Chapter 17
Azreth didn’t hesitate. Magic flowed into the runes Raiya had painted, illuminating them one by one until they all shone with a glittering, iridescent sheen. Raiya’s heart leapt as she watched her work come to life. Azreth looked down at himself, studying the glowing runes covering his skin, and as he pumped power into them, the spell activated with an audible snap. The runes glowed so bright that Raiya had to look away.
And then Azreth cried out in shock. The air filled with a miasma of negative emotion, bright and sharp and violent. Raiya could feel it seeping into her skin, into her bones. Magic sparked at random around them as Azreth lost control of his power—or perhaps he was struggling to cast something in his desperation to make the pain stop.
“What’s happening?” Raiya cried. “What’s wrong?” She’d made a mistake. She’d expected that undoing the binding might be painful, but not like this. She was hurting him.
She rubbed furiously at the ink on his chest, but the runes wouldn’t budge. The magic was helping to hold them in place. Azreth dropped to the floor, writhing.
Raiya spun to grab the bottle of ink, sloshing half of it out of the container as she rushed to uncork it. More of it spilled out when Azreth knocked into her as he shuddered. She climbed atop him to try to hold him still, which was a fruitless endeavor. It was all she could do to keep from being thrown off him. In sheer desperation, she dumped the rest of the bottle on him. She smeared it over the runes on his chest, marring the shapes of the lines, then rubbed her ink-soaked hands over the marks on his arm, too.
Azreth’s movements slowed, then stopped. The runes stopped glowing. The terrifying atmosphere that he was emitting began to recede.
He slumped, breathing hard. When he held up his palm in front of his face, Eunaios’s runes were still there.
“I’m so sorry,” Raiya whispered, covering her mouth with her hands. “I didn’t think it would be so bad if it went wrong. I’ve never tried enchanting a person before, and I didn’t know…” There was a reason it was not usually done without the input of a healer. But she hadn’t expected this.
Perhaps she had also forgotten that it was possible for Azreth to be hurt. He seemed almost too powerful to be damaged.
She raised her hands to touch him, and he recoiled a little. No one had ever flinched from her like that. Was that what she looked like to Nirlan? Or to Azreth? How could anyone live that way, having people recoil from them in fear and disgust?
She climbed off of him and knelt at his side. “I’m so sorry, Azreth.” He didn’t recoil this time, but he looked at her like he was still dazed, his eyes intense. Suddenly he sat up, reaching out to grab her by her chin. Raiya flinched, but he held fast.
“Why—” He shook his head, frustrated and perplexed, as his eyes bored into her. “Why are you this way?”
She stared at him. “What?”
“Why worry over me like a mother nyra? Why cry when I am hurt? Why do you never use my weaknesses to your advantage? Do you not know what I am? Don’t you know that I consume your kind for power? Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? Just yesterday, I angered you. I threatened you. But still, you worry for me. Still, you attempt to serve me. There is no logic here. I cannot understand it. You are the most baffling creature I’ve ever met.”
She couldn’t tell whether he was angry or grateful. “I didn’t—I don’t—”
“You should let me be bound. You should rejoice in my pain. It is a victory for you.”
“I’ve never wanted you to be in pain.”
“But why?”
“There will never be a better explanation, no matter how many times you ask for it. This is just how mortals are.”
“No,” he corrected her sharply. “It is how you are. Only you.”
When he’d grabbed her, she’d thought he was going to hurt her. She’d braced herself the same way she did when she sensed Nirlan’s temper rising, when she knew a blow was coming. She would not have blamed him for it. Instead, he gave her this softness, this rounded edge to his voice.
He searched her face. He had the look of a man peering over the side of a cliff and deciding whether to jump, and fearing the ground would collapse beneath him no matter his decision.
The door behind them slammed open. A male cultist barged into the room, followed by Priestess Gereg. “Praise Moratha!” Gereg said, which, from what Raiya had observed, passed as a greeting for the cultists, but this exclamation seemed particularly enthusiastic.
“Praise her,”echoed the others who lurked behind her in the doorway.
“Priestess Gereg,” Raiya said, struggling to keep the exhaustion from her voice. She tried to take a step away from Azreth, but he grabbed her arm to keep her in place. He was frowning at the cultists.
“We sensed your dark works from below,” Gereg said, smiling. “You should have made us aware that you were ready to enact the dark goddess’s will. We are eager to observe, and to aid, if we may.” She gave a shallow bow.
Raiya started to reply, but to her surprise, Azreth spoke first. “There is nothing to observe. It was an anomaly, nothing more.”
“Oh?” Gereg raised her eyebrows. The other cultists exchanged disappointed looks. “Then will you deign to give us any more information about your intentions here, demon? Can we expect your plans for the dark goddess’s veneration to come to fruition soon?”
