Chapter 30 Wine & Witless Insults #2
“You miss him.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Not that way. But yes…I do miss my best friend.”
“Well, then we oughta swap,” Jon said, tipping his cup at Devil, who had created half a dozen fireballs with his magyk and was spinning them wildly through the air, coming dangerously close to several screaming and laughing fay children.
“Keeping Rob outta trouble has aged me ten years, I swear. I could do with some sweetness and quiet.”
“Well, I say let him get into trouble,” I giggled. “Perhaps it will humble him.”
“No force in the damn world could humble that monster!” Jon roared. “But don’t you worry, I’ll keep an eye on your friend if you keep an eye on mine. Deal?”
We knocked our cups together, but then I shook my head and sighed without drinking. “Will ought to know better than to come back here. Perhaps I should go talk to him.”
“I’ll be your messenger, lady,” said Jon with a smile that revealed two long, sharp canine teeth. “You have the entire Arden to save. I can manage one little morsel like Will Scarlett.”
“If you eat him, I’ll be very angry,” I scolded, then gave him a wicked grin, “but if you must use your bear to frighten him away from the forest, then so be it.” Jon threw his head back, body shaking with laughter almost in time to the final refrain of the song.
When the music finished on a high, happy note, Devil stumbled over and collapsed on the ground beside us, chest heaving.
Myrtle and Vale tried to drag him back out, asking for more fire tricks, but they were quickly distracted by Jon, who offered to let them ride on his shoulders.
“So, this is all it takes to get you to stop talking?” I asked Devil after a full minute of silence between us. “Find some little children to wear you out?”
He opened his crystalline-blue eye and scowled. “I am recovering, and will be fit to speak again in a moment.”
“Spare me,” I chirped, rolling my eyes. “Well, it appears you’ve already lost Myrtle’s interest. You must be a terrible dance partner.”
“You danced with me a fortnight ago, Mayhem, and you did seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“That was the wine enjoying itself.”
“And how much wine will convince you to dance with me tonight?” he asked, propping himself up on an elbow.
“To dance with you, or to actually enjoy it?” I asked with a smirk.
Devil hopped to his feet, swiping up my wine cup and walking over to the cask.
He refilled his and mine, then handed one to me and knocked them together with a wink.
I put the cup to my lips, and when I peeked over the rim, our eyes met.
Normally, I might have looked away, but this time I held his gaze, and he seemed to take it as a challenge.
He finished his drink quickly and smacked his lips, while I had to stop with a gasp.
“What song would you have next?” Aliena asked the Fair Folk.
Several of them called out their requests, and Devil grinned at me before making his own. “A love song!”
Feeling lighter and braver than ever, I jeered at the suggestion. Aliena glanced between us and scoffed.
“Play on, Aliena!” Devil laughed, turning to fill his cup from the cask again, then facing me with a knowing smile. “Do not let the bitterness of the root taint the sweetness of the vine.”
“Ohhh,” I slurred, sitting up straighter and narrowing my eyes at him.
“I may be as bitter as the day is long, Devil, but at least the nighttime brings out my sweetness. Unlike you—hateful no matter which planet hangs in the sky.” There was a chorus of tittering laughter from the faeries around us, and Aliena leaned back with a grin, plucking her lute lazily.
Devil fixed his glittering eyes on me and took a sip. “You have all the midnight sweetness of a nightshade berry, my dear.”
Egged on, I finally finished my wine and set the cup aside. “Better that than foul, tasteless fruit dropped from a rowan branch, which is of no use to anyone.” Another peel of laughter from the crowd and Devil leaned back against the trestle table, one hand draped in his pocket.
“Won’t you tell everyone how you have come to know my taste, May?”
I hated the blush that crept up my neck just as much as I hated the smirk on his face. He was rewarded with a round of good-natured, albeit lewd, noises from his friends. I shoved myself up from the tree roots and swayed on the spot as I retorted.
“Such putrid arrogance leaves a foul taste in the mouth of anyone unfortunate enough to be in your vicinity.”
Devil flashed his fangs and took a few steps toward me.
“You mistake arrogance for charm and skill, darling. An easy mistake to make, since you experienced neither at the hands of your precious Will Scarlett.” His poisoned arrow hit its mark, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by a vicious desire to strike him.
Keeping in mind that magyk was still affecting my emotions, I fought the urge down and moved toward him too. “Will is ten times the man you are, you insufferable brat.”
“Like most of Mister Scarlett’s accomplishments, that is meaningless, since I am not a man at all,” Devil replied casually.
“Well, I do know that to be true,” I laughed derisively. “Real men possess, at the very least, a spine or a cock, and I’ve seen no evidence of either on you.”
That elicited the loudest response yet, from the rest of the clearing and from Devil himself, who threw his head back and barked a laugh.
But when he pinned his gaze on me again, it was near-feral.
His tongue flicked across his lips and he drank my face in with that hungry gaze I found so incredibly off-putting.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he actually enjoyed it when I insulted him.
He moved in close enough so only I could hear him and murmured, “Whatever evidence Your Highness requires, I shall happily provide. I am, after all, every inch your servant.”
“I doubt any inch of your cobbled-together, defective form can stiffen without a knife pressed against your throat,” I sneered in reply. Devil laughed again, then lifted one of my hands and draped it over his shoulder, held my other up, and pulled me close to him by my waist.
“Play on, Aliena!” he called again, without taking his eyes off me.
“To celebrate May’s stirring victory in our battle of witless insults.
” The persistent, airy buzz of faerie wine had settled back into me now, and I hardly even cared when Devil began to spin me around the clearing to the tune of a new, slower song.
“You really are horrible,” I told him. “A true gentleman would ask first.”
“May I have this dance, princess?”
“No,” I snapped, though I did not try to pull away from him.
“But I thought you wished to spite me.”
“It is my fondest desire, yes.”
“May,” he said in mock-seriousness, “your reluctance to dance has cut me to the quick. You cannot continue treating me this way. Dance with me willingly, or not at all.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “In that case, you should know it is the song which offends me, and not you. I would not have agreed to dance to a love song.”
“Well, then you shall be pleased to hear that this is no love song.”
I listened for a moment, but realized Aliena was singing in the fay language. I could not understand a single word. “What sort of song is it, then?”
Devil leaned in close, his hot breath sliding beneath the collar of my dress as he translated the lyrics.
“In joyfulness or dread,
on the grass or in the bed,
by the rope or by the vine,
‘til every inch of you is mine…”
Searing bolts of heat cut straight through me, bringing with them a deluge of the unholiest feelings I’d ever experienced.
Whether it was the wine, or my new magyk, or the words he’d whispered in my ear, I couldn’t be sure.
But everything about him suddenly set me on fire, from the slightly crooked curve of his mouth, to the way his hand gripped my waist. For the first time, I noticed his scent.
Not just the faint tang of magyk that hung around him, but the smell of his body itself—copper and earth, edged with the musk of woodsmoke.
I inhaled reflexively. My fingers slid through the mess of red-gold curls on the side of his neck, and I became hyper-aware of the taught muscles shifting beneath my arm.
Far too late, I wondered if fay senses were capable of detecting arousal, because his breath hitched and his brow furrowed.
Somehow, I knew that if he finished the next verse of the song, I would be done for. So I closed my eyes, wrenched my body out of his grip, and walked away.