Sympathy for the Demons (Promised to the Demons #1) - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,33
idea,” Bevan said.
“You will finish making the cottage tidy and cook my fish for when I return.”
“Okay,” Bevan said. When Variel left, he slapped the fish on the counter—far from my baking ingredients, luckily. He grinned at me. I got the feeling he knew just how to handle Variel.
“This isn’t working out as badly as I thought,” he said. “I suppose the trouble with high demons is that they get set in their ways. Lord Variel doesn’t know what to do with himself, so I think we can get it done.”
“Get what done?”
“Freeing our people,” he said. “Once and for all. So that no familiar is ever forced to serve a wizard ever again.”
I blushed a little at his confidence. It made him even more attractive, and he was already the most attractive man I’d ever been around. He was taking this unplanned situation in stride, and I wondered if there was anything that Bevan couldn’t do. There was a spark in his warm eyes that I didn’t think anything could ever dim. “Do you have any idea how to do it?” I asked. “Where do we come from?”
“I don’t know,” Bevan said. “There was a slab of stone with the covenant of the bat shifters. Variel devoured it and that’s how I ended up here. So…a long time ago, we must have all sworn ourselves to serve the wizards. Maybe a war? I don’t know. I don’t know where it all started or where we belong when it’s over.”
“My covenant was already broken. But I still couldn’t escape the pull I felt to Bernard…”
“But you are here,” Bevan said. “So…there was something stronger than your bond with Bernard.”
“But my bond with Bernard was also stronger than the covenant,” I said, chewing my lip.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, his hand brushing across mine, just long enough to light my skin up with warmth. “Who is Celeste?”
He drew an inch closer to me, across the kitchen work table.
The pact we made still brought me here. And the way I feel about you…
“Celeste is my real name,” I said, snapping out of the giddy feelings. “How did you know?”
“I heard it when I summoned you. Why do they call you Jenny, then?”
“Jenny was Bernard’s sister. She died when we were kids. I’ve been Jenny ever since.”
“Jeez.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Do you want me to call you Celeste?”
I paused. “I’m used to Jenny.”
“Do you feel like a Jenny?”
“Maybe I’m just not sure I feel like Celeste yet,” I said. “I—I don’t know.” I didn’t want to dwell on why I had a hard time letting go. “You seem a little…stronger, Bevan. I don’t know why.”
“I wasn’t strong before?” His brows furrowed a little. “You wound me, kid.”
“Hmph.” I wielded a wooden spoon. “Never mind. Let me get to work. This cake will take a long time.”
“You work on that, then,” he said. “I’ll probably have to go to the library of Etherium and see if I can find out more about why we were bound to the wizards in the first place. I had always thought it was a good thing. I see I was lucky now.”
“You were very lucky,” I said more softly. “Helena seemed like a nice witch.”
“But maybe there is more to my life than Helena,” he said.
My heart pattered a little faster. I hoped he liked the cake. Suddenly I wondered why I was making a weird Italian cake instead of chocolate cake, if it was my first chance to make an impression on him.
“I guess I’ll indulge the master just once and make my house spic and span for him,” Bevan continued. “But he’s letting you sleep in the bed.”
“Where will he sleep?”
“He didn’t really say. But he really doesn’t like you turning into a toad.”
“What!” I laughed. “Is he afraid of toads?” I shook my head as I started the tedious work of popping open the shell of each pine nut. They were fairly soft, but I had to be careful not to break them and make a mess of the nut inside.
“Some high demon,” Bevan said. He put the broom down and started changing the bed sheets. “I guess they get old and stale, the high demons…and they hollow out from the inside, so they aren’t so tough after all.”
“I’d be careful,” a low, grumpy voice said from under the cabinet.
“Who was that!?”
“That’s just Piers.” Bevan thumped the bottom of the cabinet with the broom. “He was a warlock and now