Page 102 of Demon Bound

He gave her a tentative glance. “Perhaps.”

“We’ll go there someday,” she said, then returned to the topic at hand. “But Adamus isn’t an animal, and we aren’t a zoo. You’ll be fine sharing a castle with him for a little while.”

He made a sound of vague disagreement.

Adamusand the elves had stayed with them for several weeks before moving on. They’d stayed longer than they needed to—long enough to make sure she and Azreth had settled in safely and that the gate was no longer posing an immediate threat tothe town. Raiya sent them back south with enough coins from the castle’s vault to feed and house them for several weeks.

She stood on the balcony over the bailey, bundled up in many layers, because she’d wanted to watch the sunset while she worked. She looked up from her notebook, her breath puffing in front her face as if to remind her that it was far too cold to be outside.

As vibrant reds and oranges in the sky gave way to gray-blue and lavender, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, expecting to find Azreth behind her. Instead, there was only a disembodied magenta hand. Amused, she took the hand. Its fingers folded around hers.

“Azreth?” she said, looking around. No one answered.

She looked down toward the castle gate, and there were two figures standing beneath it—one outrageously tall one, and one mortal-sized man. Azreth was wearing his human glamour.

The visitor was a stranger, probably from Frosthaven. He was standing back from the gate a fair distance, and Azreth wouldn’t get too close to the iron portcullis, which left an uncomfortably large gap between them. But they were talking, which pleased her.

Azreth had become somewhat infamous. Everyone knew, or at least suspected, what he really was, but the people in town also knew he was the man hunting down all the beasts that had escaped from the gate. It wasn’t unusual for people to cautiously come asking for him when they needed a demon hunter.

She raised the hand to her lips and kissed its palm as Azreth spoke to the human. The hand calmly accepted the kiss until she began to move away, and then it grasped her face, brushing its thumb over her lower lip. She kissed the pad of the finger. The only acknowledgment Azreth gave her was a single sly glance before he went back to speaking with the man in front of him.

Raiya pushed the obliging palm against her mouth again. “I’m going to make you scream later,” she murmured into it. Azreth glanced up at her again, curious. She knew he could feel her speaking against the hand, but couldn’t hear what was being said. She just smiled at him.

Azreth came to her after he’d finished talking to the human, who had hurried away from the castle gate as if he might be set upon by hellspawn if he lingered too long.

She turned to him as he joined her on the balcony. “What was it this time?”

“Just rumors,” he said. “They’re saying that the Temple of Moratha in Ontag-ul is attempting to open another gate. They say that the Paladins are refusing to interfere in cult business, so they want me to investigate it.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“Perhaps. What do you think I should do?”

She hesitated. “I think you should do what you want. You’re not obligated to guard the entire country from the hells, you know.”

“That is true.” He was waiting for her to say more.

“On the other hand, you are uniquely equipped to deal with other demons.”

He nodded, having received the approval he’d been looking for. “I will go if you will come with me.”

She smiled. “To be honest, I’d started to feel cooped up here. Now that I’ve had a taste of the rest of the world, it doesn’t feel right staying in one place for so long.”

“Then you should not be kept in one place.”

“But you like it here.”

“I like to be where you are. And I have also started to feel… cooped up,” he said slowly, as if he wasn’t completely sure what the phrase meant.

She’d watched him settle in to quiet life at the castle and its surroundings. When he wasn’t with her, he spent his days exploring the land nearby or lying curled up in front of the fireplace in her study. She’d learned that he liked the heat, despite his invulnerability to the cold, and he gravitated to the warmest nooks in the castle like a house cat.

They had obtained two behelgi from the Roamers’ herd. Fu-lon had selected a strong, white doe for Raiya, and a smaller male for Azreth. The choice of the male had surprised her. It was fully grown, but too small and weak for anyone larger than a child to ride, and its coat was gray and patchy. At first, she had suspected Fu-lon had chosen to give them this one because it wouldn’t fetch a good price anywhere else.

But then she realized that the male had another critical flaw: it was painfully unintelligent. It wandered aimlessly instead of following the herd, it had to be led by hand to its food and water, and it stared dumbly at predators the other behelgi ran from. It seemed to have no sense of self-preservation.

So when Azreth had reached out to touch the creature, it hadn’t moved. It had stood still, eyeing him calmly while he stroked its fur. Azreth had glanced up at Raiya in surprise, his eyes bright. She would never forget the look on his face.

She could tell he enjoyed the calm of their new life. And she took joy in watching him experience luxuries he’d been denied before now, like warmth, love, good food made by the cook she’d rehired the previous month, friendship with the elves—who had already planned a return visit—and peaceful coexistence with the people and wildlife who lived nearby.

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