2
Finn
The center of my chest feels warm and achy.
Heartburn, most likely.
After Seren and Callum returned last night—fresh off another successful assignment and flush with affection for each other, the lucky bastards that they are—we all went out drinking. And stayed out drinking until the small hours of the morning.
I used to have a stronger constitution than this.
I used to party until dawn, then jump out of bed after only a few hours of sleep, ready to take on the world.
A damned shame, really, to know I’m not the demon I once was.
With a heavy sigh, I leave my rooms in one of the best branches of the demon king’s court and make my way back to the main atrium and the great hall.
With any luck, there will be something delicious on offer for breakfast that will chase away any lingering hangover.
It’s not early, per se, but it’s much earlier than I’m usually out and about, and there are a surprising number of courtiers who are already up, dressed, and about their business. Most of them look a right sight better than I do, too.
Though I’d also bet they had better things to do last night than downing a few bottles of honey wine.
I nod to familiar faces and receive much more effusively respectful greetings in return.
Irritating, as always, to wield the Nighfall name without even speaking a word. I suppose I should try to be more grateful, more magnanimous, but mostly I wish people would stop recognizing me and allow me on my way to breakfast.
Fortunately, in the atrium—the large, hollowed-out chamber at the center of the mountain which houses the demon court—most of the courtiers scurrying to and fro are too busy to notice who they’re passing at all.
Goddess, they’re always so busy.
So much to do, I suppose, in service of our esteemed and illustrious king and queen. So many important tasks, so many asses to kiss. The work truly never ends.
I’ve almost made it through the cavernous space when the sound of my name stops me in my tracks.
“Finn,” a familiar, unwelcome voice calls to me from a side corridor.
“Father.”
He strides toward me with purpose.
He always has a purpose. Always an angle and something he expects to achieve. It must chafe him to no end to have a son who’s never had a purpose a day in his life.
“Good,” he says, though I’m not sure what he’s responding to or what’s so particularly good about this morning. “I was hoping to catch you before I left court.”
“Me? Why?”
He levels me with a stern look.
It’s a look I know well.
I’ve been seeing it since I was a child, after all, though at my current age it only serves to draw up the same exhaustion I feel whenever he deigns to talk to me.
“I wanted to see if you’d taken Eoghan up on his offer to get you a job in his practice.”
“Oh,” I say lightly, as if I’d forgotten the matter entirely. “I was supposed to speak to him about that, wasn’t I?”
I trained as a lawyer. Ostensibly.
Courts and solicitors’ offices are just so dreadfully boring, and as those are the places law tends to be practiced, it never seemed to hold my interest after I left university.
And ever since then, I’ve just been… being.
Being here at court.
Being away in some city or other, visiting with friends and generally making a nuisance of myself until it’s time to go somewhere else.
To be quite fair, though, it’s not like anyone has ever genuinely expected more of me.
With three older brothers who were always competing and scheming to get themselves into our father’s good graces, there were plenty of swaggering demon sons around to satisfy his need for legacy.
Like my younger sister, I take more after my mother, and have never quite found it in me to care about all of that.
“Yes,” my father says flatly. “You were.”
I’m certain that Eoghan, the eldest of my brothers, was just as happy not to hear from me as I was not to mention it to him.
But leave it to my father to continue to press the issue, never content with the fact he produced a disappointment among his brood of children.
Not that it means he’ll be kicking me out of the family fold anytime soon.
The only thing worse for my father than having a disappointment of a son is having a disappointment of a son who’s also destitute and bringing gossip down on the family name, so for appearance’s sake he’s never cut off the purse strings.
I wonder if he ever will.
Some part of me is morbidly curious to find out.
What would I have to do for his scant goodwill to finally run dry? What would I have to do to be exiled from my family completely?
I’m sure someday I’ll find out, but today I’m more than content not to push my luck.
“I’ll talk to him,” I lie. “The next time I’m in Traverdale, I’ll be sure to stop by and speak with him about what help he might need.”
“Good. I’ll write him and let him know.”
Great. And I’m sure Eoghan will be waiting every day for my visit.
“Will you be in court for long?” I ask, more than ready for a change in subject.
My father shakes his head once, brusquely, like he does everything. “I’ll be off later this afternoon. Just have a conversation with the guard, a brief audience with the king, and a few meetings to take.”
“That’s all?”
He gives me a droll look and seems to be about to say something else when someone across the atrium catches his eye. He raises a hand to flag down a passing courtier and strides off without a goodbye.
Well. So much for joyous family reunions.
But he’s busy, I suppose, so filled with almighty purpose that something like a conversation with his youngest son will always take second place.
My father has his business tendrils in a little of this and a little of that. Trade, farming, speculative investment. Mostly it all boils down to stewarding the wealth that generations of Nighfalls have built before him and trying not to muck it up too much.
It’s all very boring, actually, and very trite. And I’m even more boring and trite for finding it so.
So I’d best find myself a distraction rather than dwell on it.
Callum and Seren are probably already up and about this fine morning, and even if they’d rather ensconce themselves in the Nighfall rooms I’m happy to let them inhabit while they’re here, they’re about to have a visitor.
The prospect of being a bother to one of my oldest friends and the witch who’s made him happier than I knew him capable of being is enough to lift my spirits a little as I head out of the atrium and back toward the wings which house my family’s rooms.
In fact, everything would be perfect if I could only forget I ran into my father at all.
And if I could ignore the faint, nagging ache in my chest that still hasn’t gone away.
Damned heartburn.