Chapter 14
IT’S THE TRIUMPH OVER IT
Kat
Kat was getting better at the whole befriending-drayks thing, but she still wasn’t good.
Brioni was great and Alamar was practiced, but Kat teetered between poor and middling.
It probably didn’t help that she kept bothering them when they were trying to roost, but to be fair, the emerald one she needed hadn’t made a single delivery in three days.
To be unfair, drayks were not used to having leashes tied to them.
Demons would surely think she was insane, but Kat had little other choice with Brioni’s map lost somewhere in the mess of her bedchamber, so she tugged her hood as low as it would go and tried her damnedest to pretend the streets of Heck were empty as she hurried after the creature.
The drayk wanted very badly to soar in a straight line, which was ideal for delivering letters but not for delivering humans.
Kat couldn’t scale buildings fast enough to keep up with something winged, and after the little menace realized its tether meant it had to do things the hard way, the drayk begrudgingly detoured through alleys.
It couldn’t be convinced that fences and streams didn’t count, though, so by the time Kat reached the Lucent District, she was damp and out of breath.
The manors of Heck loomed high when they could be seen.
Most were veiled behind garden walls with plenty of space between, but whenever she spied a gaudy roof or plume of chimney smoke, the instinct to creep rather than scamper took over.
Kat reeled in the drayk so she could tiptoe through the shadows of high hedges. Perpetual night had its bright side.
Eventually the drayk landed on an ornate box atop an equally ornate post with “Zizreni” carved artfully above a narrow opening for letters.
The postbox stood like a sentry at the mouth of a dense garden surrounded by more of those high hedges, though Kat could see helm roofs off in the distance.
She shuddered—the way they came to sharp peaks made them impossible for climbing, but then she wasn’t here to break in, was she?
“Good job…you.” She awkwardly reached for the top of the drayk’s head.
Its eyes rolled up to watch her hand, and it seemed only to tolerate her stilted patting.
With a last distrustful look and a great flap of emerald feathers, it took off for the roost at Heck Post. At least the trip back would be much shorter.
Kat hesitated then because that’s what Kat always did. She had thoughts and she came to decisions, and then she had second thoughts and unmade those decisions like stitching she couldn’t get quite right. Then there would be third thoughts that re-made-up her mind with doubt puckering at every seam.
She checked the name on the postbox again as if it might have changed while she dithered. After about twenty paces, the path beyond the box diverged toward however many families made up the Zizreni name, but there was no gate, no bell, no suggestion she couldn’t just…walk right in.
Purple lanterns lit the path, inviting enough but only because they reminded her of Azrion. She touched her cheek and decided to do the thing she intended all this time and follow the white paving stones.
The gardens were full of trees that had been encouraged to bend over the walkways and create arches with their limbs.
The leafy shroud rustled with a light breeze and buzzing insects, and the lantern light was so low she knew she couldn’t be seen.
Still, her heart thudded like she was swathed in tight black clothing intending to plunder.
I’m not breaking in, she repeated to herself with every silent step and pressed a hand to her chest to quell the thumping.
But then she realized the thumping was out of time.
Kat came to a stop and listened, a far-off thud that wasn’t her heart echoing somewhere in the sprawling gardens. Did that mean she wasn’t alone? Was it a warning?
“I’m not breaking in,” she assured herself out loud this time as she continued on. “And no one is going to think that if they find me…except they definitely will, and then I’m going to get arrested, and I don’t have Kaly to break me out, and—”
A shuffling in the bushes both tore Kat out of the terrifying thought and thrust her into the depths of it.
She froze, gaze darting from one shrubbery to the next until a flicker of movement overhead made her blink.
It was so small, a little hand reaching out of the foliage followed by a furry arm and then a pointed snout.
The creature wasn’t nearly as worried about Kat’s presence, sight set instead on a fruit farther down the tapered limb.
It hung from the same branch where safety was questionable considering the little thing’s roundness, stretching an arm and four stubby fingers toward an orange rind. And then the branch snapped.
Kat darted, arms out, and a furry bundle landed in her hands.
It squeaked in surprise, and Kat squeaked right back.
