Page 72 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“No,” he admits, “though when I found my other parent, they gave me some…additional help.”

The beer seems to loosen him, his shoulders relaxing just a touch, to more of the normal person she’s used to, despite the oddness of the conversation.

“But a rule is, if you’re to be trained in something, you should be willing to use it,” he says, finally focusing an intense look on her, pinning her down.

“I’d be willing to kill someone who’s attacking me, that’s for sure,” Delina says, surprising a smile out of him. “I don’t want to cower whenever a threat comes by.”

She picks up her second beer, and it’s sharp and fruity, almost sour, and by instinct she offers him to taste.

Like nothing’s ever changed.

“And if I can attack first, maybe they’ll think twice before sending someone after me, maybe they’ll let me live in peace,” she continues, and he nods, tentative. “You know, set a few examples, disrupt their ways of thinking, that sort of thing.”

There’s a ghost of a smile across his face, something so close to how he used to look at her when she did something clever, when she had a smart turn of phrase while arguing.

She used to think he enjoyed her being smart and sharp.

“By all accounts, the other necromancer is peaceful.” he says, and it's a bit amazing, getting another little hint of information. “I think that you going on the offense would be one of their worst fears.”

“Good,” Delina says, and can’t help herself from being bitter. “They kept me from my mom, they tried to kill me, I should be their worst fear.”

Another glimmer of a smile, before it fades.

“They shouldn’t be able to hurt your mom, they shouldn’t have been able to lock me away, they shouldn’t have, you know, shot you. Killed you.” The words flood from her as if she could ever stop them. “Maybe my mom should’ve still been blacklisted, she sounds awful, but…not me.”

“I told them, once, about two years ago, that if you ever found out you’d be angry,” he murmurs, almost too low for her to hear. “They dismissed me, said I was overreacting.”

She sits up, towards him and he reacts in kind. “You were patient with me the entire time, you dated me when I was at my worst, and they thought you just overreacted?”

And he picks up another one of his beers, a dark beer so almost black, and downs it in one go, before he leans close to her, intent. “Delina, you were not the difficult part of the job.”

She lets her hand fall to the small glasses on the tray.

“The hard part was never you, it was the net of politics and things I had to do for my bosses, the awfulness of all the lies, andthe ridiculousness of the people going after you. Never actually you.”

Delina squashes down her first instinct to scoff, to deny it, and instead just stills herself. Makes herself listen.

“The times I could exist with just you, not have to deal with the fear over my mom, over the net of responsibilities and expectations, those were probably the only times I wasn’t stressed out of my mind.”

Delina cheers him with her next glass, out of a lack of anything else. “Glad I was the easiest part of the job.”

He sighs, which she honestly anticipated at that. “You know what I meant.”

She thinks she does, if she dares to hope instead of actually use her brain, but she just takes a drink instead.

“I couldn’t ever just be a normal person,” Maison says, sitting back. “My entire life I was always the kid Half Demon who couldn’t do anything they wanted me to do. I was always the failed experiment, good for some things but not what they wanted at all. You were the first person who treated me like I could be interesting outside of that.”

“Well, yeah,” Delina says, and her heart pounds. “You were the hot guy in the apartment next door who painted pictures on the back of envelopes, of course that’s interesting.”

His eyes crinkle up at the edges. “They put me on assignment with you because I can do half decent shields and they said you didn’t form friendships with the other people they tried. I applied for it because doing research on demons in France was boring, and maybe I would actually have free time to take some art classes.”

Knowing that’s the reason he applied for his specific job should be hurtful, should be painful, but instead, her lips tug up in a smile. “Of course you did.”

When they had first started dating, back when she was finishing her degree, he had taken nightly classes in painting and sketching, and would bring them back to her to show.

“Of course, all I knew about the assignment was that you were getting threatened, I had—of course—known about your mother, heard they locked away any magic, and that’s…it.” He gives her a sheepish smile. “Nothing about your personality, what you wanted to do with your life, nothing. Nothing about your dad, nothing about anything you were trying to accomplish, nothing about how you were, you know, actually fun.”

Dimly, she knows this should be slightly insulting, but still she just props up her chin on her hands, looking at him.

---