Sympathy for the Demons (Promised to the Demons #1) - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,45

setting up the logs like a pioneer cabin. The finished house might be a little like the old wooden schoolhouse in St. Augustine where the youngest wizards still went for their lessons. Lord Variel looked like he knew what he was doing, though. I was surprised he knew how to build a cabin. It didn’t seem like a useful skill for a demon lord with a castle.

I also saw that he looked absorbed in the job, and almost happy. And he pitched in to do the heavy lifting himself, which I supposed was why he was so…shirtless. His gray-white demon skin was shining with sweat as his powerful arms helped heave up the logs while Uram and Gillian tugged on ropes and Bevan, I guessed, was casting a spell to lighten the load.

“That’s it!” Variel said. “There you go!”

He really did miss his servants, I thought. Of course a demon could be homesick just like anyone. It seems like they like him too…but that doesn’t always mean much. Sometimes one just puts a brave face on a bad situation…I know that if anyone does. In the end, he certainly isn’t a man I would ever want to be with.

Bevan might not have been eight feet of muscle, but he was also terribly handsome, in a way that felt just right, and he was strong too. My eyes moved to him as he pointed out another suitable tree to take down, surveyed the shape of it, and then he turned into a bat, flew up the tree, and turned back into a man without missing a beat. He gestured, and Gillian—after some confusion where she looked around like she had no idea what she was doing—threw a rope up to him. He tied it around the trunk and leapt back down, surefooted, then tied the rope down to a stake already in the ground. Lord Variel nodded at him, and they seemed to be on the same page despite the tension between them. I guessed the rope was to help the tree fall in the right direction. Lord Variel swung the axe and brought it down with some swift strikes. Bevan was nodding and pointing, then ushered Gillian out of the way when she wandered underneath. The tree came down and he wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. My fingers still bore the memory of Bevan’s curls under my fingers. I wondered what his hair would look like if it grew out a little. The curl would probably fall into more of a wave and frame his face and he would look very elegant, but I liked the way that each lock of his hair had a little spring in it now. My hair was so bushy and uncooperative. If we had kids, I wondered if they would have adorable soft curls too.

“Don’t you need to keep an eye on your creme brûlée?” a sullen voice came from under the cabinet.

“Oh! Yes, thank you!” I whipped open the hinged door of the oven and tugged on an oven mitt, carefully taking out the pan with the ramekins. “Time flies when you’re daydreaming, I guess. You saved me.”

No reply. I bent over and peered into the shadows again. “You can eat one in four hours,” I said.

Still nothing.

“Are you ever going to come out?”

A little ball of flame shot out and caught the ends of my hair on fire.

At some point a girl has had enough. I quickly turned into a toad and the jump of transformation—and the fact that I no longer had hair in toad form—put out the fire. I hopped under the cabinet.

“Iluminar,” I said, casting a light under there.

“Get out,” Piers sneered at me, huddling in the corner.

I coughed. “It’s so dusty under here! This is about as nice as solitary confinement in a dungeon.”

“I’m sure that was the intention.”

“You did like that cake, didn’t you? Why don’t you just come out and help me in the kitchen? This is so miserable.”

“What is wrong with you?” Piers asked. “I’m the last person you should be nice to. Did Bevan tell you I killed my own cousin’s familiar? And I tried to kill my familiar as well? And I was complicit with all the wizard council’s plans to uphold their power, no matter who was hurt along the way? Sending dissenters to magical prison…’purifiying’ then…every bad thing that happened, I was in on.”

“Well…he told me some things…he didn’t get into all the details…” I guessed I was