Chapter 12
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT brAVERY
Kat
“Idon’t know how you stand him.” Zaiya swayed her hips in time with the lively music, tail like an echo behind her. “I was relieved when he finally moved out and I didn’t have to look at his stupid face every day, but you’re doing it willingly.”
Kat snickered as her gaze darted back to where Azrion stood with a face that wasn’t at all stupid but was in many ways quite similar to Zaiya’s, not that Kat would ever say.
There were only flashes of the lavender demon between the others as they danced, but he remained still, head tipped to the side and a curl to his lips.
“He’s not so bad,” she admitted, feeling her next breath fill up her chest with a flutter, then she swallowed whatever the hells that was back down. Kat was doing well containing her nervous energy, though being shorter than everyone else helped her feel hidden. “But it’s not…um—it’s not serious.”
“Oh, yeah. He told me all about that.” Zaiya lifted her hand, signaling for Kat to spin beneath it.
The pattern of the dance helped keep her grounded as well, allowing Kat to rely on the predictable beat.
Instinct convinced her to take Zaiya’s other hand when she twisted around without a second thought.
The demon’s touch wasn’t intimate, but it was oddly easy, like being with a friend.
Or what Kat assumed being with a friend might be like.
“But if Azrion’s a bastard about anything, let me know—I’ll make him miserable.
Even more miserable than he’s going to make himself. ”
Kat wasn’t sure what she meant, but Zaiya took her turn spinning, a graceful move with one knee lifted in perfect time with the thrumming music. Kat was about to compliment her, but when they were facing each other again, Zaiya’s face had fallen into a grimace.
“Hey,” she said heavily, and Kat’s stomach tightened with impending doom. “I’m sorry about everything that happened.”
The drumbeat began to pound at the base of Kat’s skull. “What…happened?”
“With the place you came from and the other humans?”
“Oh, that thing.” Like someone had wiggled a needle into the knot of her guts, it immediately unraveled.
“Shit, should I not have said that?” Zaiya scrunched up her face, and her movements shrank. “I meant it in a supportive way not a think-about-the-terrible-thing way, you know?”
Kat nodded, wanting to think about it even less than she wanted any kind of pity.
“I’m trying to learn to be a little nicer, and the way Az talks about you, I thought I could…practice with you? Ugh, that sounds awful out loud. Maybe I am heartless.”
How does Az talk about me? Kat peered through the crowd again and found him just where he’d left himself. “We all have things we need to practice.” She chewed her lip and recognized the way Zaiya was silently berating herself just from the bend to her silver brows. “Do you want to try again?”
The demon’s nostril’s flared, awkwardness blooming from the embarrassment. “Well, Ember seems to be having a hard time,” she finally said. “I’m just wondering if maybe you are too, but you’re hiding it well.”
Kat had hidden lots of things very well her entire life, but she wasn’t sure this was one of them.
“I’m fine. I mean, I’m not locked up, and I’m wearing a dress that probably costs more than—” Everything Kat could think to compare it to related back to thievery, so she just laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject.
“So, you met Ember?” Kat hadn’t gotten around to visiting, but Brioni had done that enough for both of them.
“Yeah, at the festival.” The demon’s thoughts were churning so rapidly Kat could practically see them in the blackness of her eyes. It was strange that she could pick up on it at all, but then Zaiya was very similar to Azrion, and Kat had been doing her damnedest to read him since they met.
“Seems like you’re having a hard time,” she blurted as she was twirled again.
Zaiya grunted.
The urge to run rose in Kat’s chest, but she squashed it because she certainly wasn’t going to flee through a crowd of increasingly intoxicated, wildly dancing demons.
And Zaiya wouldn’t have brought it up if she didn’t actually want to discuss it, right?
“It would be nice if you told me,” she offered meekly.
With a click of her tongue, Zaiya looked her up and down. “Az is rubbing off on you.”
Well, he’s certainly not rubbing anything else. Oh, gods, where did that come from?
“But if I tell you and not him, he’ll get all jealous,” the demon said, Kat’s thought blessedly unheard even if Zaiya was dropping the conversation. “So, you know Elliran, right? The green demon who works for the Horn of Finance on the council?”
Oh, so she wasn’t dropping the conversation.
