Chapter 37
ASMODEUS
It's been four days since Leander came into the world in a mess of blood, with golden angelic light filling the bedroom, and the absolute certainty that I was about to lose everything that mattered to me filling me.
The child is asleep on my chest right now, his weight negligible. One of his tiny fists is bunched against my sternum. The two nubs of his horns press into my collarbone when he moves his head, and I let him, because I will apparently allow this person to do anything he wants to me.
This is who I've become.
Simone sits cross-legged on the other end of the sofa, facing me, her sketch pad balanced on her knee. She should be resting. Instead, she keeps drawing. The pencil moves in slow strokes, and she hasn't looked up in twenty minutes.
She's healed. The angels saw to that before they left, leaving her whole and healthy and so tired she slept for fourteen hours straight while I sat at the edge of the bed with the baby and counted her breaths.
“You're staring,” she says without looking up.
“I'm always staring.”
“You're staring more than usual.” Simone's pencil stills, and she finally glances over the top of her sketchbook at me, then at the baby on my chest. Her face goes soft like she's undone by the sight of us.
“He's still asleep,” she murmurs, setting her sketchbook down. The more she looks at us, the stranger her expression becomes.
I narrow my eyes at her. “What?” I rumble, quiet enough not to wake Leander, but forceful enough that she knows I see the wheels turning in her head.
“When do you think we can make more?” she whispers, nodding at the baby on my chest.
I blink at her—I must be growing hard of hearing in my old age.
“I'm sorry? Did you just say what I think you said, little fairy?”
She lifts her eyebrows and smirks at me. “You're the one who said you want me to stay pregnant forever. Round and full of your cum.”
Her wicked grin makes me think I've utterly corrupted her. But while her words should arouse me, instead, what I feel is all-consuming dread.
“We are not doing that again,” I say vehemently. “Not once.”
Simone's expression softens. “Az… Even if I agreed, I don't think it's avoidable. Not unless you want us to be celibate.”
Leander stirs on my chest, makes a small sound, and settles back down without waking. I put my palm flat against his back, my hand nearly the size of him.
“Not if I'm not fertile anymore,” I say simply.
She tips her head back, a bright laugh escaping her. “One difficult birth and you're queuing up for a vasectomy?”
“I'm inquiring,” I say with great dignity, “whether it is even possible for an archdemon to have one. Forneus is looking into it.”
Simone blinks at me. Then bursts into laughter, pressing her hand over her mouth to avoid waking the baby.
“Oh mon Dieu,” she gasps, “you actually sent Forneus to research this?”
“I have many responsibilities. I delegate.”
She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, shaking her head. “Az. What happened with Leander, the cord, the placenta… that can happen in any pregnancy. It's not because of what I am, or what you are, or any of that. It just happens.”
“I know that,” I say. “I still didn't enjoy it.”
“You think I enjoyed it?” she asks, deadpan.
“No.” My voice drops. “Which is precisely why—”
“Which is precisely why nothing,” she interrupts, her tone gentler now but no less firm. She reaches out and covers my hand where it rests on Leander's back. “We made it through Az. We figured it out. You gave me your energy when I was fading, and if it comes to that, you'll do it again.”
I look at her hand on mine, trying to clear my head of the image that's burned there: Simone's blood on white linen.
“I want more,” she says when I don't answer.
I look up, meeting her gaze.
“I want more babies. I want to watch you figure out how to be someone's father when you're paying attention. I want Leander to have siblings.” She glances at our sleeping son, and her expression goes soft. “I want more.”
Leander chooses this moment to open his eyes. He blinks at me and then turns his head toward his mother. A small sound leaves his mouth, somewhere between a complaint and a demand.
“Good morning to you too,” Simone tells him, already reaching for him.
I transfer the baby carefully, watching the way she adjusts him against her chest like she's been doing it for years. Not four days.
She presses her lips to his forehead, murmuring softly in French.
There's a tightness in my chest I'm becoming accustomed to. It shows no signs of resolving.
“So,” Simone says, glancing up at me with a trace of that wicked humor she usually reserves for when she's beaten me at cards. “Should we tell Forneus to call off his research?”
