Page 17

GROUSING

Severath

S everath slid the knife across the counter to the human at his side.

His hand remained upon it, and her so-deep-brown-they-were-almost-black eyes peered upward to meet his.

When she was not glaring at him, Ember looked nothing at all like a killer with her soft features and her round face, a problem that had been escalating with every passing day.

But then her gaze crept higher, and before it could reach his broken horn, he grunted.

“I am trusting you,” he said and released the tool that could so easily become a weapon.

She wrapped small fingers around the handle. “ Is this the part where I say, ‘If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead?’”

“Not if you want to use the knife.”

She made a thoughtful sound and tipped her head. “Good thing I wasn’t going to anyway.”

“But you just—” Severath clicked his tongue against a fang when he saw the corner of her mouth turn up.

It was brief, but it came with a slight wrinkle to her nose and squint to her eyes that suggested mirth.

It was at his expense, of course, but a smile might be an improvement on all the glowering.

“Here.” He slid a stack of vegetables over to her.

She picked up a pepper and gave it a sniff, but he had no idea how she could smell anything over her own scent.

Not…not bad , just ever present. When she began chopping, it was obvious she had kitchen skills, making quick work of the stem and cutting through the skin to remove the bitter ribs.

But nothing about her grip or her wielding hinted at the prowess of a killer.

Severath moved a step away to break down a plucked grouse carcass.

As he worked, his eye flicked to her every few moments, but she never made a move toward him.

She was steadier on her feet now that they were healed, but it had changed little about how she behaved.

She remained focused on the food, easy to see because her dark hair was tucked behind an ear.

That ear, curved instead of pointed like his own and such a strange earthy color.

He’d seen that color before, it suddenly struck him, on the wings of the moths that flitted around the lanterns on the warmest evenings.

They were thought of as ugly nuisances, but not when they landed.

When a moth felt safe enough to keep its wings still, one could see the patterns painted on them in shades of white and beige and brown.

All of the humans shared a shade with those little moths, but Ember was the warm taupe that bordered the very edges of their wings, the most delicate part that was often damaged from being swatted away.

“Am I dicing these wrong?”

Severath blinked and shook his head. How long had she been staring back at him? “No, I…I forgot to give you something.” He crossed the narrow kitchen and scooped up an onion he had strategically left behind. He called a quick warning and tossed it.

She yelped and ducked, and the onion thunked into the wall. When she straightened, Ember was truly scowling. “What in the hells, Severath?”

“Thought you would catch it.” A practiced killer would have .

Well, any of the guards would have probably caught it too, and perhaps Davarox as well because he had exceptional reflexes.

Severath sucked his teeth. Maybe he had devised a misguided test…

unless Ember was exceptionally sneaky and dedicated to playing the part of innocent little woman.

Because the way she’d said his name was the pinnacle of malicious intent.

And it was also the source of a shiver that ran all the way to the tip of his tail.

Once she seemed sure he knew she was annoyed, she collected the onion, and he returned to the Veilwood fowl. The silence was filled with the sounds of two knives not stabbing into human or demon flesh, and while that was good, it wasn’t definitive enough for a report to the council.

He gestured to the evenly diced vegetables. “You are… proficient .”

“I had to learn,” she said pressing her hand atop the other as she lifted onto her toes.

“I really hated scrubbing floors.” With the proper weight on the knife, she finally sliced through the cowry root, and when it fell into two pieces, she made a satisfied noise of triumph as if it had been her enemy, now bisected.

Slaying vegetables wasn’t exactly the same as demons, though admittedly it was a little closer to slaying humans.

“That was what you were paid to do when you lived among humans? Scrubbing and cooking?”

“Well, I didn’t earn coin if that’s what you mean. I served in noble homes, and in return I was given a warm room and allowed to eat some of what I prepared.”

“A…barter system?” he ventured carefully.

“The only system I was allowed to take part in.” She was fully engaged with breaking down the cowry root as she spoke, apparently a good distraction as the words flowed easily.

“No one would have taken me on as an apprentice, and I wasn’t allowed in the schools, so I don’t have any other skills except cooking and cleaning.

