by Jill Archer
“We’d planned a different welcome for you, you know,” he said.
I gave him a wan smile. “I don’t need a formal welcome. I just need a place to wash and sleep. Preferably somewhere big enough to house my Guardian and our beasts…?”
“His lordship had the former consigliere’s chambers readied for you,” he said, pointing to the rotunda.
“Isn’t that where Lord Aristos’ chambers are?”
Zeffre gave me a cryptic look. “Yes, but it’s a big place and you’ll be spending at least half your time there.”
“Where will I spend the other half?”
“With my retainers,” Yannu said, joining our discussion. He bumped me with his magic, hard enough to make me stumble. His answer wasn’t unexpected but I elected not to ask the obvious follow-up question doing what? because I was fairly certain his next answer would be anything I tell you to and then I’d be forced to say we’ll see or yeah, right or you wish, and I just wasn’t in the mood for chest thumping.
“When and where?” I asked instead.
“Tomorrow morning. Behind the rotunda.” Yannu’s signature pulsed with power, push, prod, and poke. He felt like a more militant version of every Maegester instructor I’d ever had, bar Wolfram. “Tenacity can show you.”
“Tenacity?”
“Aristos’ Angel.”
Ari had a Guardian? How was that even possible? I thought Angels only worked for Maegesters…
The rotunda was Rockthorn Gorge’s version of a patron’s palace but by the time I got there, I was so tired that the only two descriptors I could think of were “big” and “round.” A young woman, maybe a few years younger than me, met me at the door. She was dressed in a red and black checkered maid costume, which she’d paired with black boots, fingerless gloves, and black-painted nails that had been bitten to the quick. Under her left eye, a black tear had been inked onto her cheek.
“Did they find Aristos?” she asked.
“Yes, he’s fine.” No thanks to you, I thought. If this girl was his Guardian, she’d done a piss-poor job of it. “Are you Tenacity?” Almost every Angel I had ever met preferred white, bright, and flawless. They wore diamonds, not argyle. Suddenly, I felt like shaking her. Did she have any idea how worried I’d been? How terror-stricken? How—
“I was going to jump out of a p—p—pie,” she said and then burst into tears.
5
DEAD OF MIDNIGHT; NOON OF THOUGHT
Turns out Tenacity was Ari’s court jester – or so she said. She neither looked nor acted like a formally trained Angel jester, which made me think her role might be a little more protean.
She told me she’d been down at the explosion site looking for Ari all day yesterday. But when night fell and he still hadn’t been found, she’d gone to the hospital to help out, which is where she met Fara and realized we’d arrived early. Apparently, Tenacity had planned an elaborate welcome for us, which involved her jumping out of a giant pineapple patisserie. I didn’t have the heart, under the circumstances, to ask her where she’d come up with the idea, why she thought it appropriate, or whether Ari had known. Despite the absurdity of it all, her tears seemed genuine. I think she hadn’t realized how worried she’d been until after she heard that Ari was okay.
In any case, she calmed down soon after her outburst and gave me a tour of the public spaces of the rotunda and my chambers. By far the largest and most impressive space inside the rotunda was the atrium. It was a cavernous, echoing dome full of marble statues, bronze effigies, and bone idols. At the apex of the dome was an oculus that, depending on the weather, allowed either shafts of light or drops of rain to enter. Interestingly, there were no birds anywhere in the structure, and I wondered if Cliodna had something to do with that. Maybe all of the winged creatures roosted with her? Except for Ari, of course.
Beneath the oculus was a fountain and in its center was the atrium’s biggest sculpture – an enormous statue of the town’s founder, Servius Rockthorn, Lucifer’s Northern Warlord. He held a tabula ansata—an ancient writing tablet—in his left hand and a fireball in his right. I wondered what was inscribed on the tablet – a warning or a welcome? – and then refocused on Tenacity, who was explaining our respective roles. She slept elsewhere, but spent her days here doing all the things I wouldn’t be doing.
