Chapter Ten
Ten
Of course Daziel hadn’t listened. Of course he’d decided to show up at the event where I already felt out of my element, where I was worried about being an embarrassment to my aunt and humiliating myself by acting like a country bumpkin.
Of course he was distractingly handsome in his elegant outfit, each detail lovingly tended.
And of course he looked entirely too pleased with himself, as though appearing at my aunt’s house was a delightful joke.
Not so my aunt. I couldn’t read her expression—politicians practiced their poker faces—but she hardly looked happy. The guests were easier, their gazes sticky with curiosity.
I marched toward Daziel, watching his smile widen. He looked like he belonged on Society Hill more than I did. As he crossed the garden to meet me, he shed onlookers as though his very presence pushed them back.
“Hello,” he said brightly when we met. “Surprise!”
“I told you not to come.” Anger warmed me, and I felt embarrassment over being so rattled. How was I supposed to explain a demon to my aunt? I was nervous enough about fitting in. “This is my aunt’s.”
“I like a party. And I wanted to meet her.” He smiled over my shoulder. “Hello, aunt.”
I turned, finding Aunt Tirtzah behind me. She was in her forties, tall, and she wore a simple navy shift and silver bangles. She gave Daziel a tense smile before pinning me with her steely gaze. “Both of you, come.”
She headed for the exit. Daziel made a polite after you gesture, which made me scowl even harder. It should be illegal for him to look so handsome and be so relaxed when I was so angry. We followed my aunt out of the courtyard, down the high-ceilinged halls of her home, and into her private study.
It was an airy room with whitewashed walls and bookshelves of political treatises with excruciatingly long titles. She sat behind a desk that looked impossible to move, so large and sturdy I wondered if it’d been constructed within the room. “Sit.”
We sat. I perched on the edge of a velvet chair before her desk, unwilling to let my spine slouch at all.
“Are you mad?” Daziel asked me, sotto voce, as Aunt Tirtzah studied us.
“Obviously.”
He looked confused. “Why?”
This was why Daziel made me want to pull my hair out. He could be so smart and also such an idiot. “I told you not to come. This is my family. It’s private.”
Aunt Tirtzah spoke, voice crisp. “Tell me why this—young man—showed up in my house, claiming to be betrothed to my niece.”
“We’re not really betrothed,” I said. “He’s staying with me for a bit.”
Daziel set his chin mulishly, and I sensed the words coming before he said them. “We’re betrothed.”
I glared at him. “Daziel!”
He glared back. “You don’t need to deny it so aggressively all the time.”
“Start from the beginning,” my aunt said.
Chastened—was this how my younger sisters always felt?—I laced my fingers together. “I accidentally summoned him.”
Even my stone-faced aunt couldn’t keep a flicker of horror from her face. “You summoned him?”
“I didn’t bind him!” I said quickly. “I just said his name. It was an honest mistake.”
Aunt Tirtzah looked increasingly pained as I explained the situation, though she tried to school her expression to a bland politeness. “Have you slept together?” she asked at the end, through a smile of ground teeth.
I flushed and refused to look at Daziel. No reason to get overheated and awkward. No need for my heart to gallop in my chest when I recalled his intensity when he got protective or the glint in his eyes when he teased me. “No.”
“Exchanged gifts?”
“A pomegranate,” I admitted reluctantly. “And a ring. Sort of.”
Daziel held up his hand and wiggled his fingers, the cheap ring I’d thrown at him flashing.
“I cannot,” Aunt Tirtzah muttered. Then she pinned me with her gaze. “Is there a reason you didn’t tell me this immediately?”
“Um.” I hesitated, feeling awkward. “It only happened a month ago.”
She looked almost hurt, then nodded briskly. “I’d appreciate, in the future, if you let me know about any magical entanglements you find yourself in.”
I nodded, trying to look obedient. My hands squeezed each other hard enough to hurt.
Her fingers tapped ceaselessly against the desk. “To make sure I have this clear. Your betrothal is binding, but you’re not planning to either banish him or marry him?”
When she put it like that, it sounded like I had no idea what I was doing. Which. I did not. “I’m waiting until after the graduation festival,” I said. “Then we’ll part ways.”
Aunt Tirtzah rubbed her forehead. “What are you getting out of this?” she asked Daziel.
He smiled, showing his teeth. “Croissants.”
She closed her eyes, looking pained. When she opened them, she’d become more focused. “This is the largest social event I’ve hosted in half a year, and I don’t want it to be a disaster.”
