She turned, bowl and ladle in hand. A wide grin showed off laugh lines and pearly fangs — a smile that looked remarkably like Silas’s. “Oh, look at that! Si, get her a seat. She looks fit to faint.”
He was already guiding her, rather forcefully, into a wooden chair. Petra sank into it heavily. She was unaccountably nervous. Not even the tantalizing smell of a perfectly seasoned and spicy chili with a side of sweet cornbread could make her stomach unclench as she took in the scene with wide eyes.
Silas’s mother was a whole head taller than his father. Her shoulders were broad, her limbs long and graceful. Her hairwas a graying auburn pulled into a loose braid behind black horns that curled into tight spirals. She was pale and boasted prominent, rosy cheeks. When she went to set the bowls on the placemats around the table, she made time to lean over and press a kiss to the crown of her mate’s head.
Petra felt like she was caught in another dream state. The tableau was too bizarre for her to make sense of. Not only was Silas’s father not a demon, but his parents seemed…
Nice.
It set her teeth on edge. In her experience, very few people were trulynice.It seemed patently outrageous that Silas’s parents, of all people, would be in that number, too.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Mama, Dad,”Silas announced, standing behind her and settling his hands on her shoulders in an unmistakably proprietary gesture, “this is Petra. She’s mine.” He paused there, letting that flat, no-nonsense declaration land, with considerable weight, at their feet.
Petra wanted to sink into the floor and become one with the worms when his parents shared a quick glance but said nothing.
Giving her shoulders a squeeze, he continued, “Baby, this is Scott and Connie Cuttcombe. You can call them whatever you want.”
That final instruction rang oddly in her ears, but Petra stopped herself from giving Silas a baffled look.Why would I call them anything but mister and missus Cuttcombe?
Settling into the seat across from her, Scott reached out to shake her hand. The sleeve of his shirt pulled back a bit, revealing a slowly swirling cuff of shadow around his wrist — very much like the one that clung to her throat.
“Since last night didn’t count… It’s a pleasure to really meet you, Petra,” Scott said when she forced herself to shake his hand. His smile was crooked. A gentler version of the smirkSilas so often flashed her way. “I’m sorry it isn’t under better circumstances.”
“You saw me last night?” Petra wasn’t sure why that disquieted her, other than the fact that she had no memory of it and was struggling to keep up with all the new information pounding her from all sides. Silas had mentioned his father a few times now, but there was just too much for her to take in all at once for her to really figure out where he fit into everything.
Silas sat in the chair beside her and, sensing her unease, placed a heavy hand on her knee beneath the table. He didn’t even look at her as he began to load up her bowl of chili with a dizzying number of toppings, then slathered a brick-sized piece of cornbread with what looked like honey butter. Even so, that seemingly unconscious touch went a long way to easing the tension in her abdomen.
Releasing her hand, Scott pushed up his glasses and replied, “You two came straight to our house last night, just past three. Not the first time Si has come home unexpectedly needing healing, of course, so I always keep my clinic prepared. Lucky thing, too. You were in a bad way last night.”
Petra sounded dazed to her own ears when she said, “You’re a healer?”
“He is,” Connie replied, chest puffing a bit with pride as she joined them at the table. “A talented one, too. He’s the best healer in the entire county.”
“It helps that there aren’t that many of us in the Neutral Zone,” he quipped. “After the war, there were basically three healers left.”
Connie cast her mate a dark look Petra recognized as belonging to Silas as well. “You hush. It’s not that and you know it.”
Struggling to control her expression, Petra dropped her gaze to her steaming bowl.Silas’s dad is a healer?
Silas, the monster in the night, famous throughout the UTA for his brutality and willingness to take on any job for the right price, was the son of ahealer.A being who, as the saying went, was beloved everywhere except a cemetery. A being sworn to protect the sanctity of life. Ahealer.
Petra hadn’t grown up with healers in the children’s home, but she’d met quite a few in her work. Of course, she was also friends — as much as one could be when she lied through her teeth every day — with the most famous healer in the world, Margot Goode. The sovereign’s consort lived up to every stereotype Petra had ever heard about healers, which was mainly that they were absolutely impossible to hate.
She felt like she was missing something. A piece of the puzzle that would make all of this strangeness make sense. Without it, Petra felt like she just kept walking into one funhouse mirror after another. Everything was distorted and unsettling and not as she expected it to be.
Shaking off his mate’s loving rebuke with a smile, Scott asked, “How’re you feeling?”
Like I’m the insane one, actually.“Fine,” she croaked. Grimacing, she reached for her glass of water and took a large gulp. When her throat didn’t threaten to squeeze her words out all wrong, she tried again. “Thank you for healing me. If there’s anything I can do to repay you?—”
Two appalled noises, one high and one low, came from the other side of the table. Scott rushed to cut her off. “Don’t think of it. I won’t accept anything. Good gravy, you’re part of this?—”
Silas’s low drawl interjected before Scott could finish the sentence. “Petra, you don’t owe anyone anything because there’s no fuckin’ way I was letting you die. I would have dragged you from the underworld myself if you tried it.”
His father gave Silas a paternal look. “Watch it, buddy. Grim’s always listening.”
“Grim can suck my c?—”
