No price too high

It wasn't long that the book was in her hands again and she was standing with it before Fortune's altar, her silhouette hidden under a new moon. She poured coals into the copper bowl, her heartbeat rising despite herself.

Guilt pried its way up her spine with ugly claws despite how much she told herself that this was harmless, that it was far better than stealing that innocent man's life. But this was different, wasn't it? The florist didn't deserve this. She was no stranger to getting her hands dirty, but only when she was wronged first, when she needed to make sure her enemies never hurt her again. This was ripping out a piece of someone's heart (her hand went towards her necklace chain protectively); this was wrong.

But she'd already come this far. She was so close to the future she needed with Basileios. If she had to strangle her conscience for this, she would, and gladly.

A match, struck, hissing, fell into the coals, coming to life with a searing hunger that made her flinch. The first torn page was the hardest, but the rest were quick to follow, until she was calm as she threw the empty hand-stitched cover in.  

As soon as the cover hit the coals, the fire burst into life, turning a violent shade of blue, before vanishing entirely, leaving nothing behind in the bowl, not a single speck of ash or a hint of her offering in the least. Lasair peered into the bowl with a stunned frown, her hair falling over her shoulder as she looked at her own reflection in the beaten, reflective copper.

There was no dramatic change, no divine touch to mark it, but she knew her reflection enough to notice when Fortune took their payment. The edges of her turned sharp where they should've been soft, inhuman in indescribably minute detail, like how the fae were described in stories meant to warn children not to wander or else risk being stolen into the woods. "No," She touched her cheeks, watching her reflection in growing horror, "No, no no no!"

Lasair could only watch as Fortune took her golden eyes, bleeding them red like the monster they knew her to be.

She picked up the copper bowl and threw it across the shrine in a wordless scream of despair, her hands covering her face. Faline would know what she'd done, Basileios would know. She'd done this to hide, not to bare to world what she was-! She reached for her mage glamour to smooth away the edges, her limbs shaking, but she already knew there was no keeping this up forever. Certainly not in her sleep. Not in the bed she shared with her fiance.

A wracking sound escaped her throat as she lowered her hands once the glamour settled in. How quick she'd been to condemn Divos for his appearance, how afraid he must've been. What Fortune had taken from her couldn't possibly compare, but beauty was measured in degrees, in fractions of inches, and it'd only take a glance to know that she'd corrupted for this.

And was it worth it?

She fell to her knees and called upon one of her cloaks, safely tucked away in her hope chest back at home. It was distant at first, but then it came to answer her call, filling her lungs with cinders and replacing her skin with dragon scales.

Lasair dragged her claws against the shrine tiles, a bestial rumble in her throat. She gotten what she wanted - the ability to shift without needing to touch her cloaks.

She still left the shrine in an awful state before she flew back home.