“Fine!”Arek shouted from behind them.“You can haveallthe fire.Will you two get over yourselves and put your hackles down?”
Saer couldn’t help it.The corner of his mouth twitched.
Runeak was, of course, unaffected.
Saer lowered his hands if only to gesture to the central part of the encampment, taking some of the edge out of his voice.“It’s good to see you, Runeakael.Please, join us.”
Runeak approached the three others after dressing.It shouldn’t have surprised them that Wrath made even the bland linen garments threatening.
Errshek and Saer took in her every move while she approached the eldest.“I need metal.”
Saer drew his head back to the unexpected statement.“Metal?”
Her icy stare spoke for her.
He lifted a brow to the others.“I don’t think we have any here—”
“I’ll go.”Errshek half-tripped as he went towards their store of goods.Gathering some supplies, he asked, “What kind of metal, Runeak?”
When she didn’t answer, Errshek glanced at Runeak and stiffened under her gaze.“Right.”He flung a pack over his back and took his leave, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll be back before the storms!”
“Family reunions,” Arek muttered under his breath with his special cynicism—as deep as oceans.He hadn’t stopped cutting produce at the workbench.
Saer forced himself to sit at one of the stumps and gestured to another across from him, addressing Runeak.“How is Alus?”
The chopping behind Saer slowed.
Runeak remained standing.“Persuasive and insolent.”
It was the huff of a laugh behind Saer, more than Runeak’s words, which provoked a faint smile of his own.“He’s gone to fetch Kalia?”
Runeak offered a slow nod of affirmation.
Pride crossed his arms and leaned back, coaxing himself to relax.“What convinced you to join us?”
Lifting her chin in a fluid motion towards where Errshek departed, Runeak answered in her low alto.“I needed to see for myself.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“Presently.”Runeak lifted her nose, scenting the air.“Your anger is different.”
Saer didn’t offer a response, though it was somewhat alarming, if not unpredictable, that she could tell as much.
“You will tell us why you have summoned us,” she said.“And why your wrath has not gone, but changed.”
“Yes, Runeakael.Once we’re all together.”
Content with his answer, the demoness nodded and sank onto the previously offered stump with feline grace.
Lucifer’s creations all gathered around the fire—Runeak sat at one end while the three others kept to the opposite side.She didn’t seem to mind.
In the usual stormy darkness, under the canopies, the four demons sat in silence, and not because they had nothing to say—Pride, Greed, and Envy found themselves enraptured with Wrath’s ministrations.
A larger bonfire had been built for the evening to fuel four of theDaemoenica, the woodpile stacked as high as Saer’s mid-thigh.Runeak wedged her bare foot into the coals where they smoldered hottest.
Taking pieces of the metal Errshek had fetched for her, Runeak channeled the fire through her body, into her fingers.She melted the core materials to a molten liquid.With a clever push and pull of heat, she turned the substance into a sort of clay, smoothing, shaping, and bending.
Arek broke the silence.“I’ve seen her make blades with the same sort of technique, but this seems different.”
