Chapter 15 Was That Slow Enough?
WAS THAT SLOW ENOUGH?
Kat
So, this was where Azrion kept his mess, but by all the gods what a glorious mess it was.
The room was wide with ceilings twice as high as the rest of the home, massive windows making up the entire back wall so that the moonshine could light up the chamber.
Even then, the last rays of early evening cast across the floor in long bright beams, but the view beyond the windows was immediately forgotten.
Easels, canvases, paintings. Everywhere. Tables littered with paints and shelves filled with more. Stacks of parchment covered in sketches, brushes drying in jars, an unruly plant climbing in a corner, a massive cushion strewn with excess pillows in another. And possessing every inch, passion.
Kat might have never moved from the doorway if the smell of citrusey tea didn’t remind her she wasn’t in some dream but in Azrion’s head—no, his heart.
She’d been trying to see through him all this time, but all she needed to do was come here.
She swept up to the closest piece with a single breath.
It wasn’t quite finished, though how she could tell, she didn’t know as every bit of the canvas was covered.
Purple so dark it was nearly black, a scar of golden light breaking across it, and within a red bird.
“Like Brioni,” she whispered, fingers tracing the shapes in the air.
Another piece hanging on the wall behind it was finished, a mottle of bright greens and blues tied up in a vining purple plant.
Beside that was an even more abstract piece with dark green strokes dancing around lavender ones.
Every surface was covered and excess canvases leaned in a corner, but why was any of it hidden away?
A seat was built into the wall of windows at the back, purple velvet curtains hemming in the cozy alcove and a pile of sketches sitting on its wide cushion.
She hurried across the studio and leafed through the drawings hungrily, studies of plants and animals, even one of those fuzzy creatures she’d caught out in the orchard.
Then she came to a series of portraits, a few demons she recognized from the wedding and other strangers sketched messily but not for wanting detail.
She could practically see how his hand moved as she admired the light strokes of charcoal, arcing and graceful.
“No one is allowed in here, but I should have expected this from you.”
Kat spun, clutching her cup in one hand and the portraits in the other, the fact that Azrion actually existed crashing down on her like so much spilt tea.
The demon leaned against the door jamb, but he didn’t look upset. He looked…well, there were words for how he looked probably, freshly washed with his wet hair slicked back and dressed in a loose white top and pants, but Kat couldn’t cobble together any of them.
“I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “I didn’t mean to, I just—”
“No, no, no. No sorries.” Azrion stuffed his hands in his pockets and pushed languidly off the wall to pad barefoot into the studio.
“I keep everyone out, but what’s one more secret when shared with you?
Unless you think it’s all terrible garbage, then I’ll politely ask that you, as they say, get the blazes out. ”
“Terrible garbage? Azrion, this is fucking beautiful.” She held up a sketch from the pile depicting a crying demon woman on the far side of a window, the lines messy in the most devastating way.
“That?” he asked, face blanching.
“Yes!” She clicked her tongue and ran to the nearest easel. “And this. And this too, and that over there, and oh gods. It’s all stunning, Az.”
He stood where she’d left him by the windows, his form strikingly small against the extra high ceiling. “You like them? Really?”
“Like them?” She was all out of breath. “I love them.”
Azrion’s features changed, but it was for only a second, too brief to tell Kat what he was really feeling, and then he grinned all-knowingly. “Well, of course you do. I made them, and I’m great, so they must be great too.”
Kat laughed loud and high as she moved to the next set of paintings and showered him with more praise, complimenting the colors and composition.
He told her he already knew, and she didn’t even care how cavalier each of his responses grew because they both knew it was just an act—she had seen his hesitation, his fear, even that little bit of doubt, and she needed him to know the truth.
But when she reached a canvas with a sheet over it, he shuffled himself in front of the work and refused to let her peek.
Kat huffed, playfully frowning and demanding to be shown.
“It’s not finished yet.”
“Well, neither is that one or those over there.”
“You’ve a discerning eye, but this is different. It’s still…finding its essence. Those other pieces already claimed their magic.”
Kat took in the paintings again. Apparently she wasn’t that discerning. “Magic?”
“Another secret,” he whispered and then shrugged. “About a decade ago I was cursed.”
