Page 26 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

“Only you would say that.” Yves hooked his arm through Charon’s. “You’re allowed to be annoyed the magic demon fox ate the words out of your new favorite book, Charon. Honestly, you’re so nice. How is Arktos an army again, if they’re full of men like you?”

Charon had lost count of the men who’d cursed him with their last, screaming breaths in the dirty cellar that smelled like blood and waste. He was not a nice man, or he hadn’t been one then. Perhaps it meant something, that someone like Yves thought he was now. “Arktos is a place like any other, full of good people and bad, as I am sure it is the same in Lukos. But I would like to see it, snow that covers houses and the caves. The illustrations in the book were truly something, but to see it myself, that would be better even than the book.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded wistful.

Yves gave a little shiver. “The rain is enough to make me cold, I can’t even imagine all that snow. You’d look dashing in fur, though.” Yves winked at him. “Like a big desert bear. Do they have those?”

“Arktos comes from the word that means bear in Senex, but that is because we are from Katoikos, originally, the forest region near the old capitol city. That’s what the scholars say, anyway. I have never seen a bear in Arktos, myself.”

Yves neatly avoided a puddle with the grace of a dancer and gallantly held the door to the baker’s shop open for Charon. “You could always dress up like one. You do look good in fur.”

Charon smiled briefly, but he felt his face heat as it always did when Yves looked at him with frank admiration and that sly little smile. “Yes, well. First, we will find the things on this list so that Hektor’s menace will learn a lesson.”

“When the book’s done and you’ve read it a few more times, can I read it? I’ll read it in your room and won’t spill any tea on it, promise, cross my heart.” Yves looked up at him, expectant, wide-eyed and lovely. He looked delicious in his tight shorts and boots and glitter, but Charon liked him this way, slightly disheveled with only the remnants of last night’s glitter and liner smudged under his eyes.

“If you like,” Charon said, and turned his attention to the baker.

* * *

Flick was having the worst day of his life.

Actually, the real worst day of his life was hundreds of years gone, when Flick had been summoned by a young poet who had informed him with absolute earnestness that “the war was over.”

what war

Flick’s voice had been quiet back then, soft as the scratch of a quill on paper. He hadn’t looked like a fox, either, more like a cat with too many legs, covered in dozens of blinking gold eyes.

“The war,” his human said, “between the Old Ones and the mages. The Mother died a few weeks ago. It’s why we’re all summoning so many demons. It’s finally safe for you.”

i was safe before

why would it not be safe

i don’t understand

“Hey.” His human scratched Flick’s ears. “Don’t worry. You must’ve been in the dark for a while, huh? It’s okay, I’ll help you. I have a missive the new Archmage wrote, it’s in here somewhere.”

The human handed Flick a paper covered in words. Flick understood words. Words had power. They could shape the universe, and they didn’t even need magic for it. Flick had stared at the paper, and all of his eyes widened as the words lifted off the page and settled into his spirit.

no

He had looked up at his human.

no

“It’s all right, friend,” his human had said, and reached out a hand. Flick flinched away.

No

His human frowned. “Maybe it’s because you’re so new. You see, the Old Ones, they torture demons, their magic drags demons back into the d?—”

NO

His human had winced as Flick raced across the small study where he’d been summoned and knocked a stack of scrolls to the floor. Flick’s eyes widened again. Words faded from the pages of dozens of missives, letters, and scrolls. None of them helped.

The Old Ones were dead. Demons would forever be left with the dark, lost without the light to balance them. They were alone. Flick was alone. He would never see an Old One fly over the low houses of Mislia again.

NO, Flick had said, and the walls of the study had trembled. The human had collapsed with his head in his hands, and the words of every book and every scrap of paper in the room had disappeared in one instant as Flick’s eyes blinked out one by one, closing themselves off in the face of this terrible truth.

That had been Flick’s worst day.

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