Page 120 of Demon Touched

He takes hold of my arm and pulls me into his lap. “All right, vulture, I give in. I should know better than to try to resist you.”

He doesn’t admit it, but I think now that I’ve brought it up, Syrus finds it hard to resist the pull of seeing Pax properly. He has a fresh supply of lake water from Viz, so once we’ve donned some long traveling cloaks and I’ve pulled on a cap to hide my red hair, there’s nothing about us that should attract notice. Nor do the wardens on duty pass any comment when we slip out of the assemblyman’s residence. Their job is to keep undesirable people out, not us in.

It happens to be a glorious day. Syrus uncurls like a plant stretching toward the sun, the tension melting off him as he basks in its glow. He’s waited for this for so many years, and I love watching him soak it in, the light warming him right down to his core.

We wander to the river with no particular destination in mind, and eventually Syrus gets his bearings, using the curves of the Sideris to place his memories onto the new version of the city.

“There used to be a huge dock here,” he says, stretching his hands out across a dry bank that’s filled with warehouse pallets now. “And the barge folk would all moor here during the harvest season. They were from other kingdoms, mostly—Velta and Dulisland—but they’d come for our harvest festival because it was the best.”

His eyes are shining with the memory, as if he can really see the boats in front of him now.

“They were artists and musicians and fortune tellers, and they’d put on shows and sell things. You just had to hop from one boat to the next to discover something new and amazing.”

“That sounds wonderful,” I say. Travel to Pax is pretty limited to armistice days now—those brief periods when people can safely cross the plains without fear of getting caught up in a battle. It occurs to me now that we’ve bought safety inside the walls at the price of freedom in the world beyond them.

“It was,” he agrees, watching the water lap low at the edge of the bank. “Sid’s birthday was during the harvest festival. One year, she said her birthday wish was that I and all my friends would jump off the barges and into the river with her,” he smiles, shaking his head. “The witch tricked us. She had a bet with her friends, and she was the only one of us who didn’t jump. So we all went home wet and stinking of river scum while the pretty noblemen’s daughters laughed at us.”

“I wish I could’ve met her,” I say, hoping it doesn’t sound hollow. What good is it to wish for something like that? Everyone he knew back then is long dead.

I knew this would be bittersweet, but as we move along the river, I try to find ways to keep things light, to stop the memories from overwhelming him. I show him a couple of my old haunts—a bar I’d sneak Hodges into before he came of age, the bend in the river where flotsam always washes up, allowing me to collect enough driftwood to make my raft.

I decide I’ll try to go see Hodges and Filippa tomorrow. If she hasn’t heard about the coup yet, she needs to be warned.

“It’s nice to think that my kingdom isn’t truly gone,” Syrus says after the morning has slipped into the afternoon, and we’re watching some fisherman on the other side of the river. “It just became something else. There’s still people living and thriving in this city because I helped protect it all those years ago. If I hadn’t, who knows what would be here now? Probably just a barren land, laid to waste by war.”

“Probably,” I agree. It’s obvious how important it is to Syrus, knowing that he did right by his people—that he was a good leader.

He presses a thumb to his wrist, where Ajax’s rune for “home” was once carved.

“That’s why it managed to keep you out,” I say, nodding at the spot. “Because a part of you still belongs to this realm, even while you were in Infernum. Pax is your legacy as much as Malice.”

He drops his hand and wraps his fingers around my wrist instead.

“What about you?” he says, looking back out across the water, his tone light. “Where is your home?”

I know he’s trying to sound casual, but I can feel the tension lying beneath the words. This is the question that’s been holding me back, the answer preventing me from diving all in with Syrus.

“Right now, I don’t really know where I belong,” I say. It’s an honest answer. I feel lost, and the only thing anchoring me anywhere at the moment is Syrus. Evie has her own life now, and staying close to her would only put her in danger. As far as I know, I’m a wanted fugitive with the ephilium. Whereas with Infernum…

I was happy there, for a time. Maybe I could be again. But it’s a big maybe, considering what I am. I wish I was braver. Simpler. That I knew exactly what I wanted without question or doubt. There’s some certainty: my love for Syrus is an unwavering guiding light in the middle of a stormy sea. But things were so much more straightforward in Aradis. There, my path was fixed, mapped out for me by a set of circumstances way beyond my control. Every day I woke and knew what I had to do. Get stronger. Pass the trials. Survive.

Syrus doesn’t immediately respond as we start to walk back to the Assembly building. Is he wondering similar things about how I can fit into his life after everything that’s happened? Eventually, he breaks his silence, sounding determined.

“Once I’ve smoothed things over with the demon lords, the four of us can work on relations with the ephilium, for real this time. We’ll prove to them that Infernum had nothing to do with Garion’s coup, and neither did you.”

“Okay,” I say. All of that seems like a long way off—a possibility for a distant future. But it would be part of a good future. It would at least mean that I wouldn’t need to fear the seraphim coming after me anymore.

“I can provide an alibi to your whereabouts when the attack happened,” he continues. “And that way you’ll be free to return to Aradis, if that’s what you want.”

I almost stop walking. He spent so long begging me to leave Aradis, and now he’s suggesting I go back there? He’s looking ahead rather than down at me, so I can’t fully read his face. I think maybe I’ve upset him, saying I don’t know where my home is, but his tone is surprisingly neutral.

I can’t help but think this would all be easier if he was in my mind while we were having this conversation. It made everything more visceral when we argued, but it meant we often couldn’t hide what we were really feeling. There was no barrier between the two of us then, and we were both always raw and exposed to each other.

Is that what this is about? Does Syrus not feel as close to me now we don’t have the possession bond? Maybe without that connection, he’s less interested in holding onto me so tightly.

Suddenly, I want that closeness again, the kind we had in Infernum, living together, training together each day. I might not be able to invite Syrus to climb into my mind and body again, but there are other ways I can reignite that feeling.

“Why don’t we do some training when I get back?” I say. “You can show me some shadow slinging tricks. I focused on honing my lightning at the academy, but no one’s shown me the first thing about how to use my other power.”