Page 125 of Demon Touched

“Wow. It looks pretty good, all things considered.”

She nods, thoughtful. “I owe you my life, Leah.”

I wave my hand. “Ah, don’t worry about it. You’re the only cousin I speak to, so it would be a shame to let you die.”

She laughs. “Thanks. I’m not sure how good a cousin I’ve been, though. Look, I’ll say this once and then we don’t have to talk about it again. Unless, of course, you want to hear me repeat it.” She looks at me earnestly. “I’m sorry I was such an idiot about everything with the general. I knew none of it was your fault, and still I acted like a child throwing a tantrum. And despite that, when it came down to it, you were there for me when I needed you. So…thanks.”

I feign a shudder. “You’re right, never let me hear you say something so nice to me ever again,” I joke.

She shrugs. “It’s the least I can do considering how Garion fucked you over.”

“You heard about the coup?” I ask carefully, gesturing to the chairs around Hodges’s little table.

“Yes,” Filippa says as she takes a seat. “My mother got another letter to me, telling me not to come home. Not that I would’ve, before I’d heard from you. She explained that the seraphim are still investigating the family, trying to figure out what we knew. Until we hear their verdict, it’s safer I stay away.”

She pauses. “And she told me what happened to him.”

I exhale, a little relieved I don’t have to be the one to break the news. “I’m sorry,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Don’t be. From what Mother said, it sounds like he didn’t shed any tears when I didn’t come back from the battlefield. So why should I feel bad about my grandfather’s hubris getting him killed?”

“My thoughts exactly,” I say, giving her an encouraging smile. She might not shed any tears over Garion’s death, but she still carries the weight of the shitty way he treated her all those years—and now there’s no chance of an apology or reconciliation in the future. I’m sure there’ll be complicated feelings for her to deal with for quite a while before she truly lays his memory to rest.

Her gaze shifts back to my shoulders, curiosity shining through. “I should probably tell you, my mother also said that I should be careful if you make contact with me again. She said you have…inappropriate friends.”

I snort. “That’s one way of putting it.”

But Filippa is just looking at me expectantly.

“Right,” I say, my fingers finding the grooves of the table, digging into them to release my nerves. “So there’s maybe some things I should tell you.”

I realized on the way over here that if I wanted to use Filippa to vent to, I was going to have to come clean about a lot first. None of it would make sense otherwise. Besides, I find I don’t want to spin any more lies for Filippa. Not big ones anyway.

“Just, before I get into it, remember all that nice stuff you said about you owing me your life, yeah?” I say.

“Ancestors, Leah, you’re making me worried,” Filippa says, hands twisting in her lap.

“Okay…” I forge ahead. “So remember when the Lord of Malice came to Luminis to negotiate a peace deal with the seraphim?”

“Ye-es,” Filippa says, drawing the word out.

I stare out the window, not able to meet her gaze. “What if I were to tell you that he actually, sort of, definitely came to Aradis…for me.”

I keep it as light as I can and only cover the highlights so we won’t be here all day. The fact that the overview also doesn’t give me time to panic is just a bonus.

I tell her about being married off, only for my husband to try to sacrifice me to summon a demon. I tell her about Syrus saving me, and then me getting to know him and realizing that maybe it wasn’t the worst thing to be friendly with the Lord of Malice. I tell her about finding out I’m nephilim, then say I fell out with Syrus without going into the exact whys and describe coming to Aradis. All the while, her eyes are getting wider and wider until I’m worried they might pop out of her head.

“So the spell the sorcerers used left me with some pretty incriminating demon traits,” I say, trying to give the general shape of things without getting too into the possession element. I told her that Syrus possessed me to rescue me from the sorcerers, but I’ve downplayed the frequency with which he kept possessing me after that. I think Filippa can stomach most things, but I don’t think she’ll understand that I came to want Syrus in my mind and body. She’ll assume I was being controlled by him all this time. “It made my wings black, obviously. It also gave me some demonic powers. When Syrus realized I would probably be killed once the oracle discovered that, he came to Aradis to try to break the spell.”

I can practically see Filippa chewing this all over. It takes her a few minutes. The truth is pretty grisly.

“So really he was doing you a favor?” she says weakly, perhaps too overwhelmed to pick at any other aspect of my story.

“Yep,” I say. “And it was a very risky move for him. It never even would have occurred to me to ask him to come, knowing how much danger it would put him in. When he turned up at that ball, I was as surprised as the rest of you.”

“Nice of him,” Filippa says, bemused, and I choke back a laugh.

“Yeah.”