Kizros blinked at the human, searching her face to find only humor in her smile. But he failed to see anything funny about this situation as she continued toward the house.
His parents were already at the door by the time they noticed Kizros and Aofe weren’t immediately behind them, and it seemed his mother had been holding one half of a conversation with no clue there was no one to listen to her. Even his sister and brother had stopped talking to not-so-subtly watch them walk up the steps.
“That’s your older sister, right?” Aofe asked, slightly out of breath. “Zestala? And your brother is Tarkoth?”
“Hmm?” Kizros mumbled, keeping a fraction of a step behind her as she wobbled. “Oh, yes.”
“They look like you,” she said. “Are all demons the same color as their parents?”
He hummed, thankful for the distraction from having hisfamily watch them walk up stairs. “Most of the time, colors take after one of the parents. It’s an indication of magic passed down. But there are rare cases of neither color, or some combination. Ozirax’s parents are red and blue, but he got neither fire nor water.”
“He’s the purple demon who tackled the big human?”
Kizros snorted. “Yeah, that’s him.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t killed each other yet.”
“I think she has incentive not to stab him… for now,” he added as they made it to the doorway. Most had disappeared, but Zestala waited, her hands shoved into her pants pockets. “Zesta, how are you?”
“Just fabulous,” she purred, her short, curled hair flowing over her even shorter horns. “The twins are causing a ruckus with the nanny, and Xenlisa is working late. All these humans caused such a stir they’ve been working overtime. You know how it is, don’t you?”
Kizros gaped as his sister turned, continuing to talk about her wife’s work lately and not bothering to see if anyone was following. He turned to Aofe to apologize.
“You grew up here?” she asked first, neck craning to see the twisting staircases and blinding white marble in every alcove and hallway. Either she was oblivious to Zestala’s comments or ignoring them. He hoped the former, but his bet was on the latter. “Is your childhood room still here?”
Kizros narrowed his eyes on her. “Aofe, I’m thirty-eight and I’ve lived on my own for twenty years.”Her brow rose expectantly, and he grunted, walking ahead. “Yes, it’s still here.”
“I wanna see it,” she teased, following after him. “Please! I need to see what little Kiz’s favorite stuffed animal was, and where you grew your first defensive garden.”
He almost stuttered a step in surprise. She remembered that mention of the box planter outside his window? Surely he hadn’t brought it up casually, probably just an offhanded mention when he talked about how he’d tried to breed a pyrus canadense with an iostritimisannah because he was terrified someone would sneak through his balcony window after reading a particularly scary story.
Yet Aofe had remembered that specific detail.
He was still ruminating on that fact—and the little feeling that had burrowed into his chest—when they sat for dinner. His family was in the midst of whatever the latest scandal was in city hall, but they quieted when he pulled a seat out for Aofe at the long table.
She gave him a smile as she sat, gathering her crutches to lean against her chair.
“Oh, we can move those out of the way,” his mother said to her left, calling for one of the servants to remove them.
“They aren’t in the way, Mother,” Kizros said plainly, noticing Aofe’s shoulders soften in his peripheral as he waved the servant away.
Ever the diplomat, his youngest sister, Hyxe, cut into the silence. “Aofe, it’s so nice to meet another human. I’ve seen Rosalind working around city hall, and she is always so busyrunning this way and that. Argeth’s initiative for the six of you was groundbreaking, wasn’t it?”
Aofe nodded. “Yes, I’m sure it was. I’ll admit I’ve not really had the time to review the documents?—”
“Surely there’s not much for her to do in that little shop of yours,” his aunt, Sestrin, cut in, speaking as if Aofe weren’t right there.
“Actually,” Kizros said, leaning out of the way as one of the servants deposited their meals. He nodded his thanks before turning back to Aunt Sestrin. “Aofe was instrumental in adapting our ingredients to human dosages and medications for the other humans here. And she’s been an incredible help with my latest breeding attempts?—”
“Son, please don’t use that term at the dinner table,” his mother chastised. “It’s so uncivilized.”
“Speaking of uncivilized,” Tarkoth added, knife working smoothly through the feger meat. “Did you hear what House Vumheri proposed yesterday?”
And thus the conversation devolved into Zestala and Karroth outlining how they were already preparing their counterproposal in language that Kizros couldn’t care less about for a topic he couldn’t care evenlessabout. Even his mother and little sister chimed in, all while Aunt Sestrin signaled for more wine as she sent her vegetables back to the kitchen because they were undercooked.
Kizros sighed and focused on his own meal. Most family dinners resulted in this. No matter how excited he was, no matter what sort of interesting fact hebrought up, he was ignored for what the rest of his family had turned into their careers. And inevitably, this meal would end with his father once again pulling him aside and asking if he was ready to give up on hissilly littleplant shopfor a more respectable career in politics.
He was nearly finished with his meal, vaguely keeping up with the proud announcement Hyxe made about her new appointment as their father’s assistant, when he noticed Aofe set down her utensils.