Kat nodded. Elliran had come to the post a few times with coins for Alamar to pay for her and Brioni’s keeping.
“Well, she and I, we’re…we’re supposed to be here together, but she’s not, and it’s my fault because I told her to stop worrying about the humans—no offense.
She just kept going over the scrolls again and again, trying to make sure details lined up about where all of you were, how much you cost, who was looking after you, all that.
Apparently they were messy, and even when she corrected them, someone else would come along and copy over the information all wrong.
I hated seeing her so stressed out, you know?
But it was taking such a toll. She even started to say someone was making the mistakes on purpose.
I know now I shouldn’t have told her to forget it—I should have asked if I could help, but what in the blazes could I have even done? ”
“Nothing,” Kat said without thinking, as if the rhythmic movements were coaxing her guard down. “I mean, some people just can’t accept help.”
“Exactly,” Zaiya snapped then sighed, her shoulders drooping as the two spun together across the floor.
“No. I should have made her let me do something. Though I did offer to claw her stupid boss’s eyes out.
He always runs her ragged, but these last few weeks have been especially bad, and Elli’s been sick on top of everything.
I don’t know with what, though, because she refuses to go to the infirmary.
Says she doesn’t have time, but I found her sleeping in alcoves at the council chambers after hours twice.
A healthy demon doesn’t just pass out at work and forget how it even happened, you know? ”
“It sounds like she does need help.”
Zaiya nodded miserably. “But I just told her she was being unreasonable, and by the time I met Ember at the festival and realized maybe I should be…I don’t know, sensitive or something?
It was too late. I’d already gotten into an argument with Elli, said some things I really shouldn’t have, and she didn’t want to discuss it anymore.
She wouldn’t even let me walk her home that night.
She never walks home alone. She’s afraid of the dark. ”
Kat tripped herself, falling out of time. “She’s what?”
But Zaiya hardly noticed, tugging her back into the quick-moving dance. “She wrote me a letter after, asking for some time apart, but what if she never speaks to me again?”
It was like Kaly was staring back at Kat from Zaiya’s iris-less eyes then. It was a fear she didn’t think her sister had, and yet it felt too familiar. “She wouldn’t do that.” Except Kat didn’t know Elliran well enough to say that, so she stuttered out, “I mean, maybe you should…apologize?”
And like Zaiya was still channeling Kaly, her face squashed up with stubbornness. “But I was just trying to help.”
“I know.” Gods, did Kat ever know. “But you are sorry, and even if she doesn’t accept, the truth is important.”
The purple demon groaned, her head tilting back, that tiny flicker of tenderness she’d shown snuffed out.
“Fine, I’ll try. But I’m going to have to write her a letter since she told me I couldn’t visit her.
Unfortunately for you, that means you have to dance with my brother while I go do that.
” The demon spun her away without warning, and there was Azrion.
Kat blinked, and he was still there when her eyes opened. She looked around for Zaiya, but the demon was already gone. Kat’s feet had stopped, and the reality of the situation—dozens of other demons, dancing, the dress—all came crashing down on her.
“My turn?” Azrion asked, hand extended.
And of course the moment she took it, the music changed from the lively, bass-filled beat to a slow, sentimental rhythm.
Azrion moved in close, and the warmth the fast-paced dancing inspired was nothing compared to the heat that crawled up Kat’s front.
The demon wrapped an arm around her waist, mimicking how other pairs shifted nearby.
His long fingers fell in place over the dip above her hip, the boniness of her body covered up by the generous skirt, thank the gods.
He took her other hand and pressed it to his chest, laying his atop it, and under her palm there was a subtle thumping.
“If you feel compelled now to leave me for my sister, please do it as dramatically as possible so some demon might pity me and take me home with them.”
Kat’s face had already gone red, but another layer enshrouded her whole body at that as the two began to sway. “Your sister is in love with someone else.”
“And yet she’s too self-involved to admit it. Not that Elli’s much better—she’s so afraid of everything her own shadow could do her in. If Zaiya didn’t have her outbursts, I don’t think either of them would ever know the other had a romantic interest at all.”
Just as magic often told Azrion things that he didn’t entirely grasp, so did Azrion sometimes tell himself painful truths wrapped up in metaphors he refused to parse out. But this was Kat’s chapter, so not only should that truth have been unknown, it should have also been unwritten.