“What?” She took a step back.
“Well, that might be a bit dramatic. And a little passive. I should say that I cursed myself. Or perhaps I was blessed? Somehow both sound wrong.” He chuckled as unseriously as ever and wandered over to a shelf where he plucked a book from the bottom of a stack.
“I became obsessed with a theory, and I was only eighteen at the time, so I thought I had everything else already figured out, and how hard could manipulating soulbonds really be anyway?”
Kat sucked in a soft gasp. She might not have known about soulbonds for long, but from the way they were spoken of, manipulating them seemed impossible.
“I know, I know.” He shook his head and paced back to her, flicking through the pages.
Sketches decorated each one, but there were runes too and nearly illegible script.
“There is deeper magic to be found in the caves—you’ll see at Lykalia—but not this thing I thought I could do.
I spent days at a time underground searching and experimenting.
I was convinced that I could figure out how to see what a soul longed for and to find its missing piece.
Turns out I wasn’t entirely wrong about that.
” Azrion sighed like being correct was a calamity as he showed her one of the last pages in the journal.
Kat reached out and ran a finger along the outer edge of the drawn rune. It was just the same as the one on his chest, and while it wasn’t as nice as she imagined touching his skin would be, she still felt something when she traced the circle, a little pinging in her heart.
“Over two years of constant sojourns in the caves turned me into quite the persistent asshole to the gods. I no longer asked, I demanded, and they finally gave me the vision I wanted—what I thought I wanted anyway. And I was impulsive enough to have it etched into me without a second thought because I was convinced they had just given me the power to shape any demon’s bond to my heart’s desire, fate and ancient magic and even the gods themselves be damned. ”
“Why would you want to do that, Azrion?” she asked quietly.
“I was a child and a fool,” he said somberly. “And my heart wished for the impossible.”
Kat thought about Melora then, about how pretty she was, how rich, how powerful. Of course Azrion would want that, but more than anything, he would want to want that and be wanted back in the way that his kind was meant to.
She lifted her hand as if she might reach out for the rune on his skin but stopped. “So…it worked?”
“Not in the slightest.” He snapped the book shut and grinned.
“Can’t be done. Shapeshifting is theoretically possible as is enthrallment, but this thing I wanted to do?
It was untouchable. You can know two demons better than anyone else, know they aren’t meant to be together, aren’t even meant to share a polite conversation let alone an entire home and family, and you still can’t manipulate the tethers that drag them away from one another.
But since I insisted, the gods knew there was only one way to make me understand, and once I put this rune on my body, it was all I could see. Fucking soulbonds everywhere.”
She gaped at him.
“And I couldn’t just see them, I could feel them.
” Azrion laughed ruefully. “All the happiness but all the heartbreak too, the desire and repulsion, the love, anger, hope, betrayal. I spent months on the edge of madness until I found a demon who could quell it with more runes.” He gestured to his arms. “Ozirax crafted and inked these bindings on me, and the infinite feelings finally stopped, but I was left with a bit of a party trick, you could call it. I don’t know until I’m at a canvas, but if I’ve met someone who is developing a new bond, it comes out in the paint.
Bonds don’t make up all my work, but then again maybe they do.
Maybe I don’t always know when I’m siphoning something out of the ether.
I don’t try to understand it anymore, I just… paint.”
Kat watched him look out on his work, lids heavy and lips drawn down.
He was always so sure of everything, and it was admittedly nice for once to see him just…
not know a thing. But then it was painful too to hear how flippant he was about his failure and what he was left with.
“Azrion, that’s…I mean, it’s terrible, but it’s also amazing,” she murmured.
“As if you would expect anything less of me.” His grin chased away the melancholy.
She took a sip of her tea to cover her flush because he was right, in a way, and then she blurted, “The cups at Brew’d Awakening!”
Azrion chuckled. “Yes, they’re my work. Don’t tell Burgritz. I’m just an anonymous artist she knows through an alchemist.”
“Another secret?” She clicked her tongue.
“Oh, the mystery is half the fun, darling. Though sometimes I wish I could tell everyone with one grand reveal. An admission I might not be as shallow as I appear.”
“You can.”
He snorted. “I don’t think my father would like it.”