had something really wonderful. All of us together, working together, building your cabin...having something I always wanted. A family, with lots of conversation and laughter and teamwork. Maybe it sounds silly to a 'high demon', and it wasn't perfect, but...was it really so much worse than your gloomy castle in a swamp with killer fish and bugs, and servants who stole your stuff and ran away? You didn't really need them! You had people around who actually liked you. I liked you!" She took a deep breath.
“A family,” I said heavily.
“I guess you’ve never known how it feels to have a family that doesn’t just serve your every whim,” she said. “But I wanted you around. I did. I liked making food for you, not because I was your servant, but because I like to do it for the people I care about.”
Her body was all tensed up, her hands in small fists that fidgeted, like they didn’t feel comfortable in such a pose. Her hands were more used to creating things.
“I wanted to hurt you, Jenny. I didn’t want to get too relaxed in Etherium…or with you. My punishment is fitting for the way I behaved to you. I’m leaving now, and I think that will be for the best.”
“I—I—I’m going to the Lost Isles, so I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.”
“Jenny—“
“But don’t try and stop me either.”
“I won’t.”
She looked a little annoyed at that too.
If we did marry, I suppose I would never know how to please her.
But how I would have enjoyed trying…
“Good-bye, Lord Variel,” she said.
My body burned with the desire to chase after her, grab her, and tell her just how wrong she was. She had insulted my castle and tried to domesticate a demon.
I didn't move, and not just because all I could grab her with were sharp claws, likely only to hurt her.
Could it be that the hag saw this girl in my future because she speaks a truth no one has dared to speak before?
I swallowed, knowing that deep within my soul, I carried a pain I never spoke of. My mother had died giving birth to me, and I had always feared it was because her body was too fragile to bear a demon. I cursed myself for having killed my mother, while wondering if she would have been kind to me, if she would have kissed me as a child or given me small gifts for my birthday. If anything would have been different.
Is it a family I wish for as well?
But my father always implied that it was just as well my mother died. Did he ever love her? Did he hide it as I tried to hide my own affections?
I had just told Uram I was leaving that morning, but instead I struggled with the door knob to get out of the room.
“Jenny!” I found her in the hall. “My lady Jenny.” I bowed to her, wings and tail draped on the floor like a cloak. “Let me make amends. I want to accompany Jenny and Bevan on their quest to the temple. If you should run into any physical dangers, you'll need someone strong. Especially if spells don't work as well there.”
“If I say yes, do you understand that I’m not offering you anything more than that?” she asked carefully. “That I am not there to be wooed and I have no intention of marrying you?”
“I swear it.”
“And you’ll look at my face and not my breasts at all times?”
“It would be my pleasure to only regard your finest of faces,” I said.
She looked a tiny bit flattered, but she tried not to show it. “Do you think you can fly?”
“I would need to learn,” I said. “Unfortunately, it will be difficult to fly with untested wings in the stormiest part of the world.”
She nodded. “Well, you are still very strong. So maybe you’ll be useful to have around. You can come with us. Just you, not any of your servants.”
No servants and no hands, I thought, with a slight qualm, but I supposed I could spear fish on my talons.
“I’ll see you at the docks,” I told her.
Chapter Twenty
Piers
"Oh, good morning? Are you new in town?" A devastatingly beautiful woman sidled up to me as I was trying to buy a few spell ingredients iat the herbalists near the castle.
I hadn't even replied before her friend joined her. "I hardly knew they made humans this handsome. What's your name, sir?"
I pulled my hood