Page 44 of The Demon's Delight
Hailon turned her head to look at me. “It comes and goes though. Sometimes quite suddenly.” She frowned. “Are you finished?”
“Not quite.” I tidied up my work as I tried to control my breathing. I lashed the ends of the two braids together against her neck, leaving the tails of the tie long, so she could play with them instead of her hair if she liked.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure, moonflower.”
Perplexed, she watched me as I wandered away to check on our clothing, a maelstrom of understanding swirling through me.
This lovely little human, this perfect specimen of beauty and violence was more than my travel companion or a fixation I’d developed on this journey earthside.
She was my mate.
Chapter 21
Hailon
“Coltor could lease out time in that glade for holidays or health rejuvenation or something of the sort,” I said, sad that the little oasis was now several hours of walking behind us.
Following Coltor’s changes to our little map, we’d easily found what was the actual main road and had been walking along it peacefully all morning.
“Most certainly,” Seir agreed. “I could live there quite happily.”
“Doing so could interfere with his posting, though. That might make him grumpier than he already is.”
“Guarding doorways like he suggested exist within the castle itself is a very important job. Can’t have people wandering in and out of other worlds on a whim.”
“People like you?” I teased back, though in truth I was as jealous as I was curious about using portals. “What’s it like being able to travel like you do? Portals and things, I mean.”
“I’ll show you one day,” he promised, and my stomach clenched. Whatever I was, whatever negative power I possessed that apparently canceled out other’s magic would almostcertainly keep me from ever doing any such thing. “Perhaps you should suggest that to him next time we see him? That he build some little cabins to rent out. We could be his first clients.” Seir smiled.
“You believe that will happen? That we’ll see him again?”
“Of course!” Seir nodded enthusiastically. “People like that are never just a one-time meeting. I suspect we’ll see him plenty more times.”
“We?” I asked, amused by how absolutely positive he was about such a statement.
“Naturally,” he scoffed, releasing his wings and spreading his arms as he jogged ahead and turned around to face me, walking backwards. “Where you go, I go, little Moonflower.”
I let that idea linger there between us. I knew that once we arrived in Ravenglen, he was returning to Hell, and the odds of us running into that stone kin man several times over the next few days was infinitesimal. But I had grown very used to being with him, and clearly he felt the same about me. It was nice to imagine a future where we had more adventures, even if the notion had never before crossed my mind.
“Why have you started calling me that?” I didn’t mind it, in fact it made my heart skip a little beat every time he said it, but it was odd. “Moonflower. That’s two or three times now.”
He dropped his chin to his chest, chagrined. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He pulled his wings tight against his back and stopped walking, reaching for my hair as I caught up to him. “You’ve acquired some moonbeams in your braids.” He showed me the end of one of the two braids he’d given me before we left the beautiful glade. Sure enough, mixed in with the black were threads of pure white.
I gasped and used the pad of my thumb to spread out the strands, trying to see how many there might be. “When did this happen?”
Seir shoved his hands in his pockets and turned around, starting to walk down the road again. His wings spread wide, he flexed them repeatedly, doing some kind of exercise routine I wasn’t privy to. “I’m not sure, I just noticed it myself.”
Panic had my pulse racing. “How are there so many? And why are they white all the way to the ends like this? This isn’t how hair normally starts turning gray.”
Seir watched me rant with a serious expression. “I didn’t tell you at first for this very reason. I didn’t mean to upset you by pointing it out.”
“I’m not so young I shouldn’t expect some gray soon, but?—”
