attempting on my own, but with him …
I shook my head. What was I thinking? Zylas wanted to go home, not tour the planet. He’d already almost left me.
My chest tightened.
Heat vibrated through the infernus. Zylas appeared in a crouch on the sofa and immediately reclined against the cushions, one foot propped up. Those crimson eyes watched me, and I wondered how much of my thoughts he’d heard.
The ache inside me grew, and I closed the book. We wouldn’t see those places together. He wanted to go home—and that’s what I wanted too. I wanted my normal life back, where I wasn’t an illegal contractor constantly fearing for my life. I didn’t want to share my home, my life, and my mind with a demon. I didn’t want to be bound to him forever.
I didn’t … but my chest still ached.
“What hurts, vayanin?”
Flinching, I ducked my head. So he wasn’t privy to my current thoughts—but he was picking up on other signs. Unwilling to delve into the confused maelstrom of feelings I was experiencing at the prospect of his departure from this world, I gave him a scowl.
“Do you have to keep insulting me, Zylas?”
“I am not insulting you.”
“Maybe you don’t think calling me clumsy is an insult, but—”
“I did not call you clumsy.”
“You keep calling me vayanin.”
“I told you, it is not an insult.”
“Then what does it mean?”
He grinned, amusement brightening his crimson eyes.
I bristled self-consciously. “It might not be an insult, but you’re still making fun of me.”
“I am not making fun.”
Despite his claim, I could see the laughter he was holding back, and hurt slashed me. Maybe he wasn’t being mean-spirited, but if he thought it was funny, it couldn’t be anything pleasant. Why would he use everyone else’s name, but not mine?
Huffing to hide my distress, I shoved off the sofa and took a stomping step away.
A hard tug on my sweater. I fell backward, landing on his lap. Before I could think of leaping off him, he wrapped his powerful arms around me, pulling me tight against his chest.
“Vayanin is not an insult,” he murmured, his warm breath teasing my ear. “Your language does not have this word. You do not know it.”
“Then why do you keep calling me it?”
“It is a good word for you.”
I gritted my teeth, too aware of all the places our bodies were touching. “Explain it to me, then.”
“Hnn … that is not fun.” He sighed. “Vayanin means …”
For a moment, he was quiet. Gathering his thoughts or deciding whether to speak at all?
“Night is a time of danger.” All amusement left his voice, his tone low and husky. “It is the time when we hunt. When we are hunted. It is dark and cold, with no way to recover vīsh. All night, we watch the horizon.”
I held still in his arms, my breath snared in my lungs as I listened.
“When the first light reaches the land, and the sky turns to yellow, and the warmth comes, we are safe for another day. The moment when the sun touches you after the cold night—that is vayanin.”
My pulse thumped in my ears. My chest tightened again, but not with the sorrowful ache of earlier. A different sort of ache. Twisting in his hold, I craned my neck back to stare at him in disbelieving wonder. “I thought … This whole time, I thought you were insulting me.”
His somber gaze turned toward me—and his wolfish grin flashed. “I know.”
I blinked. That’s why he’d always looked so amused when I’d demanded to know what vayanin meant? He hadn’t been entertained by his clever insult, but by my assumption about its meaning? Instead of telling me, he’d let me think it was an insult. It’d been his little joke, a secret he’d never intended to explain.
I was still reeling, my head and heart a complete mess, when Amalia breezed out of her room, carrying two slim sweater-dresses.
“Robin, which do you think I should—” She broke off at the sight of me trapped in Zylas’s arms. “Oh my god, seriously?”
My face burned.
Amalia tossed her dresses toward her bedroom, stomped over to the sofa, and mashed her hand over Zylas’s face. Shoving him backward, she hauled me off his lap with her other hand. I stumbled away, blinking dumbly.
“You have an infernus, remember?” she barked at me. “Use it once in a while! And you.” Hands on her hips, she glared at Zylas. “You’re an obnoxious pig! Don’t make that face. If you knew what a pig was, you wouldn’t think it’s funny!”
Choking on a laugh, I scooped up the grimoire and hurried into my room, Amalia’s angry lecture carrying after me.
“Holding Robin down is just gross, and you need to get it through your thick horned skull that civilized men don’t—” A pause. “I didn’t say you were a human, but you can do better than behaving like a beast!”
I swung my door shut before she heard my stifled giggles. Shaking my head, I stopped at my closet, figuring I might as well pick out my outfit for the party. I was looking forward to seeing Zora again—and she would have a million questions about what had happened with Claude and the sorcerers.
“Oh yeah?” Amalia shouted. “Just try me! I’ll steal pieces from your puzzle and burn them!”
Snorting with laughter, I almost dropped the grimoire. Before I could damage it, I crossed to my bed and pulled out its case. I laid the book in its nest of brown paper, my fingers brushing the leather cover with reverence.
People put their souls in books, my mother had always said. Had she left a remnant of her soul behind in the grimoire? What about Myrrine and Melitta, who’d added impassioned words to its pages? How many of my ancestors had put a piece of themselves into this tome?
I gently straightened the book’s torn clasp. Every time I picked up the book and turned its pages, I thought of my mother’s hands picking it up and turning the same pages. I knew it was nostalgic whimsy, but I felt like she was with me, guiding me, every time I worked on the translations.
Since discovering Myrrine’s journal entries, I’d felt like she was leading me too—a smart, bold older sister braving the way. As Myrrine had protected Melitta, she’d guided me with her insights, showing me a path I might have rejected otherwise.
Smiling, I folded the protective brown paper over the grimoire and closed the steel lid. As I pushed the box under my bed, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I slid it out and woke the screen to find a new message. My heart rate jumped at the sender: Ezra Rowe.
We need to talk ASAP. In private.
I bit my lip. Was there a reason we couldn’t talk on the phone? What was so urgent?
With five taps on my screen, I sent a reply: Why?
Standing rigidly beside my bed, I waited. My phone grew heavier in my hands as the seconds crawled past. Amalia and Zylas’s argument had petered out, and the silence pressed down on me.
My phone buzzed against my palm. His reply appeared on the screen, four words that sent a fear-tinged thrill down my spine.
It’s time to trade.