By the time he finished, Bex’s face was so hot, she was shocked she hadn’t burst into flames. Embarrassment aside, though, Leander had a point. Since Adrian had brought her home after their victory in Heaven, he and Bex had gotten much closer.Soclose that she couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d used her suite at the top of the RV. Her guitar, toiletries, and all her clothes had already migrated over to Adrian’s. The only things left in her room at this point were the furniture and the first aid kit she no longer needed to use.
“I don’t have a problem if you want to live in the RV,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck in an attempt to hide how flushed her face still was. “You’re here all the time anyway, so it’s definitely more practical, but I should probably ask Adrian if he’s okay with it first.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Leander replied with utmost confidence as he walked back to Mara’s bedside. “I’ll go ahead and start on the renovations tomorrow. Make sure you move anything you don’t want crushed out of the way before then. Stretched space has a low tolerance for preserving obstacles.”
“You could wait until I actually say ‘yes’ first,” Bex called after him, but he was already making himself comfortable in his chair, so of course her complaint was ignored.
Muttering under her breath about arrogant princes, she turned around and stomped up the stairs, heading through the ground floor of the RV, which still looked pretty much the same as it had before. Leander hadn’t cared about this level nearly as much as he had about the place where Mara would be, so he’d just repaired things back to the way they’d been originally. This included Norma, who was right back in her usual seat up in the driver’s cab, humming off-key to herself as she happily read through the new road atlas Iggs had bought for her. She greeted Bex with a cheerful “Howdy!” as the queen walked by,but otherwise paid no attention as Bex opened the aluminum side door and stepped out into the forest.
Even after all these weeks, it felt amazingly good to be home. It was now full-on winter in Seattle, but all the rain and cold in the world couldn’t make Adrian’s Blackwood look anything less than magical. Even the drips building up on the branches over her head looked like crystal beads, and the air smelled of rain and woodsmoke. Bex found it all incredibly cozy, though the small group of demons shivering in a line on the new path that led up to the clearing didn’t look like they agreed.
Since they all shared a portion of her divine presence, every demon in the world had felt it when Ishtar left. Bex had worried that would be a crushing problem, but while there were definitely a few crises of faith, Ishtar had always been a dead goddess to the vast majority of the demon population. Bex’s wrath demons were the only ones who actually remembered a time when Ishtar was around acting like a goddess. They were taking the loss the hardest, but everyone else,especiallythe demons Bex had freed from the Hells, barely seemed to care. There were still a few who wanted divine guidance, though, and since Bex and her sisters were the closest things to gods that remained on Earth, most of those seekers ended up on Adrian’s doorstep.
He'd been extremely understanding about the whole situation, even going so far as to make the pilgrims a safe path through his forest so they’d stop leaving offerings on the roadside where they could become a traffic hazard. All that worship still made Bex wildly uncomfortable, though. Fortunately for her, Lys had four hundred years of experience controlling access to the queen.
Her lust demon had jumped on the new worshipers before they could become a problem, taking their offerings, writing down prayers, and so forth. They’d even made Bex a scheduleso she could meet with her new faithful during a controlled time window and tell them everything was going to be fine. That was all most of them wanted to hear anyway, and for once it wasn’t even a lie. Compared to how things had been for her people before the fall of Gilgamesh, life was freaking fantastic.
Bex was more than happy to tell them so, though she wished they’d stop bringing her so much stuff. Even with the new wealth her demons were enjoying thanks to all the gold they’d stripped off Gilgamesh’s palace, setting up new lives for an entire population wasexpensive. The pilgrims always looked especially threadbare, proof that they needed their gifts much more than Bex did. No matter how many times she told them to stop, they never did.
At least the line was shorter these days. Lys was in their normal position under the wooden shelter Adrian had built for them, but only a half dozen people were waiting in front of their desk when Bex walked over. They all bowed low when the queen approached, but Lys was too busy glaring at the tall blond fear demon leaning against one of the shelter’s support beams to give Bex more than a nod.
“Hello, Your Majesty,” Desh said with a lavish bow, dumping all the rain that had pooled on the hood of his rain jacket straight onto the middle of the plastic folding table Lys used as a desk.
“Could younot?” they growled, slinging the water back at him.
“Sorry,” Desh replied, sounding like he meant it for once. “Just trying to pay my respects to the queen who saved us all.”
The line of pious demons who’d come to see Bex nodded wildly, and Lys sighed.
“Yes, yes, we’re all very respectful,” they muttered, grabbing a towel off the back of their chair to wipe up the waterthey hadn’t managed to sling at Desh. “Though I’d respect you a lot more if you got to the point.”
“No need to be touchy,” Desh chided, digging into his coat. “I just dropped by to say hello and to pass this on.”
He handed Bex a heavy packet of thick, seemingly homemade paper wrapped in waxed cloth and tied with a black string.
“What’s that?” she asked curiously. “It looks like a challenge letter.”
“It’s a bill, I’m afraid,” Desh said sheepishly. “As I told you in my report last month, the Battle for the Blackwood was a total rout in our favor. Gilgamesh’s army didn’t even have a prince, just a bunch of Heavenly pigs who hadn’t left their troughs in eons. They were powerful sorcerers, but they were so used to living in Heaven that they had to guzzle quintessence like cheap beer just to stay upright. Enemy supplies were already running low before word even got back that Gilgamesh had died. As soon as they realized they no longer had a king in their cornerandthere’d be no more quintessence coming, the whole front folded like a cheap deck chair.”
“If it was that easy, why are we getting a bill?” Lys growled.
“Because the sorcerers weren’t the ones who did the most damage,” Desh explained, keeping his orange eyes on Bex. “That honor went to Ishtar’s bull. The battle-maddened bastard flattened ten hectares of old-growth forest on his way to the fight. He also flattened a bunch of sorcerers, so nobody’s mad at him, but the damage still has to be covered, and since you’re the one who sent him, the witches asked me to bring you the bad news once they finished healing me up from my heroic war wounds.”
He pulled his dripping hood back to show Bex the new notch missing from one of his horns, and she smiled.
“I suppose that’s only fair,” she said, untying the packet of handmade paper to find a carefully itemized list of expenses that looked like it had been written by a very annoyed person using a feather quill. “I mostly sent the bull to the Blackwood to get him off my back, so I don’t mind paying for the damages.”
“Imind,” Lys snapped, hauling themselves up with the cane they unfortunately had to use now, since even Adrian’s witchcraft hadn’t been enough to heal all the damage left by their fight with the prince. If having a cane slowed Lys down, though, Bex couldn’t tell. They’d already snatched the papers out of her hands, their amber eyes going huge as they flipped through the seemingly endless list of numbers.
“Those greedy witches want seven figures!” they cried. “There’s no way trees are that expensive.”
“It’sreallyokay,” Bex insisted. “But I’ll talk to Adrian about it if it makes you feel better.”
“You’d better talk to him,” Lys grumbled as they flopped back into their chair. “What’s the point of shacking up with the head witch’s son if it doesn’t get us a discount? Do those witches understand how much it costs to find new housing for an entire population?”
“Sounds like the matter’s settled, then,” Desh said cheerfully as he stepped back out into the drizzling rain. “Lovely as always to see you both again, but I’ve got to get going. I left Streya with some old mates of ours from the Hells, but she’s still got major separation anxiety. It’ll be better for everybody if I get back quick-like, so I’m off. You know my number if you need me!”
“No one needs you,” Lys told him, but their voice held no venom for once as they added, “Don’t fall off the ferry.”
