Free The Wind City by Summer Wigmore

aversion to daylight was maybe an atua thing? Anyway, sometimes when the light caught it, her hair made rainbows.
    Rainbows .
    It was so unfair.
    She was horrible. Tony knew that! Like, for example, right now, right this second? Hinewai had suddenly gone rigid, poised still and cautious like a cat. Tony had no idea why.
    “What?” Tony said.
    “I’m hungry,” Hinewai said absently. “Shh.”
    Tony shhed.
    A pigeon fluttered onto the sill and started pecking at crumbs, tilting its head to look at them with its mad eyes. All the normal pigeony things. Tony beamed at it. Maybe she should get some bread and scatter it and NO WHAT, HINEWAI NO, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT?
    Tony said, “ Hin !” in weak protest, but she was too late. There was a startled squawking and flapping of wings as the pigeon tried to escape Hinewai’s sudden firm grip on it, but she snapped its neck without too much difficulty, and then brought it to her mouth and bit down. Blood ran down her chin.
    She swallowed her mouthful and put the pigeon down, then finally glanced at Tony’s very stern face. “Is something the matter?” she said cautiously, like Tony was the one who was acting strangely.
    Tony intensified her glare. It was the very glariest.
    “Ah, of course,” Hinewai said, and got to her feet in an unfairly graceful motion, and picked up the little bundle of bones and bloodied feathers and dangling feet and put it in the fridge – “For later,” she said cheerfully. “That’s what humans do, yes?”
    She was so horrible. Tony glared at her some more, because Hinewai was horrible and deserved to be glared at. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that if Tony wasn’t glaring she’d probably just smile adoringly by default. So yes. Tony glared .
    Hinewai hunched defensively for a second, uncertain, shoulders jutting from beneath her plain black T-shirt. Only for a second, though, and then she was calm and in control of herself again, fingers tapping thoughtfully against her thighs. She was looking at Tony in much the same way she’d looked at the pigeon, thoughtful as only hunters could be. Tony shivered.
    Hinewai brightened in realisation – like she’d suddenly gone ‘oh, yes, inexplicably killing birds isn’t really what normal people do’ – except apparently what she thought she’d done wrong was etiquette . She picked up a napkin and dabbed the blood from her mouth, delicately. Then she gave Tony a hopeful look.
    “Oh my god,” Tony said, against her will and common sense. “You are the sweetest thing.”
    Hinewai smiled a little, in a cautious, distrustful sort of way. Hinewai wasn’t very good at smiling yet – she seemed to think it was weird or something. Hinewai thought a lot of perfectly normal things were weird.
    “I thank you,” Hinewai said, and smiled in earnest, bright with joy.
    …The thing about Hinewai was that Tony knew, logically, she should be wary, should keep her distance – and then Hinewai looked at her, eyes solemn pools of shadow and cheekbones sharp as broken glass, talking all prickly and ferocious and strange, and it was all Tony could do not to kiss her silent. Or she smiled like that , and, and Tony basically lost the ability to form words. Which… she didn’t really have an abundance of in the first place, so that was distinctly unfair. So. Yeah. Her flat-neighbour and scary supernatural ally and sort-of-friend was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Okay.
    Which was…
    It wasn’t that Tony minded, it was just – dealing with apparently being a taniwha and dealing with apparently liking the ladies at least a little at the same time was fundamentally unfair. One or the other she could handle, but both? No.
    On the other hand, hey, maybe it was normal to get crushes on scary beautiful fae atua-people regardless of how you previously identified in terms of orientation. There was nothing wrong with that. You liked who you liked, and sexuality could be a shifting thing. So that was