She knew Heck had unique creatures, but she’d never seen the fuzzy pointed cheeks and little rounded ears of whatever this was.
Its down-turned eyes made it look more frightened than threatening, and it wrapped its extremely fluffy ringed tail around itself but made no move to escape her hold.
“Uh,” Kat said.
“Ree-err,” the thing chittered, and it pointed upward.
“Oh, of course.” Kat readjusted the creature in one arm and picked the fruit it couldn’t reach.
Its eyes widened, shining black from a diamond-shaped face, little hands making a grabbing motion.
When she handed off the fruit, the critter cradled itself against her upper arm and started munching, using its rounded belly as a table.
“My gods, you’re stupidly cute,” Kat muttered down at the wild thing, and like it knew, it started rumbling out something like a purr as it ate.
The far-off thudding wasn’t as nerve-wracking then. Kat moved toward it while carrying the munching critter and noted how the sound would continue rhythmically for a bit then slow, stop, and begin again.
“Do you know what that is?” she asked the animal.
It made a garbled noise around a mouth full of juicy fruit.
“Well, if you’re not worried about it.” She continued until the path she’d chosen led to the edge of the arching trees.
A gently rolling lawn spread between her and one of the houses, though it wasn’t as big as she expected.
Its covered porch wrapped around the front with dramatic columns flanking a set of double doors inlaid with stained glass.
The sound continued too, crisper when she left the protection of the garden and accompanied by the noise of someone grunting.
Kat scurried across the open space to a tree near the corner of the house because no matter how much she didn’t want to look like a burglar, it was in her blood.
Over a slight ridge, she spied the sound’s source: a demon.
A lavender demon. A shirtless lavender demon wielding an axe.
Kat pressed herself to the trunk and watched Azrion hoist the axe overhead.
Maybe she was wrong about how not broad-shouldered she’d thought he was, or maybe it was the last of the moon’s rays, but he looked…
big. Every muscle flexed as the axe swung down, and he let out an uninhibited growl.
The log before him split, and he took a heaving breath, head bent, tail flicking, rivulets of sweat inching torturously down the contours of his bare back.
So that’s what’s under all those fancy clothes.
A tattoo in the shape of a rune but not quite clung between his shoulder blades and arched over his arms, moving with every subtle shift of his skin.
Her head tipped as she admired the swirling pattern of interlocking circles, how it began wide and then tapered down his spine to mirror the narrowness of his waist, and though the tattoo ran out, she still found herself surveying how his tail lashed through the hole in his low-slung, loose pants.
“Fucking asshole,” Azrion huffed as he hefted another log onto the wide stump used for chopping. He swung the axe in a graceful arch, and the metal buried itself into the wood with a brutal crack that made Kat and the creature she cradled jolt.
Carefully, she put the fuzzy thing down and pressed herself closer to the tree, half hidden while watching Azrion’s next swing, brutality lacing itself in the finesse. She squeezed her thighs together, the tightness in her belly shifting between unease and thrill.
Azrion mumbled something else flatly, the lyricism to his voice gone. Kat swallowed, brows knitting, grip on the bark tightening. She didn’t really like when people were angry, but apparently she liked watching a half-naked demon chop wood a little more.
Azrion’s next swing was ferocious, and as the log split, he let out a booming curse.
Kat recoiled, hand too slow to cover her mouth and muffle the accidental shriek that came out.
The demon turned with an angry grunt, every severe line of his face terrifying as his black eyes found her like a wolf hunting its prey.
Splintering bark, slipping feet, tearing fabric.
A hand hold, a branch, another, another, and then a crook.
Stop breathing.
Stay still.
Wait for it to be over.
“Kat?”
She clasped her hands over her mouth and took shallow, rapid breaths through her nose, eyes shut and body pressed to the trunk as she crouched on the highest branch she could reach. It hadn’t been hard work getting up there, but she was desperate to fill her lungs like she’d fled across the city.
Her name was called again, and it spun around in her mind with flashing visions of anger and blood and pain.
But then there was a breeze, and the caress of the wind in the tree was soft—so much softer than what she was expecting. Her breathing came a little easier.
“Darling?”
Kat opened her eyes, sending away the visions, and finally glanced down.