I look at her. At our son.
“I'll send him to Paris for pastries instead.”
Simone's smile is slow and so beautiful, and maybe I don't deserve it, but I intend to spend all of eternity earning it.
“Good,” she says. Then she looks back down at Leander. “Voilà,” she tells him softly. “Ton papa commence à comprendre.”
Your daddy is beginning to understand.
That night, after Leander is finally persuaded that sleeping in the bassinet beside our bed is acceptable, Simone lies with her head on my chest in the dark.
I'm running my hand through her hair. She's been quiet for a while, but she's not sleeping yet.
“Tell me about Thomas,” I say, unable to wait any longer.
Her breathing doesn't change and I'm surprised at how relieved it makes me.
“You remembered his name,” she says, her voice low.
“You've said it twice in all the time I've known you.” I keep petting her. “I never pushed. But I want to know.”
She's quiet for another moment. Then she exhales.
“It started before him,” she begins, her tone careful. “With my family.”
I listen as she tells me about growing up in a family that treated her beauty like an asset to be leveraged. How they discussed her future marriage before she was old enough to understand what marriage meant. About the rampant religious zealotry.
“I escaped them,” she says. “I got out.”
“Good,” I say. The word comes out harder than I intend.
“And then I needed money, and I was pretty, and there were people who wanted to use that.” She says it matter-of-factly, but her voice is hollow. “Modeling agents, acting agents. They all wanted my clothes to come off. The door to stay closed.”
I clench my jaw so hard something cracks.
“I became a nurse. I had relationships,” she continues. “But the men I chose were selfish. It's what I knew, so it was easy to predict.”
“And then Thomas,” I say.
“And then Thomas.” Her voice flattens even more. “He was different, at first. I thought he was the first person who actually saw me. Not the face and the body. Me.”
She clears her throat before continuing. “It happened gradually. I wouldn't have stayed otherwise. First, it was comments. Small ones, but enough to make me question myself. Then he wanted to control my schedule, my friends, my phone. He even had me fired from the hospital where I worked.”
I close my eyes. How was I any different?
“And then there was the baby,” she says quietly. I stop breathing altogether. “I think he did it on purpose. To tie me down. So I couldn't leave.”
“Simone...”
“He hit me before that,” she continues quickly, like she wants to get it all out fast. “But when I was pregnant, he would threaten the baby. He knew exactly what would keep me meek.”
The tightness in my chest turns to rage.
“I tried to leave,” she says. “I had a plan. My friend Manon was going to help me. I just needed him to let me leave the apartment. But he came after me. Caught up with me on the stairs.” Simone pauses for a shuddering breath. “I fell. He let me fall. And I lost the baby.”
My fingers clench into fists as I imagine the anguish—I nearly experienced it four nights ago myself.
“I woke up in the hospital,” she continues, her voice very quiet now. “They didn't even need to tell me. And I never went back to him after that. I got to New Orleans, and I built something new, and I thought…” She exhales. “I thought that was enough.”
“It wasn't?” I ask softly.
“No.” She tilts her face up toward mine. “But this is. This is the rest of my story.”
I press my mouth to her forehead before she settles back against my chest.
After a moment she says, “I don't know where he is now. I don't particularly care.”
“Mm,” is all I say.
Simone is quiet for a few seconds.
“Az.”
“Hm.”
“Whatever you're thinking about doing,” she says, very evenly, “I want you to know that I mean it when I say I don't care about Thomas. He's irrelevant to my life.”
“Of course,” I say.
“I'm not asking you to do anything.”
“I understand completely.”
She lifts her head to look at me.
I smile at her.
“Az.”
“You should sleep, little fairy,” I say. “Leander will be awake in two hours demanding to be fed, and you need rest.”
Her eyes narrow on my face in the dark. She's very perceptive, my consort. She can read me in ways I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with.
“If you do something,” she says finally, “I don't want to know about it.”
“There's nothing to know about.”
“Az.”
“Sleep.”
There's a long pause. Then she puts her head back down.
Her breathing evens out within minutes, and I stay perfectly still until I'm certain she's asleep.
All the while, I’m planning.