Raiya didn’t know whether to be apprehensive or amused. They were getting bored, gods bless them. Like children on Lightbringer’s eve.
“Yes. Soon,” Azreth said flatly.
Raiya wasawoken from her bunk in the temple’s sleeping quarters that night by the sound of the door opening. It let in a dim shaft of light from the hall, and the cultists in the other beds stirred. Raiya squinted toward the door.
Azreth stood in the doorway, his body a black silhouette with gently flaming eyes.
He walked into the room. It could not be called striding, exactly, because it wasn’t quick enough for that. He had a graceful, self-assured way of moving that she always found beautiful, if a little intimidating.
“Get out,” he said, looking at the cultists.
The cultists blinked at each other, half-asleep. “What?” asked one.
“Get out,” Azreth repeated, jerking his head toward the door. The cultists very quickly evacuated the room without him having to repeat himself a third time. He shut the door and locked it, then sat on the edge of her bed. The mattress sagged so much that she worried the bed would break.
“Azreth?”
“I must speak to you.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“I cannot wait.” There was a pause, then he lifted his gaze from the wall ahead of him, looking over at her. “How do your people show remorse?”
That was not at all what she’d expected. It took her a few moments to mentally adjust. “What are you remorseful for?”
“Injuring you when Nirlan fed you to me. Taking you from the castle by force. Frightening you. Threatening you.”
She stared at him. He’d been keeping a tally of all the times he felt he’d wronged her.
“Forcing you to serve me,” he added.
“You didn’t force me. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement from the beginning.”
“I knew you had no other choice.”
That much was true.
“I would never have hurt you. When I said I would, I was lying.” His lips twitched, betraying some emotion on his otherwise impassive face. “I would not keep you against your will.”
Raiya looked up at the strange, frightening being before her—a monster who, against all odds, was not monstrous.
“You’re nothing like what they say, are you?” she said. “Demons are just like anyone else. You think and feel just like we do. You’re just trying to live. You’re not monsters. You’re not evil.”
“Are we not?” he asked tonelessly. “What is a monster? What makes something evil?”
“Hurting people. That’s evil.”
“I hurt people. I hurt you.”
“Do you think you’re evil?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
She felt a swell of warmth and sadness for him. “How do your people show remorse?” she asked.
“In the hells, penance is paid through submission and servitude. If I wished to align myself with someone I had previously offended, I would put down my weapons and prostrate myself before them so that they could punish me or feed from me. I would offer myself to them to use however they wished.”
She arched an eyebrow. She had a difficult time imagining him doing something like that. “Have you done that?”
“Not willingly.”
“I see.”
“My people express regret when they want something from someone. Apologies are made for diplomatic reasons.” He shook his head. “But that’s not what I want. I feel regret because… I’m afraid I have been cruel.”
She thought back to all the things she’d seen him do, to when he murdered Eunaios and Nirlan’s guards, to when he spared the farmers and that Paladin on their way to Ontag-ul, to how careful he’d been with her body every time they’d come together. Dominating others was in his nature. But maybe he didn’t want it to be.
“I don’t think you’re cruel,” she said. She watched his shoulders relax. The crease between his brows disappeared.
“Tell me what service you require in order to forgive me,” he said.
“An apology is enough on its own, as long as it’s heartfelt.”
“Then… I apologize.”
“I accept your apology.”
He searched her face. He looked like he didn’t quite believe her.
“Do you really think demons can feel all the things that mortals can?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“We are made different.” He lifted her hand. “Look at you. Look at me.”
She looked down at the massive, dark hand enclosing hers. He allowed her to turn it over. There were dark lines creasing his palm. There were whirling fingerprints. There were calluses beneath his fingers, freckles here and there, scars from old wounds, and faint veins beneath the skin.
“There are more similarities between us than differences,” she said. She ran her fingers along his, and she felt him stiffen slightly. His skin felt normal enough—perhaps a bit less soft than a human’s—but she knew it was impenetrable to most mortal weapons. But he was not invulnerable. His missing arm was proof of that.
He raised his hands to her face, holding her cheeks. She stared at him, taken aback by the touch. The skin of his flesh-and-blood hand was furnace-hot, and the other felt cold in comparison, pricking her with tiny tingles of energy. His luminous eyes darted around her face, studying her, searching for something. If he’d been any closer, it would have been a kiss or an embrace.
His thumbs stroked her cheekbones, just once. Raiya was frozen.
Azreth’s eyebrows came together. And then he let go of her. Raiya watched as he got up.
“I’m sorry for disturbing your rest,” he said, then left her alone in the room again.