Chapter 31
As much as Raiya wanted to just lie down with Azreth and sleep for the next day or week or several months, she had other things to consider now. Nirlan was dead, and there was no one else left to clean up the mess he’d left behind.
She and Azreth spent the morning sealing off the room with the gate so that no other creatures could come through. Once they’d closed the area, Azreth approached the gate, hands raised and glowing with powerful magic. Raiya’s hopes climbed when the gate shrank smaller and smaller until it was just a narrow, glowing line in the air. Azreth’s arms shook with the effort of goading magic into the gate, but it had stopped shrinking.
Finally he lowered his arms, glaring at the gate in defeat. “This is as much as I can do. Opening and closing gates between planes is not simple magic.”
“I imagine there would be a lot more demons visiting our plane if it were simple.”
“Yes.”
She could no longer see through the gate like a window, but she wondered whether someone could still pass through the crack if they had a mind to. “Perhaps this will be enough. It looks like it will be more difficult to move through, at least.”
“More difficult, but not impossible. Someone who knows where to find it could still use it.”
“Does that worry you?” she asked, wondering if he was concerned about the safety of the people in town.
“I like your plane the way it is, without demons. There is a peace here that I never knew in the hells.” He looked down at her, putting his hands on hers. “Will you come with me?” he asked, gesturing for her to follow him upstairs.
Casting another glance back at the ominous split in the air, she followed him out of the dungeon and up to the more pleasant parts of the castle. They came out on the balcony overlooking the gentle hills below. Soft snow covered the land and coated the roofs in Frosthaven. Smoke was rising from a few chimneys in the town.
Raiya moved closer to Azreth, and he obligingly wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against the furnace of his body. For a long while, they looked out at the landscape in silence.
“I wish I had been born here instead of the hells,” he said. “I wish this was my home.”
“It can be.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “No one will welcome my presence here. Except for you.”
“And Jai and Madira. And the Roamers.”
“I will be hunted. As you will, if you harbor me.”
“Let them hunt, then.” She turned around to face him. “Nothing has changed between us.”
His hand went to her face, touching her hair and her cheek, and he focused intently on placing a lock of hair behind her ear. He was delaying saying what he wanted to say, but as Raiya leaned into his touch and brushed her fingers along his back, he worked up the courage he needed.
“I want to stay here,” he said. “I want to be with you.”
“I want that, too.”
“But I am putting you in danger by remaining near you.”
“No. I have never felt safer than I have when I’m with you.”
“I doubt that.”
“You shouldn’t.” She felt foolish now for ever having stayed with Nirlan. But before she’d met Azreth, she hadn’t known it could be like this. She hadn’t known this sort of love was possible. “Even before you knew me, when you could have hurt me—even when you needed to consume me in order to keep yourself from starving—you resisted. Even then, you protected me.”
“You seem to forget sometimes, but I am a demon, Raiya. My world is one of destruction and danger. I was designed to deal death and take violence. You weren’t.”
“You are more than the circumstances of your birth. You are not wrong just for being what you are.”
“What about the other mortals who will want to come for me? If you do not fear me, you should at least fear them.”
“If you’re being hunted, then I must stay with you to protect you.”
His eyebrows went up a little.
“I’ve made my decision,” she said. “I want you here beside me for whatever comes next, and for whatever comes after that.” She motioned to the sturdy, ancient stone walls around them. They’d stood for hundreds of years, and they’d stand for hundreds more. “We have a whole castle to ourselves. A fortress to protect you.”
“You want to take over the castle? Someone will stop you.”
“No one will stop me, because it’s my inheritance. It was Nirlan’s land. I am his closest remaining relative. That makes it my land.”
Suddenly, she could see a future for herself. It had been a long time since she had envisioned anything other than boredom and misery ahead of her.
She was going to make this place hers. Hers and Azreth’s.
“We can watch over the gate to the hells from here, in case anything else comes through,” she went on. “We can fix up the castle and make it a real home. I could have a study to work on enchanting, and you could put some behelgi in the stable if you like. And we can leave whenever you want, of course,” she added quickly, not wanting him to feel trapped. He’d been caged enough. The last thing she wanted was for the castle to become yet another prison for him.
He studied her for a long time, and she could see him breaking. He leaned down, touching warm lips lightly against hers.
“For a violent creature designed for dealing death, you kiss very sweetly,” she said wryly.
He seemed not to know what to say. “Am I doing it incorrectly?”
“No. You do it very well.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“I hate to interrupt,” came a voice.
Madira had appeared in the doorway behind them. He handed her a burlap sack that was nearly empty. There were a few shriveled apples inside.
“Breakfast,” he said. “There was also a bag of flour, a sack of sprouting potatoes, and some kind of pickled vegetables in jars.”
“Asparagus and carrots,” she supplied.
“Ugh.”
