Page 11

EVERYONE’S GLOOMY AND COMPLAINING

Severath

S everath raised his fist then dropped it back to his side.

You’ve hit much more threatening things , the wood mocked. And yet you are afraid of a door?

Severath was similar enough to every other romantic male lead in that he believed he feared nothing. An inanimate object challenging that belief could only spur him on then to do the greatest of things, and so he finally knocked.

An interminable moment later during which he contemplated every way in which he could be attacked through a narrow crevice, the hostile door cracked open and the white of a human eye peered up at him from the darkness inside.

A dart fashioned out of splinters did not pierce his thigh, nor did a trained centipede crawl up his leg.

“Food,” he said and stepped aside. There—first challenge conquered.

She poked her head out, damp hair untangled and brushed away from her face. “Where?”

He gestured for the staircase.

She scoffed and mimicked him.

“And turn my back on you?” Severath leaned against the wall as if to say, Not a chance in blazes .

When the woman rolled her eyes, the dark brown spots circled the whites in such an exaggerated way that Severath could only let his mouth hang open at an offense he didn’t know would wound him so deeply.

But apparently she was hungry enough not to continue the charade and stepped out onto the landing in the wake of his affront.

She still wore the tunic dress from the infirmary that had trouble staying up on both of her shoulders at once, but it was clear she had bathed, both by her clean limbs and her smell.

The stench of the Dreadmoor was gone, the sharpness of human blood and sweat no longer clinging to her, replaced with yarrow soap and…

something else? He breathed in deeply as he took a step closer to her back but couldn’t place the odor.

Perhaps it was just human, but if that were the case, why did it not smell entirely unpleasant?

Every human he had ever come across in the Dreadmoor absolutely stank .

That sorcery must have fucked with my nose too , he thought, watching as she took the stairs with an exaggerated tenderness.

“You are walking funny,” he said as he followed.

“Thanks.” The pinch of her voice let him know she was probably rolling those rings in her eyes again. Quicker, she made it to the bottom floor and whipped around.

“Balran is usually thorough, but human anatomy is not her specialty. Do you need?—”

“I’m fine.”

Severath gritted his teeth and continued toward the kitchen but kept his eye—the remaining one—on her.

The peripheral of his other would have helped him navigate the hall, but without it the archway’s edge came up quicker than he expected, and he swore as he collided with stone.

At least it was just a shoulder, but the pain shot up his neck and right through his skull.

“Looks like you need the healer,” she quipped, arms crossed. The bruising had not yet faded, but the gash along her forearm was gone. She was a lucky if fragile menace.

“Not all things can be healed,” he mumbled and gestured aggressively through the archway into the small dining space carved out opposite the kitchen. She squeezed through, taking pains to not touch him—a good thing as the aggravation in his body couldn’t take much more.

Severath’s dining table was small, but it was rectangular, so there was a best way to sit to ensure her shorter reach couldn’t take him by surprise.

And if she decided to, say, attempt to choke him with a diabolically flung vegetable, he would have optimal time to deflect it.

He owned exactly three chairs—enough for him, his brother, and their childhood friend Davarox—but the third was shoved in a corner to discourage any closeness, not that it looked like she would choose to be nearer than she had to be.

In fact, she covetously eyed the cast-off chair before awkwardly shuffling into the dining alcove.

Lanterns of ever-burning red flames hung from the ceiling.

It was a simple spell most demons had, but the human’s wary gaze was a good reminder that most humans were unfamiliar with magic.

Yet when she stepped under the lights, she looked almost like his own kind with her skin tinted crimson.

She made for a very short and hornless demon, of course, but Severath was a mere cast of messy sorcery away from being similarly afflicted.

She surveyed the table, perhaps for makeshift weapons, but her face softened.

Humans—they were much like demons in some ways, he supposed, a thing he’d learned from years of study and scouting.

His father had exaggerated their monstrousness, and nowadays, scouts were instructed to guide them back to the carved ways on the rare occasion they posed no threat.

