate your last dollar and spat out nothing but a metallic clunk—confused, offended, and one wrong second away from shaking it until it coughed up change or justice.
"How do you expect me to get inside then?"
She shrugged. Tiny crystalline shoulders rising and falling with the devastating indifference of someone else's problem.
