Page 30 of The Demon's Delight
The wind had begun to blow more aggressively as well, great gusts chasing up pine needles and leaves and dirt straight into our faces. It almost felt personal, which was… odd. I tucked my wings down, but didn’t yet stow them away.
“Let me have your pack, Hailon.” I reached out a hand for it, trying to see as far ahead as I could. The perspective seemed unusually narrowed, like something was blocking us from seeing more than perhaps a hundred paces.
“I’ve got it,” she argued, thumbs hooked into the straps as she trudged forward, watching her feet.
I frowned, uneasy. Everything felt off. The weather, the trees. The way the road had suddenly narrowed and climbed several hundred feet with no relief to either side without a painful slide down through the trees. My tail whipped around, seeking the source of my agitation.
Our pace had slowed, Hailon’s breath had become labored because of the incline.
“Here,” I said, pausing to dig out a waterskin for her.
“I’m okay. Let’s just keep going.”
“No, you need to have a drink.” She accepted the jug from my hand in a gesture that could only be called a snatch, and I was rewarded with a sassy swig and side-eye as she drank deep.
“Satisfied?”
“Not hardly. What else can you offer me?” I winked at her, just to continue the banter. To my amusement, the corner of her mouth twitched as she shook her head. Flirting with her was as easy as breathing, and I only wanted to do it more often the longer we were together.
“Let’s just keep moving, ridiculous demon. This place makes me uneasy.”
“Agreed.” I scanned the trees, seeking a reason for the watched feeling. Still, there was nothing obvious. Then it hit me. “There are no birds. No insects. It’s too quiet. There’s magic here.”
“You’re right.” Hailon’s voice was barely above a whisper as we stopped walking and both looked around. “Whatisthis place?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s not linger. If I had to guess, the place where the road curves can’t be too far off. I expected us to hit it by nightfall.”
As I slid the waterskin back into my pack, I stepped closer to the outer edge of the path. The soft soil gave under my foot, and I flung my wings out wide. A gust of wind pushed me further from the center of the road, then with one leg dangling off the side as I tried to right myself, I was no longer on the road at all.
Wondering how I’d managed such a thing, I was a clumsy mess of limbs and wings, desperately trying to claw into the dirt with my fingers to slow myself down or grab a little tree with my tail. Hailon shouted my name from somewhere above me as I tumbled down the embankment, narrowly dodging trees and taking a fair beating from the stones that happened to be in my path.
I skidded to a stop at the very bottom and could only watch in horror as Hailon began the treacherous descent herself.
Chapter 14
Hailon
“Well, this is embarrassing.” Seir grinned up at me, the smile fading into a wince as he tried to shift his weight. “You were much more graceful than I was getting down here.”
He wasn’t wrong there. I’d slid down the rocky embankment entirely on my feet, which was much more than I could say for him. It had taken far longer than I liked, but with the help of the skinny new-growth trees, I’d managed not to fall or hurt myself on the way down.
“Stop moving,” I ordered sternly, dropping down to my knees at his side so I could better examine the wound. My stomach pitched and rolled when I spotted the pointed shard of bone on the outside of his skin instead of the inside, where it belonged. “Seir, your leg.” Then I saw the blood blooming across his shirt. “Oh,fuck.” I whispered the curse, but he heard it clearly enough.
The tan skin of his face had paled in a worrisome way, his breath coming in sharp pants as he propped himself up on his elbows, wincing. “Can’t be all that bad, right? Just bandage me up, and we’ll be on our way. Surely there’s a way to get backto the road. Oh.” He grunted as he pulled his shirt tails out of his trousers and then above the bleeding. There was a branch of some kind protruding from the center of his body, in the crease between two of his abdominal muscles. His eyes closed and his head tipped back, nostrils flaring as he dragged in slow, measured breaths.
I swallowed, throat dry as my shaking hands hovered over the limb, unsure where to start. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”
He leaned up, slowly moving his eyes from my face back to the concerning injuries. “Isn’t that terribly… inconvenient.”
My eyebrows slammed together at his detached assessment of the situation. Break aside, he had to have some pretty serious scrapes from the way he’d skidded down the rocky hill. Was he already in shock? I’d seen his desensitization to things like hot pots in action, but could he be immune to mortal physical pain altogether?
His wings had been out when he started to fall, and they were folded awkwardly behind him now. I peered closer at the way one was bent and realized with no small amount of horror that it wasn’t a branch that had punctured the demon. It was a bone from his own wing.
My hands shook, bile rising hot and sour in my throat as I tried to figure out how exactly I was going to help him. I could fix it. I could. It would just take some time.
I glanced up in time to see his eyelids flutter and kicked out a foot so that his pack slid enough to cushion his head as he fainted.
“Saints and devils,” I swore, leaning up toward Seir’s face. I slapped his cheeks, willing him to regain consciousness. He gasped and coughed several long seconds later, his gaze unfocused when his eyes finally opened again. “Hey. You with me?”