“I don’t want to make it a disaster,” I said quickly.
“If you don’t,” she said, iron in her voice as she leaned forward, “the two of you will go out there and dance and mingle, and the three of us will behave as though we’ve all known about this betrothal for ages. What are you called, here in the human lands?”
He inclined his head slightly. “Daziel bar Cathmeus.”
She repeated it to herself as though committing it to memory, then added, “Send in Chava and wait in the hall.”
We did. Once her assistant had closed the office door, I didn’t know where to look, cringing as my aunt’s words replayed themselves in my mind. Have you slept together? What a mortifying question.
But when I snuck a look at Daziel, he appeared remorseful, clearly not dwelling on the same part of the conversation as me. Which, fine. I didn’t want him focused on sleeping with me anyway.
He twisted his signet ring and gazed at the floor. “I’m sorry. I knew you didn’t want me here. I should have respected your wishes.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He frowned. “I didn’t realize how serious you were, I suppose. How much it would upset you. I’m used to statements being challenges. Games. You weren’t playing a game, and while I mostly knew that…I’m still getting used to how serious humans can be. How deeply you feel things.”
“Don’t you feel things deeply?” I asked, baffled. “You were very serious the night with the winds and the caves.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But…we don’t hold on to things as long as humans do? I’m used to people getting upset but not staying upset.” He bowed his head. “You’re the first human I’ve known. I’m still getting used to it.”
“Well, you’re the first demon,” I said wryly. “So I guess we’re equal.”
“Shayd.”
“Shayd,” I corrected. The singular of “shedim,” the term Daziel used for demons. “I’m sorry. Is ‘demon’ rude?”
He shrugged. “It’s incorrect. And has negative connotations.”
I nodded, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
“Shall we strike a deal?” he asked, his mood shifting. Well, he had just mentioned he didn’t hang on to things as long as humans. “Since we are here, let us endeavor to have fun. It is a party.”
“A party for stuffy politicians,” I said wryly. There’d barely been anyone under forty in the courtyard.
He raised his brows, black eyes gleaming. “You’re not up for it?”
Ha. I’d turned both collecting crocus flowers and being silent into games for my sisters. If anyone could make a boring party a good time, it was me. “I can handle it.”
He tilted his head consideringly, then smiled, sharp and bright as a knife. “You look very beautiful tonight.”
His unexpected words stabbed me, leaving me hot and breathless. My whole body warmed from my forehead to my palms. I didn’t want to care, but I felt a fluttering in my stomach, a delight and uncertainty I didn’t know how to handle. The back of my neck prickled. He thought I was beautiful.
Instead of saying thank you like a normal person and potentially revealing how much the compliment meant to me, I scowled. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
“I was mad at you,” he said cheerfully. “I didn’t want to be nice.”
I wasn’t sure whether to scream or laugh. In the end, I kicked his shin lightly, and he grinned at me so fondly I thought my heart might burst.
The door opened, and Aunt Tirtzah and Chava reappeared. “Let’s go, then,” my aunt said, marching into the hall.
The four of us returned to the garden courtyard, Chava peeling away. Aunt Tirtzah walked confidently through the guests until she reached a clump of well-dressed men and women in their sixties and seventies. I was glad; I wasn’t ready to look Daziel in the eye again. Beautiful.
“Messieurs and madames, may I introduce my niece, Naomi bat Yardena, and her betrothed, the shayd Daziel bar Cathmeus.”
A man with an impressive coiffure and twenty years on the others recovered from his shock first. “Enchanted, mademoiselle. And—honored guest—I believe we crossed paths at the opera last week.”
Amusement welled within me, and I felt a bit more normal. Of course they had.
“Which one?” Daziel said, which was how I learned he’d attended multiple operas.
“The Sons of Har Chermon. I believe…you were accompanied by a cat?” The gentleman glanced at me, as though maybe I’d been the cat in question.
A crack of lightning drew everyone’s attention upward to the dome shielding the garden. The guests stared at the night sky until thunder rumbled. As though it was the permission they’d waited for, everyone then returned to their dancing and talking.
“It’s a beautiful dome,” a lady in orange silk said to Aunt Tirtzah, who inclined her head graciously. The dome was a wild extravagance, but that was the purpose of parties like this, to show off your resources and taste.
“If only Bar Asher had one yesterday,” one of the men said. “The storm completely decimated their garden party.”
“Were you there?” someone else asked. “I heard it was carnage, everything flooded.”
“You should have seen it—chairs strewn across the lawn, everyone chasing after napkins and scarves.”