“Jolakaturin.”
“The jolakaturin, yes! Too bad they’re extinct, you would have loved them. Anyway, all those creatures bowed to her whim. But there was a challenger to the Sanguine Throne.Irromach.”
Damien mouthed the name along with his father, resting an elbow on the window ledge and his chin in his hand. It was difficult to imagine the soggy marsh outside covered in ice, but over thousands and thousands of years and twisting arcana and the rise of humans, the world was bound to change. It was not difficult, however, to imagine his great, great grandmother having a hated rival—Damien knew that all too well.
“Irromach believed he was the rightful heir to the Sanguine Throne. He declared war on earth, and he nearly defeated Valgormoth.”
“But great, great grandmother was stronger, wiser, better learned and practiced, and, most importantly, the truer evil and rightful heir,” Damien said, repeating what he had been told many times. The words were ingrained in him, difficult to echo without sounding totally put-upon, but they were only stories.
Zagadoth’s rumble of a voice quieted. “That is all true, and she may have taken down Irromach herself, but Valgormoth did not defeat him and his armies alone.” Typically, his father would laugh when Damien repeated things back to him, but this time he said something new. “I wish I could be there with you, kiddo, though I guess you wouldn’t be doing this if I could. I just hate seeing you insist on struggling alone. If I’ve taught you anything, it is to not scorn those who are useful and loyal. Call in the loyalty of those you know and use them.”
Damien stared out a moment longer at the marsh. Down on a mound of roots jutting up from the bog, a white bird had its wings outstretched. He blinked and squinted, but it was only a crane, not a dove like he had momentarily thought. Why would it be? That would be ridiculous.
He nodded, his gaze shifting back to the eye on the crystal. “You’re right, Father. As always.”
Zagadoth laughed heavily. “I never get tired of hearing that! Now, get some sleep, and don’t waste all the power left in this crystal on me telling ya the same ole boring stories about your ancestors, all right?”
“Sure, Dad,” said Damien, and he swiped over the crystal again, darkening the eye until Zagadoth’s essence was locked back away inside.
Then, before he could think long on it, Damien pulled out his dagger, rolled up a sleeve, and cut a small slice into his forearm. He let the blood drip onto the sill and whistled sharply into the marshy air. The clouds above darkened, and a black speck fluttered out of them, diving down and coming to land just before him on the sill.
“Corben.” Damien nodded to the raven who bowed back. When he muttered in Chthonic to the bird, its eyes shimmered violet and then he ran his hand through the feathers on the creature’s back. When the message was conveyed, the raven took off again, disappearing into the clouded distance.
Kaz was still there when Damien turned around, the imp’s eyes a little shrewder than when they’d been filled with awe at seeing the demon lord in the crystal.
“To bed,” Damien demanded, pointing sharply away from him, and the imp scurried to the corner of the room. When Damien went to get into his bed, he saw the sprig of yarrow, no idea what to do with it. “Kaz?”
The imp whimpered from the corner.
“You’ve done an acceptable job fetching this today.”
There was a long silence, and then a gurgly, delighted squeal from the imp. Damien rolled his eyes and turned over, determined to actually get some sleep.
CHAPTER 13
HOW TO FORCE COMPANIONSHIP AND MANIPULATE EVIL
Amma could not remember falling asleep the night before. In fact, she couldn’t remember much at all from the previous day after bathing and being given new clothes.
It was probably for the best, the not remembering, because even if something awful had happened, she was still alive, and despite losing her temper with Damien in such an embarrassing way, he wasn’t in nearly as grumpy a mood as she expected. Still grumpy, yes, just notasgrumpy.
Kaz was also still alive, but sourer than ever, especially after Damien had announced they would be taking the “long way” to Eirengaard when they left Anomalous and Mudryth that morning.
“Master Bloodthorne,” Kaz had cried out in his pinched, gurgly whine, “that is not what was planned!”
“Well, Master Bloodthorne has changed his mind,” Damien had responded drolly. “Now, shut it.”
After, the imp took to riding on the tail end of Damien’s knoggelvi, glaring at the mage’s back.
This was great news to Amma—the longer it took to get to Eirengaard, the longer she had to figure out how she might survive—and even though Kaz was absolutely miserable, he hadn’t gone out of his way to antagonize her since he’d gotten the news, so it was twice the triumph.
But Amma was vexed with something else in the imp’s stead: a vivid dream of being held in Damien’s arms and carried off somewhere. Why she would dream such a thing and have it not end with being pitched off of a high tower was beyond her, especially since she’d yelled at him that she thought he wasthe worst, but instead of the dream culminating in her death, the ghosting of his fingers on her skin and the warmth of pressing into his chest just sort of dissolved into fuzzy sleep which, she supposed, was better than…escalating. Still, every time the dream slithered itself back into the forefront of her mind—and it did that morning, frequently—she had to focus on finding patterns in the clouds or in the knoggelvi’s dark hide to avoid looking at Damien directly and giving herself either an attack of shivers, flushed skin, or, worse, both at once.
The swamp thinned as the day pulled on into afternoon, the ground hardening, the trees shifting from mangroves to pines. The smell improved as well, and like the short moment in the sun outside of Aszath Koth, Amma found her own mood lightening.
Her new garments helped, a much better fit, tighter and more practical for moving quickly, if not for being misidentified as a boy—that had been useful before, though it mattered a little less when she was traveling with someone so openly homicidal toward anyone who dared touch her.
Amma took a deep breath of piney air and worked up the courage to look at Damien again.
