The men crossed themselves. Edan swore.
“Aye,” said Cathal. “The wizard who cursed Fergus has other tricks up his sleeves, it seems.”
In truth, it was almost better to have them staring at the demon. He hadn’t been able to get either himself or Sophia into any truly compromising state of undress, and alarm had greatly diminished his own excitement to a state easily hidden by clothing. Nonetheless, they were a man and a woman alone in a room, and clearly both disheveled.
“What is it?” Roger asked. “How did it get here? Are there more?”
They were all speaking in Gaelic, and Cathal only noticed it when Sophia stepped back, taking herself out of a conversation too quick and too worried to follow in a foreign tongue. He switched to French, trusting the men to follow his lead.
“’Tis a demon, as I understand such things. Likely if he could send more, he would have, but I’ll post guards throughout the castle tonight, and I’ll take other measures as well.” There were wards. His knowledge of them was academic, another memory of childhood training for which he’d cared little at the time, damned young idiot that he’d been. Hethoughthe could make them stronger. “We’ll have Father Lachlann bless weapons. How did it get here?” he asked, turning to Sophia.
“There was a”—she waved her hands in the air, making a circle of varying size—“space that grew larger. It came from that. I smelled rot before then, and sweetness.” Sophia’s eyes held Cathal’s for a breath longer. There was something she wasn’t saying, that she didn’t want to speak of in front of the guards.
“A bad sign. But as you see”—he gestured to the demon’s corpse—“they die like anything else. Munro, gather the men. I’ll talk to them soon, let them know the plan. Then two of you can come back here and get rid of the body.”
Whatever skills Cathal lacked in running a castle, he’d been commanding men long enough to know how to put dismissal into a tone of voice. The three guards left, Roger crossing himself again before he turned.
Cathal waited for their footsteps to fade before turning to Sophia. She stood farther away from him now, arms wrapped around her stomach. In the light of greater concerns and the eyes of others, their earlier madness had cooled for her too, perhaps. He still hungered to look at her, but it was a fainter urge now, and he could displace it, as he knew he must.
“I think,” she said, “that I’m the reason it could get here.”
“Ah,” Cathal said and wished he could argue the point. But the demon had appeared in her laboratory, and… “The connection again?”
Sophia nodded, hair brushing against her cheek. “I doubt it could appear where I’m not. And I’m not certain what to do about that. If I leave, I’ll be abandoning your friend, but if I stay, I will perhaps put you all in great danger.”
There was no confusion on Cathal’s part, whatever there might be for Sophia. “Then we will put a guard on your chambers and on this room. If need be, I’ll stand the watch myself.” He glanced down at his waist, at the silver-chased and sapphire-set hilt of his sword. “I had this from my mother’s kin. It’s not the only weapon of its kind, nor the only one in the castle. And,” he added, glimpsing the pouch at his belt and remembering the letter within for the first time in an hour or two, “I have news.”
Only after Sophia looked up from the letter with a face of embarrassed regret did Cathal remember that she likely couldn’t read Gaelic. Only after he’d skimmed over the first few paragraphs did he realize that he hadn’t thought twice before giving her his family correspondence. That was a notion he was sure he’d turn over in his mind later, on an early morning or a sleepless night. For the moment, he repeated Moiread’s information without embellishment.
Listening, Sophia stood very still, her hands twined in her skirt. At the news of Valerius’s crimes, she swallowed, a quick movement of her slim, bruised throat, and again at Moiread’s conclusions.
“And so we can guess where he obtained the demon’s services,” she said. “I’ve told you before that I know little about such creatures, great or small, but fratricide seems a sure way to attract darkness, if you seek it.” Her voice was quick as usual when discussing theory, but quieter, smaller. “This may help. I can’t be certain. I wish I could promise more.”
“These things die like anything else,” Cathal repeated. “And you held it off long enough this time.”
“Barely. And… Oh!” Unlikely joy dawned on her face. “It worked. My experiment, that is. It has certain limitations, but it’s entirely promising. The demon couldn’t break my skin, and that alone was a great protection. I’m sure it saved my life… Well, that and you arriving when you did, and having the right sort of weapon. I did stab the demon, but it didn’t seem to take.”
“Steel often doesn’t, I hear,” said Cathal. “I’ll find out more as I can. As for the potion, I’m glad of it. While this lasts, you should make more. Drink them every time one wears off.” He reached out and took her chin in his hand, turning her face up to his. “You’ll have anything of mine that you need.”
Then he left. He had tasks at hand and limits on his self-control—limits that were, it seemed, growing shorter by the day.
Twenty-two
Practically speaking, the demon’s attack was almost a blessing when Sophia thought about it. For the cost of a few bruises, a knot on the back of her head, and a short stretch of literally mortal terror, she’d tested her potion and found it successful. She’d encountered a new form of life, even if it was horrible and evil. To top it off, as she was cleaning up her laboratory and periodically glancing at the demon’s corpse, she’d realized that there lay a potential new source of both materials and a connection to Valerius.
Sophia hadn’t worked with demons before, naturally. She didn’t know of anyone who had, and what little she did know warned against it—but against calling them up, not analyzing their bodies after they’d met their well-deserved fate. Very gingerly, she pried off two of the demon’s claws, wrapped them in linen, and tucked the package into a corner of her box of supplies. The blood would probably burn through any container, she thought, and while either its heart or eye would likely have the greatest power, the risk of mischief from that direction was too great.
The claws would be enough to go on. She’d test half of one for elements and planetary correspondences; that would give her at least a hint to whether the rest could be at all useful. Then too, she wanted to consider the protective elixir further—with time and other processes, it was possible that the effect could last longer, or that it could guard against, say, being strangled—and there was the other potion for Fergus, which had fortunately not been upset during the fight.
Sophia had many roads to go down, many discoveries she could make, much work that she could do—and she rejoiced in it. She always would have, when the projects were new, but for the first time in her life, she felt that she would lose herself in it as a need, and not just as an inevitable result of progress and curiosity.
She didn’t—couldn’t—regret the moments she’d spent in Cathal’s arms. She knew she’d flung herself at him as she’d told Alice she wouldn’t, though out of neither recklessness nor despair, and that nothing had changedsincethat conversation with Alice. The reward had been worth the act.
For most of her life, Sophia had thought she understood desire tolerably well for an unmarried woman. Men were part of the world. A few of them were well made. She’d noticed, imagined more than noticing from time to time, and responded accordingly—but she was unmarried, and had never before had the time or the opportunity to be truly tempted into misbehavior. Despite her reading, she’d never really been able to imagine much beyond kissing, if that. It had never occurred to her that she would feel faint and dizzy, that her sex and her breasts would ache, and that she would not only find all of those phenomena pleasant but actually crave the chance to feel them again.
Lust was its own kind of alchemy, it seemed, and as full of contradictions. In Cathal’s arms, she’d ached and not noticed pain, had all the strength go out of her limbs while she’d felt full of new energy as bright as the noon sun. It was fascinating.
It was not an area of knowledge Sophia could rationally pursue further. She was glad of the time they’d had. Until she died, she would remember the heat of Cathal’s mouth, the intoxicating glide of his thumb across her nipple, the way his manhood had thrust against her. When she was alone at night, or in the depth of age, she knew she would take out the memories and comfort herself with them. Had they not stopped, she would have let him take her on the floor, and she doubted she would have had many regrets after.
