Iris’s breath hitched as his thumb traced the arc below her eye. It was probably addictive, the touch of the Master, but even the nymph couldn’t know that much about her own machinations. She nodded, a little solemn, and the way the sun played with her verdant strands they seemed to catch fire and burn in an auburn glow. That, too, belonged to Greta. A suggestion just beyond subtlety that the nymph seemed to offer with a deft hand. It was what he wanted, right now, in the way he needed it. She was as confident and she could be, having known his blood her whole life but the man for mere moments.<br/><br/>“Yes. I’m very sorry, Master.” She said, and she was as sincere as her soul could be. “I should have known my place better. I’m sorry about the interruption.” Iris said, and it could well have been the nymph shouldering Greta’s sin as much as it might have been an imitation of Greta herself. She hugged the slipping jacket tight around her waist, where the fabric bunched against the seatbelt. Iris was as unperturbed by her exposure now as she had been, wet and nude, when she’d slipped from the gash in her mother fruit.<br/><br/>“What can I do to make up for it?” she asked, small fists clenched. It was impossible to say what she was, or who she offered. Iris was Iris as much as it seemed she could be anything else. It had been what she’d offered from the beginning, after all. A reflection of all his little desires, and his greater ones too. If it seemed novel and delightful then, he had, perhaps, forgotten his sister’s scar on her shoulder. If it was terrible, that was just as well. Any great emotion, any catharsis, was hers to nurse. Whether he wished to hate or love her, Iris was a body hungry to sate his blood.