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For almost a minute nothing happened. I remained perfectly still as I felt him draw power. Jill watched him with wide eyes. Even the bean went still, or at least I assumed so, since Jill had stopped making little noises of discomfort.
And then his form abruptly broke into a billion pieces that dissolved into amorphous sparkly multicolored light, so beautiful as to be nearly incomprehensible.
He remained thus for what felt like millennia though it was probably more like half a minute, then I felt the draw on my support sigils. In the span of a single heartbeat, the billion pieces coalesced into the form of a demahnk, half a head taller than any other I’d seen. I blinked, as if waking up from a dream, only now realizing how very different this had been from the transformation I witnessed with Eilahn or the smooth shift of Helori.
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sp; Jill’s eyes filled with tears, and she gave Zack a weepy smile. “You’re gorgeous.”
Chiming softly, he stretched his delicate, iridescent white wings wide, then settled them close to his body. “Demahnk, sweetie.”
Jill wiped at her eyes. “Okay, wow.” She let out a weak laugh. “Wow.”
I sat on the floor, relieved as all hell, while Jill stood and moved to him. Almost a foot taller in this form, he towered over her. She hesitated, then touched his chest—tentatively at first, then with her whole hand upon his pec. He caressed her cheek with two fingers of a three fingered hand, then lowered his head and touched his forehead to hers.
“You’re still you,” she breathed. She closed her eyes and slid her arms around him, belly bumping into him as he enfolded her in his wings.
“Yes, only a different form,” he said, voice still very much Zack’s but infinitely richer, and imbued with the chimey birdsong qualities of the demahnk. “All else is the same.”
I climbed to my feet, insanely pleased that my intervention was working. So far, at least. “Perhaps you should go back to human for the rest of this,” I suggested to Zack. “There’s still some more explainin’ that needs to happen.”
He shook his head, chiming low. “I am yet unable.”
“Sorry.” I winced. “I don’t know how all that works.” I gestured to the wings and all of him to indicate the shape-change. “But I do think it’s time you told her why you’re here. With Ryan.” I met his violet eyes. “She’ll understand and accept that you need to spend so much time with him if she knows why.”
Zack dipped his head slightly. “I cannot.”
“Crap, that’s right.” Zack was still oathbound to not speak of Szerain’s crime or his fate to any who didn’t already know. “Will you be forced to intervene if I tell her?”
His lips parted in a small demahnk-smile. “No.”
A frown began to tighten Jill’s mouth. “Someone had better spill whatever this big secret is.”
I debated telling her she should sit down, but then I realized that would only piss her off again. “Ryan is actually the exiled demonic lord, Szerain. Zack is his guardian, and he’s pretty much been busting ass for the last fifteen or so years to make sure that Szerain remains sane in what’s a truly brutal imprisonment. All those long periods of needing to do shit with Ryan? Most of those are spent helping Szerain.”
To my private amusement, she sank to sit on the bed and stared at me in astonishment. Zack lowered himself into a sit-kneel.
“And your sweetie’s demon name is Zakaar,” I said, unable to resist adding one more level of weird to the whole thing.
She blinked, shook her head like a dog shedding water. “Wait. Ryan . . . Ryan is a demonic lord? Ryan?!”
“Weeelll, it’s complicated.” I grimaced and rubbed the back of my neck. “Ryan Kristoff is . . .” I had to swallow back a sudden wave of sadness. “He doesn’t actually exist. There was a real Ryan Kristoff and, as far as I can tell, he died and his, um, life was taken over as a cover for the exile of Szerain.” The grief clogged my throat briefly, and it was a few seconds before I could speak properly. “He’s an overlay, basically. An identity with a real person’s background, but he’s an aspect of Szerain. He’s not real.”
“Ryan Kristoff died in my arms,” Zack said.
I stared at him, unable to form any possible reply to that statement. I’d thought about it, rationally accepted the truth that the Ryan I knew and, yes, loved wasn’t a real person. But hearing it like that—from someone who knew—seemed to wrench my whole world off its axis. “What happened?” My voice cracked. Since I already knew the basics, I hoped that Zack had enough freedom around his oaths to fill in the details I so desperately needed.
“I sought a candidate for Szerain, for his exile. Similar in body and face.” He tipped his head back, inhaled deeply. “I was carefully watching many possible choices. Ryan Kristoff was the one to succumb in a circumstance that proved suitable. He and a friend went hiking in the Adirondack mountains. Ryan lost his footing and tumbled a hundred feet down a steep rocky slope.” Zack lifted one long-fingered hand, tilted it to indicate a precipitous grade. “His friend went for help. I went to Ryan.”
Grief swallowed me as I listened. I pygahed in an effort to maintain any sort of control. I’d wanted to know this. As hideous and painful as it was, I wanted to know the truth.
“He was close to death,” Zack continued after a moment, voice a bit less rich. The memory affected him as well. “I eased him, removed the pain, held him, and spoke to him, in the moments he had remaining.”
Tears slid down my cheeks, but I didn’t wipe them away. I felt frozen in shock and sorrow, dimly aware that Jill also quietly wept, eyes on Zack as he spoke.
“What did you do with his body?” I finally asked.
“I incinerated him. Collected the ashes.” Zack lowered his head.