I wish I’d been able to learn to bake, but that was considered an art.

I was raised on laundry and polishing instead. ”

Severath frowned at the uniformity of her slices, confused why any master would not want an apprentice with such deft hands. “Everyone should be taught to care for themselves,” he mused, though felt his voice waver, conviction lost.

“I don’t disagree, but as soon as I could hold a rag, I was cleaning up after others who didn’t care what kinds of messes they left.”

“Quite early in your life,” he said with a quiet interest.

“It was part of the arrangement for my mother’s job. A lot of women fled Kaetong with their children during the war, and they took whatever positions were offered in trade for passage on the boats. She was told she could take me with her to Ankerick if eventually I worked too.”

Severath was vaguely familiar with the skirmishes across the seas that humans always seemed caught up in, but less so with the aftermath. “How could you be indentured by your parent’s decision?” His words came louder than he meant, and it broke the focused spell that had taken her.

She looked sharply back at him, and Severath swallowed— that was the glare of a killer. But then, he had been looked at like that before by female demons, and none of them ever ended up gutting him.

He cleared his throat, directing the conversation elsewhere. “You are not from Ankerick?”

Ember snorted and raised the knife but only pointed its tip at herself. “Do I look like I’m from Ankerick?”

“You look just the same as the other humans.” When her glare went even sharper, he quickly corrected as he dug his own knife in and separated the grouse’s spine from its meat.

“That is, I can tell each of you apart, of course. You, for instance, are the smallest, and you have hair that is very different than that enthusiastic one with the mail. You are also not sickly-colored like the other very thin one, and…well, I don’t remember the others much beyond that, but I do know that while they are odd, the shade of your eyes is closest to a demon’s. ”

Severath was proud of himself as he rattled off the most obvious differences he could remember, and that led to a mistake: smiling.

He grinned at her, and in turn, Ember’s face lost its glower, regaining the soft roundness he so rarely glimpsed.

Her features had more uniquenesses than what he’d said, but he couldn’t very well tell her he’d noticed the plumpness of her bottom lip or the laciness of her eyelashes.

Then she laughed, and it was even brighter than moonlight in the middle of the afternoon.

“I guess humans aren’t as obviously different from one another as demons—at least it would look that way to you.

It might help us get along a little better if we realized.

” She shook her head, but her lips were still drawn upward.

“I wasn’t born in Ankerick, but I have been there almost my entire life. ”

“And your family is still there?” Severath wrapped up half of the fowl for another day. “Do you wish to return to them?”

“No.”

That answer had been quick, and it perhaps needed a quick response if he were to get more. “Explain. ”

Ember chopped a bit more fiercely. “My mother is still alive, but I haven’t seen her since I was thirteen, only heard word about her from others.

She finally has a comfortable position as a governess, so she has plenty of children to take care of and doesn’t need… well, I’m thirty, so I don’t need her.”

“Ah, I see.” Severath only spoke to his own parents every few months. And while he knew it wasn’t quite the same, he had been given a dagger when he was six, a mace at eight, and finally a bow when he was ten. Maybe, he thought, he ought to tell her that…

“Would you have taken me there if I’d said yes?”

“Hmm?” Severath was shaken of the memory of his father’s harsh training by the softness of Ember’s voice. “I don’t know if the council will ever allow any of you to return to Ankerick,” he admitted as he filled a deep pot with water.

“Well, that’s lucky because none of us probably want to go back. Slavers snatch people who won’t be missed.”

When she sighed, it was a wistful sound instead of being full of irritation. Was that his in? Could he finally ask about?—

“What are you doing?”

Severath had placed the pot over the fire and had just lifted the cutting board. “Cooking?”

“You’re going to boil chicken?” She looked utterly aghast as though he were about to boil her instead.

“This is grouse—I told you we do not have these chik-ins . And we cannot eat it raw.”

“We may as well if that’s what you’re going to do.” She abandoned the knife, waving empty hands frantically so he would put down the board. “Tell me you have some sort of lard or butter around here? And some spices? We need to sear this first so it actually tastes like something.”