Chapter 32
HUMANS PLAN AND DEMONS LAUGH
Kat
The smell hit her first, and it was so divine, Kat forgot why she was there.
The array of sugary opportunities to drown her sorrows beckoned to her from the shelves, and the sweetly spiced air dulled her urgency.
A place like this might have been overwhelming in the worst of ways before, but now she only stood in its center and breathed.
Heck had been washed clean by the night’s storm, but it was strewn with fallen branches and deceptively deep puddles making her walk from the post more treacherous than it needed to be. It was almost as if the city were mocking her for professing her love. Probably because that had been a lie.
Well, no, not entirely. She did love Heck and all it had given her, it was just that she’d actually wanted to tell Azrion she loved him instead.
She used Heck as a poor analogy that she didn’t really see through to its end, and whether he understood it or not, it didn’t matter: he was beholden to his family and the scholar’s hall and Melora above all else, her stupid feelings be damned.
Last night had been…selfish, but she didn’t regret it.
She couldn’t. She’d signed that contract knowing full well it was her job to get Azrion and Melora back together, the purse full of coins weighing down her pocket proof of nothing but.
And as if the stars were playing some joke on her, she’d been shown the answer while sitting at the table the evening before with Melora after Azrion and Fenthorn walked to the bar.
Thick silence had hung between the two, and then Melora had pursed her lips. “You’ve gotten awfully cozy, haven’t you?”
“So have you,” Kat had retorted. “With his friend.”
The corner of Melora’s mouth ticked up at that, almost like she enjoyed Kat’s prickliness.
“Unbelievable,” Kat muttered, not bothering to hide her disgust.
“Oh, get off your high hiriivi—it’s all just a game. As if either of them really care.”
“Azrion cares,” Kat snapped back.
Melora looked at her then, really looked at her as she leaned forward and placed her elbows on the table.
“Oh, does he? Because I’ve known him since childhood, and in my experience, he’s only interested in approval and moving up in the city, which basically makes him a puppet to whoever is smart enough to pull the strings.
But do regale me with what you’ve learned he really cares about in the last however long you’ve been here. ”
Kat’s heart was in her throat, but for once it didn’t strangle her.
“He cares about his sister, for one. He did all of this to save Elli for her, though I’m sure he would have done it anyway for the love of research and puzzles and magic.
His eyes light up when he discovers a new rune, and that’s hard considering how demons look. ”
Again Melora’s mouth twitched into a faint smile at the jab, and she kept smirking like it was all just some performance.
But Kat wasn’t done. “He might throw the word ‘friend’ around a lot, but he actually means it when he says it—it’s the strangest thing, but he just decides you’re his friend, and he treats you that way, and that’s honestly amazing because who in the hells else could even pull that off?
Not someone who wasn’t kind and thoughtful and interested in everyone around him.
And maybe it’s a little shallow to care so much about how you look, but I guess I actually care an awful lot about clothes too, and obviously so do you, so you should understand that wanting to turn your body into a piece of art is something worthy of caring about.
Oh! Not to mention the art. The way he paints is just—”
“Paints?” Melora’s face had changed in an instant, the haughty amusement wiped away.
“Yes, his studio full of…” Kat tipped her head and let it hit her all at once. “Oh, my gods, you don’t know that he paints?”
Melora clicked her tongue. “What he does in his free time is none of my concern.”
Kat stared back at the demon and waited for the joke to become clear, waited for the truth to be revealed, waited for anything that would make it all make sense. Melora only huffed and ran a claw around the edge of her empty cup, muttering about how long the other two were taking.
And so Kat had gotten up and left.
“Yeah, the bronzeberry scones do that to me too.”
Kat’s eyes popped open, and the bakery came back into focus as the tavern was wiped from her mind. A red demon was standing behind the counter, one she was sure she knew except she’d embroidered an eye patch for Severath, and this demon had both of his eyes and both spiraling horns too.
“Let me guess: Kat?” He pointed at her, black eyes bright and grin ridiculously wide.
“How…”
“Bri and I get together every week. I bring a new sweet experiment, and she brings gossip. I think it’s a fair trade, but she keeps giving me these little folded up pieces of parchment.
I’m afraid to tell her I can’t figure out how they’re all supposed to fit together.
Puzzles aren’t my strong suit, but scones are.
Here, on the house.” The demon offered her a pastry, and Kat’s stomach growled the moment its fruity sweetness wafted in front of her nose.
She’d skipped breakfast and lunch, working sluggishly to sort the mail as her mind was elsewhere formulating a plan.
As soon as the day was done, she’d gone to the council chambers, met far too many new demons, and ultimately learned she’d just missed what she was after.
It hadn’t even occurred to her that she could eat when she found the Lovable Loaf, but the smell was strong enough to overcome her despondency, and she bit in.
Kat mumbled praise around a mouthful of flaky goodness then shoved more in before she even swallowed. The red demon clapped with triumph, and then a second demon appeared from the doorway behind him, and this one Kat definitely knew.
