At first, Eric didn’t understand her, it was just noise. She spoke in a chorus with a half dozen mouths at the same time, all at different pitches from the sound of thunder to the wailing of a tortured songbird. And yet, he started to understand her meaning if not the words, through some magic ability.
“My son. You are here.”
“Yes. Did the spell disturb you? It was not intended to summon you,” said Ix.
“HA.” The Demon Queen roared, and all three of them started as the entire room shook and more of the cold air solidified with a crackle into ice across every available surface.
“You did notsummonme.” She sounded offended at the very idea that anyone could just summon her like a common demon. “I caught you wandering in my lands.”
A maw opened, a stretching black hole right in the middle of her swirling mass ringed by a thousand tiny sharp teeth. Puddles of more darkness streamed out, gushing through the teeth like blackened vomit. It was so disgusting that it took Eric another moment to realize that something was inside that maw. She spat it out like a hairball. It was barely the size of Eric’s fist, but it glowed an amber that matched Ix’s old eyes. It landed straight on his face. The thing hissed where it touched his skin, a pungent odor and steam sizzling.
Ix grunted but didn’t peel it off, which was the only reason Eric didn’t rush up to him to help him. Whatever it was, it could move on its own. Eric watched up until the glowing sludge started seeping into Ix’s face through his nose, his mouth, hiseyeballs. He had to avert his eyes then, steeling his throat so he did not gag.
Ix hissed, his eyes bloodshot red once he had absorbed the whole thing, and then raised his hand. The wind stopped, the flapping curtains and blankets suddenly stilling. The temperature of the room returned to normal. Eric gasped.
“Be not so careless again, my son,” advised the Demon Queen in a tone that probably counted as an outstanding show of motherhood for her, and oozed back through the mirror.
The moment the last trail of inky tar crossed through the mirror, Ceronzar flicked his hand at the mirror, melting the ice and smearing all the chalk lines. His chest was heaving from the effort of the spell as he struggled to stay standing. The mirror dimmed; the room returned to normal. Or, as normal as it could have been. Everything that had touched the Demon Queen looked as if it had been burned by acid. The rug was fused into the floor, the wooden floorboards now had deep gouges melted in. Ceronzar’s boots where she had brushed against him were still smoking and the rim of the mirror was entirely tarnished. All that, and everything that had been covered in ice was now damp.
“You don’t have your mother’s eyes at all,” murmured Eric faintly.
Ix laughed, a loud, guttural burst of sound that brought Eric back to the moment. That was when he realized that Ix’s mother wasn’t the only demon who had crossed over. A hundred or more tiny shadows were suddenly revealed from underneath her as she made her exit, previously camouflaged by her black writhing mass. They dispersed immediately, darting in all directions like a shoal of fish before any of them could react. Fuck.
Eric glanced around, but the only person who seemed to care about the demons was him; the Demon Queen had disappeared,Ix looked amused and Ceron tracked the wriggle of the demonic shadows with something akin to hunger.
“This cuts too close to not technically summoning a demon,” Eric said despairingly, feeling the hairs on his arms prickle. He should have anticipated that happening. Why had none of them thought that tearing open the barrier to the demon realm would attract any hungry demons nearby? A complete oversight. He could only blame his lack of experience with the demon realm.
Ix squeezed his shoulder; Eric chose to interpret it as a silence reassurance that he would intervene with the king if Eric got arrested for releasing a hundred new demons into the human realm.
And then he shot his hand out, so fast that Eric didn’t even see it. An unnatural demonic speed. Eric was so excited that Ix’s normal reflexes were back that it took him another second to notice why Ix had snapped his hand out. Barely visible was a shadow, squirming in his clenched fist.
Ix grabbed it with both hands, twisted and tore it apart and inhaled the wisps of it. It disappeared, no remnants to be seen. Eric gasped again. He needed to stop reacting so much to everything, his lack of nerve was showing.
“You should be more aware of your surroundings,” said Ix calmly.
“Me?!”
“A demon can’t possess another demon,” said Ix, gesturing to himself and Ceronzar. Now he understood: that left Eric as the only conscious human target in the room.
Eric was about to protest that he wasn’t going to let himself get possessed by a demon, he knew better than that, before remembering he had something better. He fished the necklace, still with Ix’s protective spell on, out from under his shirt and dangled it in front of Ix smugly.
“…I forgot.” To his surprise, Ix blushed. Eric wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Ix blush before. He was instantly charmed.
“As touching as this all is, this new establishment of yours had better be ready soon, since I require new lodgings.” Ceronzar looked around his ruined room.
Eric hurried over to the slumped form of Brother Ramsey by the wall. He could see the side of Ramsey’s face swelling already, a gash across his cheek where he had hit the edge of the decorative wood paneling, and his arm was bent at a strange angle. His eyes were still closed. “We need to get him to a healer.”
“No need.” Ceronzar reached out, then snapped his hand shut into a fist. Ramsey gasped, and his eyes fluttered open slowly. Eric looked at Ceron curiously. Healing magic was so rare and he had never heard any rumor that Ceronzar could use it. It was public knowledge that Ix specialized in fire and wards, offense and defense both, and Ceron in complex telekineses. Eric remembered him as a child, making every piece of furniture float in the air to join him in the air as he flapped his wings, out of reach of anyone trying to stop him.
“Healing, Ceron? How unlike you.” Ixthan watched him with an air of studying an opponent. Even he hadn’t known about this ability, then.
Ramsay touched his face with his fingertips, first gingerly and then wonderingly, and patted down his arm. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Don’t go thinking it was out of the kindness of my heart,” said Ceronzar lazily. “You owe me a favor, at a time of my choosing.”
Ramsay’s stone face wasn’t as good as Eric’s – he let a spasm of discomfort show before he managed to smooth it away – but at least he knew better than to argue with a demon prince. He merely bowed low, murmuring his agreement. It was Eric’s faultRamsay had got into this position, but he couldn’t think of some way to smooth it over. And besides, his main concern was Ix.
“So it worked?” asked Eric. Perhaps he ought not to have judged Ramsay for his lack of composure; the desperation and hope leaked through into his voice.