“In other words,” she said, “you handle all the ‘pen and sword’ type stuff and I handle stuffing all the skeletons in the closet, washing everything but the kitchen sink, and performing tricks for his lordship.” A zing of… something I didn’t want to identify… bloomed in my signature, but then she winked and followed it up with two handsprings and a tuck, which I took as further clarification – carnival tricks, not carnal.
At the end of the hallway, Tenacity blew me a kiss and waved goodnight. Frankly, the thought of Ari with her – or anyone else – made me sick to my stomach.
Just as the thought of Ari and me together again terrified me.
Just before midnight, I finished my ablutions and put Nova out for the night. I was passing back through the rotunda’s atrium on my way to the chambers I’d been given, when a voice spoke from the dark.
“Did you come to fulfill your promise, Noon?”
I whirled around, half a second away from shaping a sword, but pulled back when I saw Ari standing beside one of the pillars surrounding the fountain. His face was shadowed and his signature was taut with banked emotion. I frowned, as much from confusion as from his nearer presence. He stepped toward me, into the circle of dim moonlight shining down from the oculus, and motioned to the lantern I held.
“You promised when you came to the gorge you’d bring me life and love.”
I opened my mouth to deny it. I hadn’t said that exactly.
“I told you I’d bring you a lit candle,” I said slowly, firmly, remembering. My promise had been made at a place and time that had seemed very far from where and when it would have to be kept.
“But you said it on Bryde’s Day,” Ari said, stepping closer. “That’s what a lit candle means then. Or have you forgotten?” I refused to step back. I didn’t want to start off the next six months by retreating. What kind of precedent would that set?
But the combination of darkness, privacy, and me seemed to bring out Ari’s latent predator impulses. How had I thought this residency would go? It seemed preposterous now, watching Ari advance on me, that I’d thought I could be professional about our relationship or (even more laughable) that I could control him. Without thinking, I snuffed my lantern out, plunging us into near blackness.
“It’s no longer Bryde’s Day,” I said.
I guess, subconsciously, I’d thought to take my promise back somehow, or at least show Ari that I wasn’t prepared to deliver on it just yet. But extinguishing the tiny flame and uttering those words only seemed to blast away the last of his restraint. He closed the distance between us immediately but I retreated just as fast, falling back until I bumped into a pillar.
Ari stood in front of me as he had countless times before, his chiseled features nearly as set as those on Rockthorn’s statue. He rested one hand against the pillar and then leaned toward me. I tensed and closed my eyes. My heart beat erratically in response to his breath on my neck. But my actions were no precursor to a kiss. I wasn’t trying to be coy.
I genuinely did not want him to touch me.
A year or so and more ago, I’d bared my heart to him and he’d ripped it out. Not with a drakon’s sharp teeth but with a man’s silent tongue. You should have told me, I thought. Because then I could have avoided what I felt now. I loved him but I was petrified of making myself vulnerable to him again.
We stood like that, inches apart but not touching, for what seemed like half the night. Then Ari made a sound of disgust (with himself, I think) and frustration (with me, to be sure) and lowered his arm. He stepped back and then motioned for me to follow him.
I’m not going to lie. I was unbelievably hesitant about doing so. But it seemed as
if some sort of détente had just been established. Ari had shown me that, while he was a demon who desperately wanted me, he was also a man with iron control.
I followed him into a lesser outer hall furnished with wooden tables, upholstered sofas, and a wool rug. Their colors were muted until Ari lit the sconces with his magic and then shades of crimson, copper, dappled stone, and speckled fawn emerged. He walked over to a table and I joined him, still wary enough to keep it between us. Only then did I notice that he was still wearing a cloak – and that it hung oddly on him.
“Take your cloak off,” I demanded. He looked surprised, confused, and then annoyed.
“No,” I said quickly, “that’s not… I mean…” I cleared my throat and schooled myself. He’d offered a truce of sorts a moment ago. A temporary emotional ceasefire, and I didn’t want to break it with carelessly chosen words. So I traded my concerned tone for a courteous one and asked what I should have asked before.