“The cook and the rest of the staff must have left after Azreth and I first escaped. I can’t blame them. I suppose the kitchen has been unattended for a while.”
“Well, it’s tended right now. Jai is cooking.”
“Really? She doesn’t have to do that.”
“She was excited to get to use a real kitchen for once. Don’t ruin her fun.”
“Staff?” Azreth repeated, frowning. Raiya could read his mind. He didn’t like the idea of living with strangers.
“Just a few. There was the groundskeeper and the cook, who was also a housekeeper. I think we can do without the guards.”
He made a face.
“Surely you didn’t think Nirlan was cooking and cleaning for himself,” she said, amused by the thought. “We’ll need to try to get them to come back. This place won’t take care of itself.” She frowned, thinking of the bookkeeping Nirlan used to do. He didn’t do actual work often, but she recalled him spending long hours muttering irritably to himself over stacks of papers on his desk whenever the time for tax collection came. There were things lords needed to do that he’d never bothered to explain to her. If she was going to inherit his title and his possessions, she would have to learn what those things were. The thought made her grimace. She had always been better with words than numbers.
She looked over the edge of the balcony into the bailey. Adamus was below, carrying the corpse of a guard out of the castle. Azreth had healed his injuries, and he was looking nearly recovered from the previous night. The Paladin had lined up the dead neatly along the outer castle wall. Raiya would need to make arrangements to notify their relatives of their deaths.
“Adamus,” she called. “I wonder if I could ask another favor of you.”
He rested his hands on his hips and stretched his back. “I’m at your service, as always, lady.”
Azreth made a soft, almost imperceptible sound of annoyance deep in his chest, which Raiya ignored.
“I remember you saying that you know about law and accounting.”
“A little, yes.”
“With my husband gone, I will need some help learning my duties and getting our books straight. Would you be willing to stay and help me?”
Adamus looked surprised. He tilted his head at her and Azreth as he thought about it. “What are you paying?”
She blushed a little. “I’m not sure what amount would be appropriate for such work. You’d have to educate me about that, too.”
“I’d be happy to stay a while and help you set things in order. You can count on me.”
Azreth made another, slightly louder, sound of annoyance. “The castle is going to become a zoo at this rate.”
Raiya looked up at him. “How do you know what a zoo is? Do they have them in the hells?”
“No. Jai told me it’s a place in the capital of Ardani where they keep all kinds of animals.”
“Ah. I imagine you’d like to see a place like that.”
He gave her a tentative glance. “Perhaps.”
“We’ll go there someday,” she said, then returned to the topic at hand. “But Adamus isn’t an animal, and we aren’t a zoo. You’ll be fine sharing a castle with him for a little while.”
He made a sound of vague disagreement.
Adamusand the elves had stayed with them for several weeks before moving on. They’d stayed longer than they needed to—long enough to make sure she and Azreth had settled in safely and that the gate was no longer posing an immediate threat to the town. Raiya sent them back south with enough coins from the castle’s vault to feed and house them for several weeks.
She stood on the balcony over the bailey, bundled up in many layers, because she’d wanted to watch the sunset while she worked. She looked up from her notebook, her breath puffing in front her face as if to remind her that it was far too cold to be outside.
As vibrant reds and oranges in the sky gave way to gray-blue and lavender, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, expecting to find Azreth behind her. Instead, there was only a disembodied magenta hand. Amused, she took the hand. Its fingers folded around hers.
“Azreth?” she said, looking around. No one answered.
She looked down toward the castle gate, and there were two figures standing beneath it—one outrageously tall one, and one mortal-sized man. Azreth was wearing his human glamour.
The visitor was a stranger, probably from Frosthaven. He was standing back from the gate a fair distance, and Azreth wouldn’t get too close to the iron portcullis, which left an uncomfortably large gap between them. But they were talking, which pleased her.
Azreth had become somewhat infamous. Everyone knew, or at least suspected, what he really was, but the people in town also knew he was the man hunting down all the beasts that had escaped from the gate. It wasn’t unusual for people to cautiously come asking for him when they needed a demon hunter.
She raised the hand to her lips and kissed its palm as Azreth spoke to the human. The hand calmly accepted the kiss until she began to move away, and then it grasped her face, brushing its thumb over her lower lip. She kissed the pad of the finger. The only acknowledgment Azreth gave her was a single sly glance before he went back to speaking with the man in front of him.
Raiya pushed the obliging palm against her mouth again. “I’m going to make you scream later,” she murmured into it. Azreth glanced up at her again, curious. She knew he could feel her speaking against the hand, but couldn’t hear what was being said. She just smiled at him.
Azreth came to her after he’d finished talking to the human, who had hurried away from the castle gate as if he might be set upon by hellspawn if he lingered too long.
She turned to him as he joined her on the balcony. “What was it this time?”
