“You’re telling me they weremarried? So they…theyenjoyedone another’s company?”
“Yeah, it was almost a little unbelievable. A human and a demon getting along like that?” She snorted, her laughter joyous despite being so raucous. “Usually creatures like you are the result of an arrangement—orworse—but with them it all seemed so real.”
“But it…itwasjust a deal,” said Damien, absolutely bewildered. His father didn’t allow there to be any discussion of his mother. They had struck a bargain to bring Damien into existence, and she had promised to care for him, but hadn’t followed through. Zagadoth had a talk with him about it once, when he was much younger, only to say that there was nothing to actually say: she was human, she was supposed to stay, she didn’t. Simple.
“Friendliest deal I’ve ever seen.” Her tone was flippant as she blew a breath out between her lips, then she cocked her head in thought. “But I suppose there was something fishy about it all since she fled Aszath Koth and stole you away to Eirengaard. Took that other one too, the one with the white hair. You know, Zane…Darklung?”
“Xander?”
“That’s the one! He was always such a little shit.”
A memory flashed in Damien’s mind, being too small to wriggle away from a woman who had grabbed him but desperately wanting to. And then a young Xander sitting beside him in the dark, uncharacteristically soothing an even younger Damien, telling him things would be okay, in the end. It was…it was all real? “You’re saying my motherabductedme away from my father and took me to the capital of Eiren?”
“Well, yeah. I might not remember everything in perfect detail, but I answered Zagadoth’s call to march on the capital to get you back, that’s for damn sure. The big fool just wouldn’t wait for all of us to arrive, and he went in on his own, and it was over before it even began. They did manage to get you back though, with the help of that other demon, the little shit’s mother.”
“Birzuma,” he said, eyes falling to the ground. He’d been her ward for a few years while she oversaw Aszath Koth until The Brotherhood rescued a chunk of Zagadoth’s crystalline prison and reinstated him on the throne. To say Zagadoth was unhappy with her when he “returned” was an understatement, not least of all for how bruised Damien was, and there had been bad blood since, her hand in Damien’s rescue never spoken of. But then Damien’s kidnapping hadn’t been mentioned either.
“Anyway, hon, what did you want to know?”
Damien’s mind was scrambled. What did he want to know? He hadn’t even known to ask the things to get him the information he suddenly had, he had only been thinking of his human half, of what it meant, and what he still had yet to understand. “I think I was going to ask if you knew where my mother might be.”
“Oh, revenge, right,” she said in a whisper that was still loud enough to fill up the whole parlor. “I understand. So, a couple hundred years ago there used to be this teeny, tiny, little village south of the capital where the humans worshiped this goddess. Can’t remember her name, but she lorded over birds, of all things, but they believed she healed the sick too, and maybe she could, I dunno, but it was the priestesses doing all the healing, if you ask me. Crazy good warriors too, I tell ya. When I’d go in to collect my confused, little vampires who didn’t know what they were and just thought they’d caught some nasty disease, it waswork. Anyway, that place was called Orrinshire, but it’s sort of been absorbed by the capital since. That’s where your ma was from, so if you’re looking for her, you might want to start there.”
Damien sat back. Thoughts of his mother had plagued him since he’d left Aszath Koth. He’d always known she was human, but that felt heavier lately, as if it meant more than being weak and vulnerable. It likely had something to do with the human he traveled with, who admittedly was often weak and vulnerable herself, but also much more than just those things. If he were as much his mother as he was his father, then perhaps he shared more of those qualities that he admired in Amma—the exact ones that had made him so perplexed the night before—than he thought possible, and meeting his mother could assist in making sense of it all.
Or it could absolutely shatter any hope he had at being different than he’d been taught he was.
He touched the pouch on his hip where he kept the shard of Zagadoth’s crystal. Asking his father felt completely out of the question, a twist of anger at not being told the truth digging into his gut. When it had just been a broken deal, things had made a little more sense, but to know his parents may have, what,caredfor one another in a way that it was insisted was impossible for infernal creatures? And that his mother hadn’t just abandoned him in Aszath Koth, but had tried to take him when he ran? Had wanted tokeephim? That changed everything.
Lycoris was staring past Damien’s shoulder, holding very still. He looked back to see Amma and Rapture standing just behind where he sat, no idea how long they’d been there. Rapture was returning Lycoris’s intense gaze, communicating silently, but Amma’s eyes were wholly on him. He immediately stood and turned away, announcing that they were leaving.
If Amma heard anything, she was gracious enough to keep it to herself, and Damien abandoned all his own weighty, existential thoughts and questions in the shadows of the karsts.
“Where too?” Amma’s voice was lighter the moment they exited the mouth of the cave, sunshine falling on her as she took a deep breath of fresh air. She likely didn’t even know, the way she threw her head back and smiled up at the sky, and Damien was lost. Where too, indeed.
“Eirengaard!” spat out Kaz, scrambling out of the boat and up onto the rocky shore. The imp had shown up when they were ready to leave, full of a new and annoying vigor. At least someone had been successful in the den. “The dark lord awaits! We cannot leave him in the crystal to squander himself away!”
Damien huffed, scratching his head as he stepped out of the small boat. “Well, that is the plan. Eventually.” His waning interest in helping Zagadoth was easier to ignore for the time being. They’d emerged without separating the talisman from its vessel, and there was no point in going to Eirengaard without it.
He extended a hand, and Amma slid hers into it. Her fingers were warm, still human, still alive. She didn’t blush when she grinned at him nor when she added in a playful voice, “Thank you, Lord Bloodthorne,” but that knotted his stomach with the memory of how skillfully she’d created friction between the two and how soft her thighs, her breasts, hereverythinghad been. She would remember those things only as a dream, and from her demeanor, she’d been pleased rather than vexed by them which was strange—if she had tied him up and left him to plead with no relief, he would have been very frustrated. But then that hadn’t been all. He had also said…things.
“The horses!” Amma sprinted ahead, her hand leaving his, and with it a tug at his chest. She made her way around the lake and up to her ginger mare, munching on grass beneath a tree a few paces off from where it had been left. Beside it, Damien’s dappled stallion had its legs folded beneath it, laying in the warmth of the sun. He was not expecting to see either again, but he supposed they liked Amma more than any of the bumbling idiots they’d been lifted off of.
He chuckled as he made his way over to where she was heaping praise on both horses in a sugary, sincere voice because of course she was, she knew no other way to speak to dumb creatures, which was appropriate as dumb creatures seemed to like it quite a bit. He certainly did.
Maybe Damien would find a way to tell Amma those things again when she wasn’t intoxicated, when she would have the opportunity to remember. Maybe.
Perhaps, if he found some way to repeat the sentiment he’d been trying to express the night before, she would even respond, and, if he were lucky, she might even use some of those disgustingly syrupy words on him. But that could never happen if he left her behind. Basest beasts, what would he have done if she’d chosen to stay with the vampires? What in the Abyss had he been thinking taking her in there at all?
“Damien?” Amma’s eyes were on him, brow knit in concern. “You’re…smoking?”
He flipped his hand over, noxscura festering in his palm. He scoffed and flicked it away, pushing the arcana back inside where it belonged. “Just feeling for the best route,” he lied. “I don’t have an exact destination in mind.”
Amma then carefully stepped away from her mare and up to him. Even dressed in those clothes that made her breasts so prominent and with a crossbow strapped to her back, she looked too sweet, too innocent with her hands clasped, toying with a hesitant look on her rounded features.
“Yes?” he asked in anticipation of whatever impossible-to-say-no-to thing was coming.
She gnawed on her lip. “Well, I was thinking…”
