Page 62 of Red Demon

“How long has it been since I—” I winced at the effort of holding myself to a sitting position. “—challenged you?”

Her face wrinkled at the question, and she stepped away, bending over to pick up a notebook on the table—the leather-bound journal. “Since you tried to kill me?” She flipped a page. “Three days, I think.”

Days. The plantain bandages around my body were fresh. The long grasses that made up my bed felt dry against my skin, but if I’d been out for days… Well, I could imagine why I was lying on straw like cattle, and why the straw did not smell like cattle. I flushed with embarrassment, then chugged the remaining water.

“Another?”

I shook my head, finding that it hurt a little. “Why?”

Faruhar took back the glass, setting it beside the ceramic pitcher with the swirling Asri design. “Why what?”

I slowly gestured with my hand to the room; to me.

She squinted in concentration. “You fought well. Kept breathing. You refused to die.” Faruhar cocked her head at me, assessing until I looked away. “You are very stubborn—and very strange.”

The fireplace crackled in the dimly lit room. I could smell the stew bubbling on the fire. My stomach rumbled.

“Again, why?” I said, but she waited for the rest. “Why do anything for me at all?”

“I respect stubborn. Even if you are too stubborn to tell me your name. I suppose I won’t remember it anyway.”

I looked up, but the Red Demon was not smiling. “Jesse.”

“Have you chosen your second name, Jesse?”

I clenched my jaw. “You killed the man who gave me one. You don’t deserve that name.”

She shook her head. “You named yourself after an Asri family?”

I huffed, looking away.

“Okay Jesse, will you try to kill me the minute I turn my back, or when I sleep?”

At first, it sounded like a straightforward question. It wasn’t. The cold stone rubbed against my back.

“You won. That wouldn’t be … honorable.” I had to use the Asri word. I couldn’t remember a Chaeten word that felt right.

“Honorable.” Faruhar huffed, mirthless. “The honorable ka kill more than anyone. It is no sin to slay a demon, na?” she said in Asri. “Hasn’t your family told you the same?”

My stomach churned, but I got the words out. “You deserve to die for what you’ve done.”

Faruhar slumped back to the iron pot by the fire, stirring the stew in the uneasy silence. “Aren’t you a demon too?”

I stuttered at the question. I struggled to find words, meaning in any of this.

“Quarter-blood maybe, One-eighth Chaeten-sa in your code? It would explain how you can fight like that.”

“No, I—” I said, but faltered. My hungry, exhausted brain was useless, straining to watch her fluid movements ladle out a bowl of hearty stew and walk back toward me. Her maze of scars was as detailed as a century robe up close, and I got lost tracing them with my eyes. I found it difficult to look at this woman with her long unbound hair, beautiful on anyone else. Yet this woman in her simple linen tunic had gutted Galen like a yearling fawn.

Faruhar frowned as I reached out for the bowl, holding it to her hip. “You still want to kill me. I’m not blind to that.”

“You won. Someone else will have to do that now.” It felt so empty to realize that, to have that taken away.

Her silence felt like that of a multitude.

“Do you have any people who can help you while you recover?”

“You killed them all.” I thought of Asher, Mira, but I wouldn’t give her the names of the last two people she could take away from me. I could stay alive for them, though. With a sigh, I reached for that bowl of soup.