“No. I just need to practice…with my power.” I held my hand up and let out a few vines of shadow, making his eyes widened with surprise.
“You found your magyk,” he breathed. “Shadowspinner.”
His fingers twisted too and the fireflies flew down to form a neat little line along my shadowy branch.
“Did he send you to watch me while I slept?” I asked.
Devil’s smirk returned. “He does not even know I am here. I thought perhaps you’d started to miss me.”
“Well, I hate to disappoint,” I said dryly.
“In that case…” He stood up, taking his fireflies, and his warmth, with him.
Without thinking, I grabbed the edge of his wing. “Please…don’t go. I-I do not want to be alone again.”
“Mayhem, are you asking me to stay the night with you?” Devil laughed, looking back over his shoulder.
“You would refuse?”
“That is not what I said.”
“I could always order you to stay,” I said slowly, “…since you belong to me now.”
He turned his entire body to face me, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“Oberon said he was going to…‘return you to the Arden’, that he had no more use for you, and that you’d become difficult to manage. A burden.”
“And you disagreed?”
“No,” I snorted, “but I could not let him do it. Not when…”
“Not when…what?” He stepped closer, his eyes fixed intently on my face.
“Nevermind,” I muttered as the exhaustion took over my body again. I flopped onto my pillows, holding back the words I’d wanted to say:Not when you might be the only person in this entire forest I actually trust. “You do not have to stay. I know you probably have many important things to do—many other innocent people to torment.” I closed my eyes, but only a moment later, felt the end of the mattress dip, and heard two softthuds. When I looked up, he was sitting up against one of the posts at the end of my bed, his boots discarded on the ground and wings stretched out behind him.
“Of course, I’ll stay,” he murmured, opening his palm and letting out a few pale, glowing orbs. Sir Toby belly-crawled down, dropping one head into his lap and the other two onto my feet, just as I closed my eyes again.
When I woke in the morning, Devil was gone, but his lights had stayed with me, holding the nightmares at bay.
Chapter twenty-six
Deities & Dust Motes
Oberon greeted me witha pleasant smile when I met him in the library for breakfast, completely famished from the overwhelming amount of magyk I’d encountered the day before. He was drinking tea and reading a small book, but set down his cup when I approached the table with Sir Toby beside me.
“Good morning.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I replied, pulling out the chair opposite him and surveying the food spread out before me. Tall, fluffy biscuits with little dishes of honeyed butter and raspberry jam beside them, balls of brown sausage rolled in sage, poached eggs smothered in a creamy, green sauce, and an entire bowl of dewy forest berries.
I began to fill my plate as Oberon silently poured a second cup of tea and put it in front of me, then closed his book.
Mercifully, he waited until I had stuffed half a biscuit into my mouth and swallowed before he asked, “Did you sleep well after your visit last night?”
“I…uh…”
“Marina,” he said gently, “you might find it hard to believe, but I was also young once, and Ididraise a rather headstrong daughter.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “He was just…checking on me. Isn’t that what you made him for?”