“Just rumors,” he said. “They’re saying that the Temple of Moratha in Ontag-ul is attempting to open another gate. They say that the Paladins are refusing to interfere in cult business, so they want me to investigate it.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“Perhaps. What do you think I should do?”
She hesitated. “I think you should do what you want. You’re not obligated to guard the entire country from the hells, you know.”
“That is true.” He was waiting for her to say more.
“On the other hand, you are uniquely equipped to deal with other demons.”
He nodded, having received the approval he’d been looking for. “I will go if you will come with me.”
She smiled. “To be honest, I’d started to feel cooped up here. Now that I’ve had a taste of the rest of the world, it doesn’t feel right staying in one place for so long.”
“Then you should not be kept in one place.”
“But you like it here.”
“I like to be where you are. And I have also started to feel… cooped up,” he said slowly, as if he wasn’t completely sure what the phrase meant.
She’d watched him settle in to quiet life at the castle and its surroundings. When he wasn’t with her, he spent his days exploring the land nearby or lying curled up in front of the fireplace in her study. She’d learned that he liked the heat, despite his invulnerability to the cold, and he gravitated to the warmest nooks in the castle like a house cat.
They had obtained two behelgi from the Roamers’ herd. Fu-lon had selected a strong, white doe for Raiya, and a smaller male for Azreth. The choice of the male had surprised her. It was fully grown, but too small and weak for anyone larger than a child to ride, and its coat was gray and patchy. At first, she had suspected Fu-lon had chosen to give them this one because it wouldn’t fetch a good price anywhere else.
But then she realized that the male had another critical flaw: it was painfully unintelligent. It wandered aimlessly instead of following the herd, it had to be led by hand to its food and water, and it stared dumbly at predators the other behelgi ran from. It seemed to have no sense of self-preservation.
So when Azreth had reached out to touch the creature, it hadn’t moved. It had stood still, eyeing him calmly while he stroked its fur. Azreth had glanced up at Raiya in surprise, his eyes bright. She would never forget the look on his face.
She could tell he enjoyed the calm of their new life. And she took joy in watching him experience luxuries he’d been denied before now, like warmth, love, good food made by the cook she’d rehired the previous month, friendship with the elves—who had already planned a return visit—and peaceful coexistence with the people and wildlife who lived nearby.
And yet, she had suspected there was a part of him that missed conflict. It was the part of him that claimed to crave blood. She saw it in him whenever he lost himself in the pleasures of her body and sank his teeth into her. She felt it in herself, too. There was a hunger in both of them.
Now, untethered by curses or cults or bad husbands, they were free to go where they wished when they wished. They could choose peace and quiet or adventure and battle as it suited them. That in itself was a luxury.
There was just one last thing to be addressed.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Come on,” she said, picking up her notebook and pulling him inside. They wound slowly through the castle and down many stairs, deep into the heart of the dungeon below, until they came to the central chamber where Azreth had first been summoned. The gate still shimmered in the center of the room.
Azreth stood patient and still as Raiya painstakingly painted runes all over his body in dark ink. She had already spent long weeks on the runes in the rest of the room, painting over ones that needed to be modified and scrubbing away the ones she didn’t need.
“It will work this time,” Raiya said, more to herself than to him.
“I know.” He went to stand beside the gate in the center of the room, then waited. Runes striped his body and radiated out from him in all directions. They were flat black, waiting to be charged with magic.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“I am.”
Her heart was in her throat as she recalled what had happened the last time she’d tried this. What if she’d gotten it wrong again?
“Be calm, Raiya,” Azreth said. “The runes are all in place? Everything is correct? You have nothing to worry about.”
She looked around one last time. The runes were right. She’d researched and experimented for weeks. She’d done everything as well as she possibly could. They were ready.
She nodded. “Do it.”
Azreth didn’t move, but she knew the exact moment that he charged the runes, because they began to shimmer, filling the room with rainbows of light.
He didn’t contort with pain as the runes on his own body lit up. Instead, he held up his hand, watching the inert binding mark on his palm. Raiya leaned closer to watch with him.
The mark faded, and then it was gone.
Azreth looked up at her, sucking in a breath. He bent over her, taking her face in both hands as he kissed her hard.
“Thank you, Raiya,” he said emphatically.
She was surprised by his delight. “It was nothing. I doubt it would have done any harm to you, now that Nirlan is gone. It was just an unwanted tattoo at this point.”
“It means a great deal to me,” he said. “My body is my own again.”
That, she could understand. She nodded. “I’m glad.”
The runes around them began to fade again. Raiya shook her head a little. “Gods. I’ve been working on that for so long. I don’t quite know what I’ll do now that it’s finished.”
“Now we will begin the rest of our lives. I will supply some ideas, if you wish.”
“I have some ideas of my own.”
Whatever came next in life, they would do it side by side.