Page 13 of How Not to Charm Your Human Colleague (Falling for Demons #2)

FAMILY DINNER

Kizros

K izros had been given three days to stew in his anxiety.

Well, he’d been given three days to clear his schedule of any potential conflicts, and since he was an awful liar, he couldn’t even come up with a fake excuse to avoid it—not that he’d ever done such a thing, even if he’d wanted to. So, three days of anxiety it was.

And three days from avoiding any sort of conversation or close quarters with the one person he so desperately wished he could confide in.

Aofe sat across from him in the carriage, a soft-blue dress pillowing out at her hips and spread across the seat.

Brioni had delivered it the day before, and apparently the long sleeves had been embroidered by one of the other humans.

Silver flowers and vines decorated the scooping collar and trailed down to her wrists where they secured over her rune cuff.

The leggings, silver to match the stitching, were tucked into flat ankle boots that he’d noticed she wore with all of her outfits.

So dangerous, how he would have much preferred to keep her home than be here. Peel those leggings from her thighs and count all the freckles on her skin.

But she was not his, and he could not keep her sequestered away. He was not a monster, and he’d kept himself busy so that he wouldn’t dare tempt himself to do something foolish.

Like kiss her, no matter how much he wanted to.

“Whoa,” Aofe whispered, blue hair twisted around her finger as she stared toward the home at the end of the pathway.

She’d dyed her hair again, the blue a richer hue than before—her own recipe combined with the stronger pigments of demon-native flowers—leaving her shoulder-length strands shining in the waning moonlight.

Beautiful. Utterly stunning. And now he was trying very hard to scrub those thoughts from his brain as he stared at his childhood home looming over them.

Already, he could see his older sister and younger brother chatting against the marble balustrade, the white-columned backdrop and bright lights illuminating their varying shades of green skin.

His youngest sister was likely inside already, gossiping with their aunt.

And since his parents were waiting at the base of the stairs to greet them instead of waiting at the doorway, he had a feeling he knew what the topic would be.

As their carriage rolled to a stop, he caught his father’s mildly concerned look toward the qapian before his famous Kosteri smile was back in place. “Kizros, so glad you could join us.”

Kizros hopped out of the cart and gave a polite nod to his dad, then leaned down to accept air kisses from his mother.

A dozen ideas of voicing his displeasure lingered on his tongue—particularly how this was most likely a political stunt for his father’s campaign—but he instead chose to say, “Thank you for inviting us.”

His mother pulled away, squeezing his arms gently.

As predicted, she had none of the tact his father possessed in her greeting.

“Surely you could have saved time walking instead of waiting for a ride. I just know Vylless Sohraxi is going have questions as to why my son had to hire such a lazy form of transportation when…”

Kizros had already turned away from her, offering a steady hand for Aofe to exit. He lingered, not just for her comfort, but for his own, as she descended to the unstable rocks at their feet. Or perhaps so he could hide his embarrassment at his mother’s behavior from his ever-observant father.

What he didn’t account for was Aofe’s ever-observant eye as well.

She adjusted her skirt and then gripped her crutches, offering his parents a wide smile and her own polite nod. “Hello, Ukela. Karroth. I’m Aofe. It’s lovely to meet you.”

Karroth placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Nice to have you visit. Both of you.” His eyes flashed to Kizros, but that smile remained in place as he waved a hand to the house. “Please, let’s head inside. Dinner is almost ready.”

His parents turned, almost as one, and began the climb up the two dozen stairs at a quick pace. Kizros took one look and nearly cursed aloud.

“It’s fine, Kiz,” Aofe whispered, taking the first step. “Just… maybe don’t let me fall backward? It’s a long way down.”

Kizros blinked at the human, searching her face to find only humor in her smile. But he failed to see anything funny about this situation as she continued toward the house.

His parents were already at the door by the time they noticed Kizros and Aofe weren’t immediately behind them, and it seemed his mother had been holding one half of a conversation with no clue there was no one to listen to her.

Even his sister and brother had stopped talking to not-so-subtly watch them walk up the steps.

“That’s your older sister, right?” Aofe asked, slightly out of breath. “Zestala? And your brother is Tarkoth?”

“Hmm?” Kizros mumbled, keeping a fraction of a step behind her as she wobbled. “Oh, yes.”

“They look like you,” she said. “Are all demons the same color as their parents?”

He hummed, thankful for the distraction from having his family watch them walk up stairs.

“Most of the time, colors take after one of the parents. It’s an indication of magic passed down.

But there are rare cases of neither color, or some combination.

Ozirax’s parents are red and blue, but he got neither fire nor water. ”

“He’s the purple demon who tackled the big human?”

Kizros snorted. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t killed each other yet.”

“I think she has incentive not to stab him… for now,” he added as they made it to the doorway. Most had disappeared, but Zestala waited, her hands shoved into her pants pockets. “Zesta, how are you?”

“Just fabulous,” she purred, her short, curled hair flowing over her even shorter horns. “The twins are causing a ruckus with the nanny, and Xenlisa is working late. All these humans caused such a stir they’ve been working overtime. You know how it is, don’t you?”