This human had rounded lips and a blunted nose, and her eyes were quite dark nestled into those expressive whites.

If the duty he’d been given didn’t demand such alertness, it might have been…

nice to sit across from someone who looked like that for dinner.

Better than staring out the window while he ate alone .

He double checked then that he’d drawn the curtains. If the neighbors saw, it would be a catastrophe. Unless it was Elder Zaretha tottering by—she would be delighted that Severath finally had a female someone over for dinner, even if that female was human.

Severath kept his eyes trained on her, pulling out his chair with his tail.

She recoiled at the appendage’s appearance but dropped down opposite him.

There, they were sitting: second challenge conquered and the only injury had been self-inflicted, not that he would include running into his own damned wall in his official report.

Her dark lips pursed. “So, you cooked this?”

“Who else would?”

She tugged the fallen shoulder of her tunic back up as she shrugged. “I just thought you would make me do it.”

“And give you unfettered access to the most dangerous room in the house?” He snorted and picked up his fork, immediately saw his mistake in giving her one as well, and held his breath.

But she only picked up her own and poked at the food on her plate. “What is it?”

One of his fangs sharpened against his tongue as a vicious idea slithered into his mind. “Braised slaver,” he said and shoveled a strip of meat into his mouth.

Her fork clattered across the table as her eyes went wide, the purpose of that white ring suddenly made clear: it was meant for terror. Her reaction ruled out murder for cannibalistic reasons, at least. “Are you fucking?—”

Severath’s chuckle broke through the straight face he couldn’t maintain. He shook his head, swallowing and snorting, and blazes even that tiny spark of humor felt good. “It’s boar,” he corrected with a deep breath. “Though it is from the Veilwood.”

Deep confusion flashed across her features before it was replaced with discomfort as she stared down at the plate. She squeezed her shoulders inward, the prominence of her collarbone jutting out when her tunic fell askew once more.

And with that, Severath’s minuscule flicker of mirth was snuffed right out, not that things like that lasted anyway.

He’d seen similar looks on the faces of demons who’d been lost on the moors without food for days, and she was already skinny enough.

“It is not human. That would be immoral, not to mention unappetizing.”

“Immoral,” she repeated, fingers crawling across the table to retrieve her utensil. “Where I come from, they say demons hunt humans who get lost in the woods.”

He decided not to mention that she would really have to be fattened up before something would go to the trouble of hunting and eating her. “Where you come from, humans sell off their females like breeding livestock.”

She had nothing to say about that, but she did go back to poking at the not-human meat.

They sat in silence as Severath ate and she poked until she decided to sit back and meet his eye. “Where are the other women?”

He swallowed, recalling Councilor Fineril’s words. “The humans have been placed in appropriate working environments.”

“What does that mean?” Anger flashed across her face like it had in the infirmary when he touched her. “They’re not like me—they’re good. Rosalind tried to help me in Ankerick, and the others?—”

Severath lifted a hand, and she clamped her mouth shut.

“The post,” he said, remembering how Alamar, the postmaster, had been bustling around the infirmary.

“Some of them have been assigned there to organize letters and packages. I was a parcel runner for a year before I was old enough to join the guard, and unless things have significantly changed in”—he squinted his eye and did the math before sighing—“sixteen years, the accommodations are more than suitable.”

“They’re delivering mail?” Her chin lifted.

“Drayks deliver most of the letters, but they need demons—or, humans, I suppose—to sort and manage the larger packages.”

She spun the fork in one hand, eyes narrowed in thought rather than a glower for once.

“They won’t need five bodies though, so some will be assigned elsewhere.”

“Where?”

Severath shrugged and took another bite.

The human made a sound then, and if Severath didn’t know better, he would have called it a whimper. “They’re not…they’re not being used for sex, though, right?”

Severath choked on a chunk of boar, slamming a fist into his chest and swallowing painfully. “Fucking hells, no,” he sputtered.

But she only seemed capable of glaring at him skeptically.

“We are not like you .”

The woman pulled back, likely because he had leaned in and stopped bothering to control his fangs, but he was not done.