But her mouth was full of scone, so she just wiggled a finger at him in recognition.
The gray demon’s eyes narrowed in much the same way they had in the cottage Ember and Severath shared—the demon who looked just like this other one minus a few facial features. Kat squeaked a questioning sound around more scone.
The one she remembered being called Dav huffed. “She came to Severath’s for a cutting from his tree while I was holed up there. Surprised she doesn’t have that hoity toity scholar with her.”
“Azrion?” the red demon shouted, and Kat’s heart squeezed at his name, but luckily her mouth was so full of scone, her face didn’t show it. “Bri told me everything.”
“Of course she did,” Kat managed as she finally swallowed, unsurprised. “Speaking of humans, I’m actually here looking for another one. A demon called Mozke told me I could find her here.”
“Rose!” the red demon called, hands cupped around his mouth.
Rosalind tottered out from the back, rubbing at her eyes and looking a little ruffled, her hair mussed and her blouse falling off one shoulder.
Of course she was exhausted, though. Rosalind had worked tirelessly since that first day they’d all arrived, and it appeared she had yet to stop.
But Rose’s smile was still friendly and welcoming.
“Hello,” Kat started, licking off the last of the pastry from her thumb. “You probably don’t remember me, but—”
“Don’t remember you?” Rose waved the impossibility away, squeezing between the two demons and leaning on the counter. “There’s only six of us, and we were roomies at the infirmary. How could I forget?”
“Well, there’s actually seven of us now,” said Kat, and Rose’s eyes crossed.
“We found another, but he’s still asleep, I think, and I probably shouldn’t have brought it up since that’s not going to get addressed until the epilogue.
Anyway, I came because I need some help, and if I remember right, you’re really helpful. ”
“She is,” Dav growled, a clawed hand coming down on Rosalind’s shoulder. “But she’s already stretched thin.”
“Like pastry dough,” the red demon chimed in, and his tail snaked around Rosalind’s waist.
“Down boys,” she said, patting the hand and tail in kind. “I’m always available for a fellow human in need.”
Kat took in the three of them tangled up, the warm looks on the two demon’s faces when they gazed down at the human between them. She felt herself go red, but she grinned too as she quickly pulled a roll of parchment out of her bag.
“Well, there’s something I want to do. I wrote up all the plans and everything I think I need to do to pull it off, but I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t even know how these things work, so I was hoping with your organizational skills and maybe some of your connections, you could point me in the right direction. ”
Rosalind accepted the parchment, and her eyes darted over Kat’s writing, the description, the lists, the timeline.
Kat had tried to think of every necessary step including a good distraction on the day of, but it was possible she’d missed something.
Or a hundred somethings. Or a thousand. Enough to screw it all up and be told it was the dumbest idea anyone ever had.
“This is very detailed. Lots of planning for worst case scenarios, which is exactly what I would do too.” Rose ran her finger over the last few lines and nodded. “But there’s no budget.”
“Oh, right.” Kat pulled out the purse of coins Azrion had given her the day she’d signed the contract and dropped it on the counter with a clank. “I don’t really know how much anything costs, to be honest. That might be the biggest thing I need help with.”
Rose’s dark eyes went wide, lips pursed as she tugged at the drawstring to peek inside. “And you want to do this in two days?”
Kat covered her face. “Is that not enough time? Or coin?”
“Oh, it’s definitely enough of both,” Rose assured her and wiggled her shoulders eagerly as she plucked a quill from the counter and began taking notes. “In fact, I already know the perfect place.”
Kat spent the evening poring over details with Rosalind and was given a list of tasks to complete.
They involved a lot of running around Heck, but she was glad for the busyness.
It allowed her to avoid Azrion, though not the gifts that he sent to the post or his notes complete with little sketches of drayks and moon flowers.
She wrote back that she was swamped with work, but not to worry, they would see each other again soon. A truth, if a painful one.
Kat wrote a lot of letters the next day, slowly and with care so that they were as beautiful as possible, and she sent them off on drayks with her aching fingers crossed every recipient would show.
Letters were easier than in-person visits, but she did those too, hesitantly walking into shops and asking favors—no, not favors, Rosalind reminded her, because she had the coin to pay for services.
Kat hadn’t really ever paid for much before, but the tight timeline she requested was better than stealing, she had to assume.
A visit with Kaly helped. Kat explained what she had planned—not every detail because the worst might send her sister into a blind, murderous rage—and she asked her for her support. Not help, not coddling, not smothering, just her presence. Kaly tentatively agreed.
Kat sat up in her bed at the post the night before her plans were to come to fruition and stitched the final touches on a new dress, one that was fitted with short sleeves and a hem that only reached her knees.
It would be warm and sunny where she was going, after all, and she needed something appropriate.
When she was done, she admired the moths that fluttered around the hem of the skirt and smiled through the ache in her heart.
Anything, she reminded herself. Anything for him.