Kizros gaped as his sister turned, continuing to talk about her wife’s work lately and not bothering to see if anyone was following. He turned to Aofe to apologize.

“You grew up here?” she asked first, neck craning to see the twisting staircases and blinding white marble in every alcove and hallway. Either she was oblivious to Zestala’s comments or ignoring them. He hoped the former, but his bet was on the latter. “Is your childhood room still here?”

Kizros narrowed his eyes on her. “Aofe, I’m thirty-eight and I’ve lived on my own for twenty years.” Her brow rose expectantly, and he grunted, walking ahead. “Yes, it’s still here.”

“I wanna see it,” she teased, following after him. “Please! I need to see what little Kiz’s favorite stuffed animal was, and where you grew your first defensive garden.”

He almost stuttered a step in surprise. She remembered that mention of the box planter outside his window?

Surely he hadn’t brought it up casually, probably just an offhanded mention when he talked about how he’d tried to breed a pyrus canadense with an iostritimisannah because he was terrified someone would sneak through his balcony window after reading a particularly scary story.

Yet Aofe had remembered that specific detail.

He was still ruminating on that fact—and the little feeling that had burrowed into his chest—when they sat for dinner. His family was in the midst of whatever the latest scandal was in city hall, but they quieted when he pulled a seat out for Aofe at the long table.

She gave him a smile as she sat, gathering her crutches to lean against her chair.

“Oh, we can move those out of the way,” his mother said to her left, calling for one of the servants to remove them.

“They aren’t in the way, Mother,” Kizros said plainly, noticing Aofe’s shoulders soften in his peripheral as he waved the servant away.

Ever the diplomat, his youngest sister, Hyxe, cut into the silence. “Aofe, it’s so nice to meet another human. I’ve seen Rosalind working around city hall, and she is always so busy running this way and that. Argeth’s initiative for the six of you was groundbreaking, wasn’t it?”

Aofe nodded. “Yes, I’m sure it was. I’ll admit I’ve not really had the time to review the documents?—”

“Surely there’s not much for her to do in that little shop of yours,” his aunt, Sestrin, cut in, speaking as if Aofe weren’t right there.

“Actually,” Kizros said, leaning out of the way as one of the servants deposited their meals.

He nodded his thanks before turning back to Aunt Sestrin.

“Aofe was instrumental in adapting our ingredients to human dosages and medications for the other humans here. And she’s been an incredible help with my latest breeding attempts?—”

“Son, please don’t use that term at the dinner table,” his mother chastised. “It’s so uncivilized.”

“Speaking of uncivilized,” Tarkoth added, knife working smoothly through the feger meat. “Did you hear what House Vumheri proposed yesterday?”

And thus the conversation devolved into Zestala and Karroth outlining how they were already preparing their counterproposal in language that Kizros couldn’t care less about for a topic he couldn’t care even less about.

Even his mother and little sister chimed in, all while Aunt Sestrin signaled for more wine as she sent her vegetables back to the kitchen because they were undercooked.

Kizros sighed and focused on his own meal.

Most family dinners resulted in this. No matter how excited he was, no matter what sort of interesting fact he brought up, he was ignored for what the rest of his family had turned into their careers.

And inevitably, this meal would end with his father once again pulling him aside and asking if he was ready to give up on his silly little plant shop for a more respectable career in politics.

He was nearly finished with his meal, vaguely keeping up with the proud announcement Hyxe made about her new appointment as their father’s assistant, when he noticed Aofe set down her utensils.

Since she’d been sick, he’d taken to keeping a closer eye on her.

Monitoring the state of her freckles and flush of her skin, but also the little things that he knew she still hid from him.

Winces or stumbles, how she sometimes leaned to subtly disguise sliding her hip back into place, but mostly the tremor in her fingers.

The reason she still struggled to get a rune to work, but more importantly, a sign she was hurting.

Kizros caught the slight shake of her pinky finger as she slipped her hand from the table and set it on her lap.

And then he noticed the meat on her plate, a few jagged and superficial lines cut over the surface, but only one or two missing slices from the offering.

Anything that didn’t need a knife had been eaten, but the tough feger had barely been touched. Not nearly enough food to sustain her.

Without a second thought, Kizros reached over and stabbed his fork into the slab, holding it steady as he began to carve.

After slicing off a few pieces, he snagged her fork and skewered a bite, handing it off to Aofe without a word.

Of course, thoughts of feeding her himself flitted through his mind, simply because he entertained the idea of doing it with berries and fruits while they were both gloriously naked, but he shoved them down, reminding himself that he was not meant to be enamored with his human colleague.

When the feger was cut, he returned to his own plate, oblivious to the silence that had fallen around the table.

But when he glanced back at Aofe to confirm she was still eating, her blue eyes were soft and full of sunshine, staring up at him with such gratefulness that… maybe he didn’t need to feel like a monster. Not when someone could look at him like that and make him forget why he felt so small here.

Or, more specifically, remind him what it was like to feel happy.