Archie pressed the heel of his palm against his chest. It seemed ridiculous for his heartbeat to be thudding so fast just from some panicked thoughts when they weren’t in danger of being reported, and he willed himself to calm down. There wasno remark from Damaris, which was odd given he was usually attuned to anything unusual happening inside Archie’s body.
Damaris?asked Archie, before realizing he wasn’t there, not simply silent. He sighed.
I wish you’d tell me before disappearing. He wasn’t sure if thinking something more loudly meant that Damaris would be able to hear him, and resolved to say it again when he could be certain.
It was only because Archie was so focused on the space between his ears that he noticed the ache come on so quickly. It felt like one of those things his mother described as a tension headache, where everything in his mind felt stretched taut like a scrape of butter over too much bread. Suddenly, a snap left Archie reeling, a sudden lash of agony as if he’d been cracked with a whip. Damaris was back, a heavy mass of swirling shadow and magic in his mind, and his matching pain bled into Archie’s own thoughts. Archie clutched at his head with a cut-off cry.Damaris!
The pain receded, Damaris deftly sifting through their co-joined thoughts and sorting out which belonged to whom.
“Milord, is everything all right?” asked the hansom cab driver, muffled through the walls as he knocked on the roof.
“Yes, yes, I just stubbed my toe in the dark,” Archie called up hastily. It was strange to know that the pain was magical, not a real wound. It didn’t feel any less real, even after the hurt subsided.Damaris? What was that?
Damaris sounded peevish.My magic is not as recovered as I thought. When I tried to manifest as Damian, I remained tethered to your body. The further I went, the less substance I could maintain, and once I reached a certain distance, I could not get any further.
Isn’t that what possession means?asked Archie, stretching himself with a groan. Now that the fright was over, he had to try and convince his tense neck and hunched back that the danger was done, unpeeling himself to lean back into the carriage seat.
A silence. Archie detected a waft of surprise, as if it hadn’t occurred to the demon that in making a deal for Archie to be bound to him, he was in turn bound to Archie.
I take it you hadn’t previously known a limit to the distance you can manifest away from me?asked Archie, thinking back. As far as he was aware, Damian had only tried to appear inside the palace, and as big as it was, that distance was still confined to one building. Perhaps they would be able to be further apart once Damaris recovered more of his magic, or became more proficient at manifesting a solid body. That was certainly one thing to test.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ARCHIE’S PARENTS WERE out tonight, according to Grace, the maid. The winter festivities were starting to come into full swing as the nights got colder, and he quickly lost sight of which of their friends’ townhouses they were visiting each night. The house being fixed up was the perfect excuse for them not to host anything and get invited to everything instead, which must have made his mother happy.
He thanked Grace and mentioned he wouldn’t need anything else for the rest of today, suggesting that the servants take an early night. She beamed at him and pressed his cheeks before taking her leave, which she certainly wouldn’t have if she’d known why he wanted to be alone.
Damaris?As Archie called out to the demon, he wondered how rarely it was he who initiated the conversation with Damaris. It was always the other way around, the demon observing Archie’s actions and making commentary on it, unwarranted, and often judgmentally. A magical nudge at the edge of his mind, like a questioning note in the air, indicated that Damaris was surprised too.
Is the Earl Lymond form more effort for you than existing as your natural state?asked Archie.
The answer materialized as an image in his mind, that it was not so much the specific shape of Damian that was difficult, but the idea of permanence, that Damian of Lymond was supposed to look the same all the time and that humans would find it strange if his appearance shifted and it meant he had recall what Damian was meant to look like. Not only did demons recognize each other by their magical aura, whether they decided to have scales one day or fur the next, but they also tended to show their dominance by appearing bigger. Being confined to a size of a human when he could appear taller was tantamount to humiliation.
Back in the demon realm, were you bigger than—Archie tried it himself, sending the thought half as words and half as an image held in his mind. It was easier than he’d thought it would be. The image was of Damaris, as the swirl of shadows he’d first manifested as, then the shadow with the antlers.
You could have considered me the equivalent of a Marquess, said Damaris.Or perhaps an Earl, but certainly not so low as a Viscount.He seemed to find no small amusement in equating things in human terms for Archie to visualize. He sent a memory of the time he had met with one of the eight Demon Queens, not one related to either of the princes, and Archie’s mind failed to comprehend it entirely.
The only thing that filled his head was a shifting swarm of blackness, a spider-like being made entirely of a thousand legs and ten thousand unblinking eyes — and next to it, barely the size of even one of those legs, was an antlered demon.
Archie promptly shut the window in his magical mental tower and pondered the revolting image for only a moment. “Well, I hate that.”
Damaris cackled, manifesting as a fizz of lightning at the back of Archie’s throat.The Demon Queen of Uncountable Desires. She is the originator of my line.
Your… grandmother?asked Archie, horrified, as he tried to parse the non-verbal thoughts Damaris handed him.
Something like that.There was no exact equivalent for it, as demons were created out of the mingling of demon’s magics rather than begotten and born, but it was close enough.I suspected she was considering eating me, thus the immediacy needed to cross the border between our worlds.
Archie was not going to ask about that one. His thoughts turned, instead, to the antlers.Would you show me?
The sensation felt like a breeze drifting over his skin, as Damaris peeled out from him, the air deepening into smoke. Archie watched, fascinated. He’d never actually seen the process of Damaris appearing in front of him before. The wisps of smoke gathered together, pressing closer and closer until Archie had to look up to see his face.
Damaris stood around seven foot tall, broad-chested, his skin tan. The only part of him that seemed completely solid. Instead of feet, his form tapered after at the waist into legs that turned into a mass of dark tendrils that occasionally wafted like the curl of cigar smoke, somehow misty and yet solid at the same time.
His features were reminiscent of Damian, as if Damaris had tried them out and decided he liked them, but the eyes were a gleaming gold and occasionally the tip of his nose changed and darkened and Archie suspected it might be a soft felted feel if he reached out to touch it. His neck shifted constantly, from a regular human’s to growing a full mane, mottled brown and green. Fur and moss, Archie realized when he looked closer. He reached out a hand and then hovered just shy of touching.
“Come.” Damaris caught his wrist and pulled him forward so that Archie fell against him, one hand in the impossibly soft mane and the other against the firm bare muscle of his chest. When Damaris’s arm curled around Archie’s back to steady him, the hand was large enough it spanned his entire waist, the fingers long with too many joints.
And, of course, the antlers. Enormous and majestic, erupting from Damaris’s head, almost as wide as Archie’s arm span.
