Page 125 of Demon's Bane

Rhett

The mood in the village is brighter than it’s been in weeks.

Sun shining, work continuing on cleaning up and clearing out and getting back to the way things always were and will be.

There are a few friendly greetings called as King Eren and I make our way toward my mother’s home, but I barely register any of them. I’m here to see Halla, to make sure she’s alright, and then to get back to my mate. The rest of the village can keep their damned pleasantries and leave me the hell alone.

Besides returning the greetings called to him, Eren doesn’t say much as we walk through the village. It’s not until we reach the fork in the path where we need to part that he braces a hand on my shoulder and gives me a brief farewell before heading down to where his soldiers are encamped at the edge of the village.

Pausing on the threshold of my mother’s cabin, I take a moment to compose myself. The last thing my injured sister needs is me disturbing her peace. The least I can do for her is pull myself together for a few damned minutes.

But, as it turns out, Halla is not in need of a gentle sickbed audience.

I step into the cabin and spot her sitting in a chair near the front window, basking in the late afternoon light. Aside from a bandage covering the wound she was bleeding from the last time I saw her, she seems… fine. Alert. Awake. My chest clenches and loosens at once in a combination of near-painful relief and joy.

Her face breaks into a smile when she turns to see me, but it quickly dims.

“You’re here,” she says. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with Joan while she’s—”

“Resting,” I gently interrupt, crossing the room to sit in the chair next to her. “She has two excellent healers attending her.”

“And her mate?” Halla arches a brow, clearly not convinced.

“Can spare a few moments for his injured sister.”

She lets out an exasperated sigh. “Barelyinjured sister. And it wouldn’t have even been barely if Gorver wasn’t a fucking coward who’d strike a demon while her back was turned.”

That launches us into a brief discussion of everything that happened that night in the caves. And even though it’s all in the past, over, behind us, talking through the details makes an anxious, shaky sort of energy take up residence in the center of my chest.

Goddess, how much worse it all could have gone.

For Halla, for Joan, even for me, though that’s hardly as much of a concern.

But there’s no point dwelling on it, not when Halla explains she’s already healing well and that Gorver’sweakhit was nothing she couldn’t take, and not when she lets me know that every demon who was a part of this whole mess has been apprehended.

“They can rot, the lot of them,” Halla says.

I make a low noise of agreement in the back of my throat, ready enough to be done with the matter.

“So,” she continues, voice taking on a more cheerful note as she changes the subject. “The human realm. What will your life be like there?”

“What makes you think I’m going to the human realm?”

Halla reaches for my horn and tips my head forward, inspecting it from a few different angles before I wrench out of her grasp.

“What are you doing?”

“For a second there, I could have sworn you were the one with the head injury instead of me. Your mate, you idiot. What other reason would you have for going to the human realm?”

“We still haven’t decided what we’re going to—”

“You can’t stay here. And neither can she.”

A rumble of dissatisfaction crawls up my throat. “Of course Joan can stay here. Even if it takes me thumping it into every thick skull in the village that she belongs with me, I’ll make everyone—”

“Goddess, give me patience,” Halla groans. “That’s not what I meant. Of course if Joan wanted to be here she could stay. But she doesn’t. And neither do you.”

Another immediate protest lodges itself on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it. I don’t bother arguing her first point. I know it well enough, and if my family can see just as clearly Joan wouldn’t be happy here…