“Did you injure your arm?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you have a Mederi heal it? Or heal it yourself”—I dropped my gaze, suddenly unable to meet Ari’s—“by shifting.”
When I looked up again, Ari was still staring at me.
“It’s an old injury,” he said.
“What do you mean, an old injury? It wasn’t something that happened yesterday?”
“No,” he said and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture that told me he wanted me to drop it. But I wouldn’t. I was here to be his consig, which meant I needed to know what he was talking about. How could it be an old injury? He hadn’t had it last year. I narrowed my eyes.
“When did you injure it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, impatiently. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“But it’s something I need to know about.”
He said nothing.
Ari’s not wanting to talk about it made no sense. How big a deal could it be? Even a mediocre Mederi could rebreak it and set it right. Unless…
“You didn’t break your arm, did you? You broke a wing.”
This time, he was the one who looked away.
“Why didn’t you shift back?” I said, my voice soft. I understood now what a big deal it was. A demon can be healed just as a human can, but they usually self-heal by shifting. If Ari had been injured as a drakon, however, and didn’t shift into human form until after the broken wing bones fused, then the bad break would carry through. I wanted to ask him then if I could see his arm, to assess the damage, but the question suddenly seemed improper, as if I was overstepping. If I was here working for any demon other than Ari I wouldn’t have dared – at least not on the first night.
“So how do you want to do this, Noon?” His voice was efficiently crisp and businesslike.
“What do you mean, ‘this’?” I asked. I didn’t mind talking shop at midnight, especially after what had happened, but he was going to have to give me something more specific than this. “Do you mean hunting down Displodo, ensuring the safety of your work crews, guard rotations here at the rotunda, or something else?”
“I mean us.”
I bit my lip, but then said in a steady voice, “There is no us.”
Ari clenched his jaw and met my stare.
“As long as we are both alive, there will always be an us. I left you alone, like you wanted. You got rid of my signare. How, I don’t know. But none of that means there isn’t an us. So now that we’re working together again, I want to know how you want it to go.”
I…
Oh.
I swallowed.
Uh…
Was my plan really for us to dissemble?
Luck, that sounded pathetic even in my head. I couldn’t say it out loud.
“I thought you’d say that. So I have a plan,” Ari said.
Of course he did. It wasn’t that Ari was incapable of letting me take the lead. It was that the last time I’d taken the lead my decision had indirectly led to our breakup. Would I make the same decision if I had it to do again?
Yes.
Probably.
Of course.
Maybe.
Ari smiled. “Frigore Luna is in three months. Acheron will be coming to the gorge for the celebration. Between now and then, you train with Yannu, patrol with his retainers, and work with me, all while pretending we meant nothing to each other before. Because that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
I gave him a weak smile. He knew me too well.
“And after Frigore Luna?” I asked. “What then?”
Ari gave me a cunning look and then retrieved a clear bottle from one of the sideboards. He set it on top of the table. Inside was a reddish black liquid and on the outside was a small label with “Black Gilliflower” handwritten on it. My eyes widened. Nicknamed “Veracity,” it was a type of ensorcelled apple wine the Angels made. It compelled honesty. Dissembling, while drinking, was impossible.
Ari laughed when he saw that I recognized what it was.
“I say we drink this. Together. Later that night.”
He arched a brow and glanced at Rafe’s silver bracelet, which I was wearing on my wrist. He obviously knew there were things I hadn’t told him. And despite the fact that we’d broken up because of his Big Demon Lie, he was never shy about pointing out that I too had trouble revealing hard truths.
“Why not drink it now then?” I asked recklessly.
But Ari shook his head.
“I haven’t seen you in ages, Noon,” he said. His voice held an unfamiliar note and his signature felt abruptly different than the man I’d dated… loved. This person – this patron demon – sounded sly and beguiling. He walked around the table toward me. “I want a chance to… enjoy you… before you tell me things I don’t want to hear.”
“Enjoy me?”
“Uh-huh.” He stepped closer.
