They rode in on the masked knoggelvi, the single thoroughfare to the tiny village unpopulated enough to stay mounted so long as they proceeded slowly. In the early evening, villagers were returning to their homes or chatting on porches, but most stopped to stare at the newcomers, few bothering to whisper as they pointed.
Damien cleared his throat as he scanned for whatever would pass as an inn, doing his best to avoid the slack-jawed gaze of the locals. He shifted uncomfortably, and the animal beneath him pulled closer to its companion, his leg brushing up against Amma’s.
“Kaz, are you all right?” Amma kept her voice low, but she was easy to hear so close, glancing back at the imp.
Kaz had curled into a circle with his snout tucked under a leg on Damien’s knoggelvi’s rump. Disguised as a dog, he was perhaps even scrawnier and more pathetic than as an imp, and the shivering didn’t help.
“The infernal pits are quite a bit warmer than this place.” With his muzzle buried into his own thigh, his gurgly voice was muffled, though that was likely for the best as Damien didn’t believe most dogs spoke Key.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she lilted. “Do you want to sit on my lap?”
“No!” Kaz was quick to snap back.
Damien blinked over at Amma, half expecting her to follow up the distress with a laugh, but her brows were knit with concern and lips pulled into a pout as she looked on the miserable, quivering creature.
“Are you sure?” Amma’s voice went even sweeter, leaning a little closer and brushing Damien’s leg again. “I can tuck you down in my tunic and share my body heat.”
Damien was quick to avert his eyes from where she had pointed between her breasts. Her honeyed words, even if they were sarcastic and not meant to illicit deviant thoughts, had struck a tumultuous feeling in his stomach. He grit his teeth and glared at the road ahead—maybe there was something arcane about Amma after all if she could do such a thing with little more than words.
A set of village children scrambled out from behind a building, one running after the other, and the two fell out right into the roadway. They shrieked with what Damien could only assume was glee though it pierced the ear and chased away the odd yet captivating feeling Amma’s words had inspired. The children’s laughter, though, came to an abrupt halt when they saw him.
One hid behind the other, each with wide, terrified eyes, dirty faces drawn slack from their place so low to the ground, too stupid to move out of the knoggelvi’s way. Even disguised as horses, they were imposing beasts, and Damien knew he was even more so. He tugged the reins to slow his mount as the children gathered enough sense to back off the way they’d come to huddle at the roadside.
Damien leaned toward them as they passed. “Boo.” Both children exploded into shrieks and fled, and he sat back up, chuckling.
“Damien!” Amma’s voice had lost all of its sweetness, a fact that perturbed him much more than it ought to have. She, apparently, did not approve, yet she would speak to Kaz as if he were some worthy thing even when he was consistently awful to her. Damien, at least, was beinginconsistentlyawful to her. Perhaps she would prefer if the blood mage chased her about instead, threatening to bite when she was finally caught. He nearly suggested as much and then bristled at himself—it would be too difficult to make those words sound vicious, especially when the first places he thought to nip at absolutely weren’t vicious at all.
“Don’t you think you should make a little effort to blend in too?” Her voice shook him of the baffling contemplation. “Like the knoggelvi and Kaz?”
“And how do you propose I do that?”
Amma’s eyes traveled over him slowly, and he stiffened under her appraisal. “Well, everything you’re wearing is all black. It’s a little ominous.”
“My illusory powers do not last nearly as long as wholly infernal creatures.” He snorted and continued disparagingly, “And I told you, black is my favorite color.”
“Okay, fine, but you also don’t have to have your face like that.”
Damien’s jaw tightened. “We’ve discussed this. If I could remove this scar, don’t you think I would have already?”
“I didn’t mean that!” She threw her hands up so quickly he thought she might fall right off the knoggelvi.
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Truly! I forgot it was even there,” Amma whined. “It’s not even—that is, I mean, it’s…it’s actually kind of…”
He let her flounder until she was only mumbling incoherently, but her discomfort was far too entertaining. “Yes? Go on.”
“I don’t want to say.” She was biting her lip so hard it looked as if she could have drawn blood, and then she let out a defeated sigh. “That’s really not what I meant anyway, you just have to believe me.”
“I absolutely do nothaveto do anything.”
Amma grunted in her frustrated way. “I meant this,” she said, gesturing to her own face as she narrowed her brow and pushed out her lips into a comically terrible frown. She crossed her arms and flared her nostrils, and then she even growled out what may have been the least-terrifying sound Damien had ever heard including Kaz’s attempt to bark.
Damien had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Surely, I don’t look like that.”
“It’s close,” she warned, features relaxing. “You have resting villain face.”
“Iama villain.”
