“You did this for me?” I said, not just the umbrella, but the whole thing—the basket, the rowboat, the gentle sacrifice of his own dignity to make a mortal woman’s morning perfect.
He shrugged, like it was obvious. “You said you liked breakfast. And lakes. And not being turned into a cautionary tale about melanoma.”
I set the bottle aside, then edged forward, feet braced on the hull, and kissed him square on the mouth. It was clumsy, off-balance, and made him nearly drop the oar, but he steadied the boat with one hand and kissed me back, soft mouth ridiculous on that face. When I drew away, the lake was spinning, and not just from the change in weight balance.
“You’re pretty thoughtful for a demon,” I said, voice low.
Samiel’s face went oddly serious. “The least I can do,” he said, “is keep you safe.” There was a weight to the way he said it, like he was making a vow. I wondered if he knew how good he was at it—how completely the sense of danger that had always stalked me had been reclassified, redirected, until it no longer seemed like something outside myself but something I could manage, or even want.
I sat back, watching the water. The lake was still empty, the mirror-surface unbroken except for the wake of our little boat. Far up on the bluff, the house looked tiny. I tried to project myself a decade into the future—see if I could imagine myself still here, still on this dry, haunted shore, eating goat cheese omelets and rowing out onto the water with a demon who made sure I never wanted to leave.
Samiel rowed us across the cove, his face set in an easy half smile. When we reached the far side of the lake, the water changed. It darkened, ribbons of black and indigo twisting beneath the boat, as if something ancient and patient waited atthe bottom. The air chilled, or maybe it was the way the shadow of the cliffs leached the warmth from the sun. A finger of dread prickled along my spine—not fear, exactly, but the flutter of nerves that comes just before impact.
He beached the rowboat on a crescent of dark sand, hopped out with a demon’s casual disregard for sharp rocks, and anchored the boat with a twist of rope around a boulder. He turned, offered me a hand, and I took it—half expecting him to haul me into the freezing water for a joke, but he only steadied me.
The cold was real, but the sun on my back kept it bearable. A breeze picked up as we walked, the sky overhead bright and the cave mouth ahead a slit of pure black in the soft sandstone. I could smell the minerals, the live edge of the water, and underneath that, something like ozone or the promise of fireworks.
Samiel grabbed the basket, leading the way. His hand, rough and warm, never let go of mine. We scrambled up a short, steep slope where the sand gave way to stone. At the top, the world fell away beneath us—just a dizzy drop to the water, the town a toy set across the shimmering expanse.
"Watch your step," Samiel said, navigating the ledge with a confidence that was both reassuring and a little show-offy. He led me to the mouth of the cave—a slit of black so deep the sun couldn’t touch it—and ducked inside, dragging me with him.
The temperature dropped by ten degrees as soon as we entered. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust, and found that the pitch darkness wasn’t so much empty as densely packed, full of the blue-black shimmer of minerals and water seeping from the rock.
Beneath our feet, the cave floor sloped gently down, then opened up into a chamber that glowed with an impossible, underwater light. I braced for the usual damp rot of lake caves,but the air was clean, almost cold enough to taste. Samiel knelt, scraping his claw along the wall. It sent up a flare of phosphorescence that painted the stone in lines of neon blue.
“Sulfur mostly,” he said. “Magnesium, arsenic, bits of cosmic history. It’s why the water doesn’t ever get warm, even in August. It pulls heat straight out of the air.” The words sounded rehearsed, but I could tell that being here meant something to him. The way he crouched, shoulders hunched to duck the roof, was almost reverent.
I stepped closer, toes curling against the sudden chill. The light from the cave mouth faded behind us, replaced by waves of ghostly blue radiating off the walls. I reached a hand toward the mineral graffiti, letting my palm hover a bare centimeter from the surface. It thrummed, a vibration that ran up my bones. “It’s beautiful,” I said, not quite whispering.
He looked up at me, something tentative in his face. “Most mortals just see a hole in a rock. They don’t notice the way it glows.” He reached out, not quite touching my wrist, just lingering nearby.
I edged deeper into the cave and nearly lost my balance; the floor dropped away in a shallow bowl, rimmed with pale sand that looked imported from another world. In the hollow, maybe a dozen feet across, a pool of liquid shimmered so blue that it seemed lit from below. The air over it was colder, and every ripple threw turquoise shadows onto the ceiling. I squatted at the edge, toeing the sand. It was shockingly soft—like powdered sugar, or the dust from a well-loved plush toy.
Before I could ask him if it was safe, Samiel had set down the basket, stripped off his shoes, and rolled up his pant legs to the knee. He stepped right into the water, bracing for the cold and grinning at me through the shiver.
“You have to try it,” he called. “It’s like swimming inside a gemstone.”
I hesitated, then followed, wading in up to the ankle. The shock nearly took me out at the knees.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, “it’s freezing. Are you trying to kill me?”
Samiel just laughed, full-voiced and echoing off the cave walls. “If I was, I’d have better methods.” He splashed a little, then beckoned me deeper. “I’ll keep you warm,” he promised, and the way he said it made the cold not just tolerable, but exciting—a dare, a shared secret in the dark. I kicked ahead, splashing him, and he caught me around the waist, pulling me so my back pressed his chest. The temperature difference—the chill of the water, the infernal heat in his hands—made me shudder, but I didn’t want to wriggle away. I wanted to see how good it could get.
He tucked his chin over my shoulder and whispered, “See that ledge?” I followed his gaze up to a shelf in the rock wall, maybe ten feet above the water, jagged but perfectly flat on top. “That’s where we’ll eat.”
And with no further warning, he hoisted me out of the pool and set me on the sand, as if I were a pool toy and not a whole person. He scrambled up the wall, claws anchoring in the rock, and came back with the basket. Without breaking a sweat, he one-armed me up to the ledge and then joined me, grinning, as if this was as natural as breathing.
The ledge, despite its height, was wide and slightly concave, with a perfect view back down into the shimmering cave pool below. The surface was gritty with pale dust, but the basket came equipped with a thin, checkered blanket—classic red and white, which made me laugh out loud. Samiel laid it out with excessive care, anchoring the corners with river rocks, then opened the basket with a flourish that would have shamed a Vegas magician.
Inside, there was a spread: little jars of pickled things, a loaf of honest-to-god bakery bread, cheese and charcuterie, paper-thin slices of something that looked like prosciutto but glistenedpurple-black around the edges. There were strawberries, bigger and redder than any I’d seen outside of a Photoshop ad, and two glass bottles of something clear and bubbly. Samiel fished out two cups—actual glass, not plastic—and popped the tops with a flick of his thumb, pouring them without a drop spilled.
I sipped, expecting wine, or at worst, some horror of spiked mineral water, but it was sweet and subtle, more like an iced cider than anything else. I breathed in the cold, the faint salt of his skin close beside me, and felt the last of my nerves dissolve.
We ate in near silence at first. Samiel offered up everything, breaking the bread and slathering it with cheese, handing me the first strawberry, then the next, never taking for himself until he’d watched me taste and approve. It wasn’t like being courted, exactly, more like the world’s most overqualified bodyguard had decided to feed me until I surrendered.
At last, when the edge was off my hunger and I’d shifted to lying back on the ledge, staring up at the mineral-lit roof of the cave, I let myself ask the question that had been floating beneath the surface. “Why me, Sam?”
He wiped a trace of cheese from his thumb, then flicked a glance at me that was as raw as sunlight. “Because you never blinked,” he said. “Not even at the start. Most people, when they see a demon, they look for an out, or an angle. They imagine how they’ll use it, or how they’ll survive it. You just… looked. And then you laughed.”