“I’m not going to sleep with you.”
Wow. Did I just say that? Maybe the mere presence of Black Gilliflower compelled bluntness. What had happened to the concern I’d had just sixty seconds ago about propriety?
But Ari seemed to revel in my candor. He grinned as if we were back on track.
“That’s your choice,” he said, once again leaning toward me. I let him, feeling less vulnerable now that I wasn’t pressed up against something. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to convince you to.”
“That’s hardly how people act when they don’t know each other.”
“But I’m a demon,” he said, blowing a puff of soft, hot smoke against my lips. “Remember?”
“I’m not trying to forget,” I whispered. “I’m trying to forgive.”
6
PERTHIUS
They say true irony is hard to define. Fine. I say it’s dealing with three Angels in the first fifteen minutes of your first full day of work for a demon lord.
Tenacity woke me just before dawn. Thankfully, Nova hadn’t tried to gnaw on any of the rotunda’s statues the way she had on Miss Bister’s table, but she had left a big pile of bear bones outside the door, and Virtus had hidden a half-eaten deer behind one of the larger boulders on the hill. Ari’s jester insisted I clean them up before breakfast or go without. A complaint was on the tip of my tongue—hadn’t Tenacity said that she would stuff all the skeletons in the closet?—but I remembered my last morning at Megiddo all too well. My midnight rendezvous with Ari had left me feeling tense and edgy, but sleeping in one of the guard towers with Yannu’s retainers would have left me feeling completely blown. I couldn’t risk Tenacity kicking me out the way Miss Bister had.
The next Angel I sidebarred with was Fara, who wanted, once again, to make a case for casting spells over me that I didn’t want. Over a meal of cold deviled river crabs and hot stinging nettle tea, Fara pressed me to allow her to cast either Tabula Rasa (“Who says there are no second chances to make a first impression?”), Center of Attention (I had a feeling Fara was projecting more than just her magic when she suggested it
since her glamour this morning was a feathered animal print jumpsuit), or Two Wrongs & Then Mr. Right. When I glared at her over that one, she just huffed and said, “Maybe your problem is magic users, Noon. Didn’t you tell Sartabella you only dated Hyrkes before Ari and Rafe?”
“Rafe and I didn’t date,” I said, my words clipped.
“What did you do?”
I ignored Fara then in favor of managing Angel #3 – the dressmaker herself, who wasn’t present in the gorge but whose presence was very much woven into each of the garments in my trousseau. Everything but the last item she’d designed for me had been neatly folded, wrapped in paraffin paper, and packed in the wooden chest that we’d brought with us from New Babylon. Sartabella had told me that the paper helped her enchantments last. Each of her packages had a label, but instead of saying what the item was, it merely specified the event I’d need it for.
Since Ari had provided few details on what his Captain of the Guard’s training would be like other than a continuation of my St. Luck’s physical-magical readiness drills, I pulled out the package in my trousseau labeled “Sparring” and unwrapped it. Inside was a note:
Today, you must be Perthius not Daimoneda.
Perthius had been a fifth-century Maegester who had rescued Daimoneda, the executive’s daughter, from being sacrificed to Megaptera, a giant drakon, although the only people who believed that story were children… and apparently spellcasting couturiers. The real problem, however, wasn’t that Sartabella had used a “princess and dragon” type myth as inspiration for what I’d just unwrapped, but rather that Perthius would never have worn something like this. My jaw dropped as I beheld what was sure to be skintight black scaled armor. Emblazoned on its front was a scarlet drakon.
Instantly suspicious, I asked Fara, “Did you know what my sparring gear was going to look like?” Her jumpsuit would look like a plain brown wrapper next to this and yet… the two suits looked as if they were part of a collection. I narrowed my eyes at her and she blinked back at me. I swear, only Fara could look like an ingénue while dressed in leather and leopard print. I wore the damned armor, though, because it was either face Yannu in that or wear the canvas pants and cotton tunic from yesterday, and we all knew what they smelled like. Better I look like a badass than smell like a barghest.