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“No.” I pressed my hands against his chest to keep him at a distance. “You’re fine. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
Black witches didn’t do boyfriends. They had ritualistic sex, either to fuel spells or to grow the coven. The only time hearts were involved was if one or the other got snackish afterward.
Clearly, I was no authority on feelings or whatever that squishy sensation was Asa inspired in my chest.
Ugh.
Ugh.
Ugh.
Hearts were so much simpler to figure out when you held them in your hand.
To erase the line gathering across his brow, I redirected him. “Why do you think Aedan’s here?”
“He didn’t show for the last challenge,” he said, which was news to me. “I assume he’s made his peace.”
And come to diewent without saying when an opponent pitted themselves against Asa.
Hand in hand, I led him down the sloping hill. “Can he forfeit?”
“That is not the way of our world.”
Ourworld could have meant his world, the daemon world in a broad sense, not ours as in his and mine, but the weight of my maybe-heritage pressed down on me more with every passing day.
“Hello, Death.”
The cheery voice almost let me skip over the grim nickname, but I forgot both when I set eyes on Aedan.
For a daemon with blue skin, I picked out the pinkish-orange bruises with ease. Strips of his skin bore the telltale signs of claws, and his gills had crusted shut down one side of his throat. Sunset-colored fluids hit the creek and swirled in rainbow eddies that got swept downstream. His webbed fingers were wrong, as if the thin skin had been cut to separate each digit. He caught me cataloguing his injuries and chuckled in a wet and rattling way that told me there was worse damage than I could see.
Given his condition, he might have trespassed to guarantee immediate repercussions, but if so, he overshot the mark. A good six feet separated him from my side of the property line. We had to rectify that, and fast.
“Don’t fret.” He winked a black eye at me. “I’ll soon be dead, and the dead no longer feel pain.”
Jaw set, Asa glanced away at the other daemon’s gallows humor.
“What happened to you?” I gestured to his, well, everything. “Who did this?”
“What does it matter?” A faint smile graced his swollen lips. “It was done and cannot be undone.”
“Fine.” Frustration set my teeth on edge. “Die with your mysteries.”
“Your sister did this,” Asa murmured into the night. “The question is why bother?”
Word traveled fast about challenges issued to Asa. Astaroth. How could Aedan’s sister not know?
According to Clay, daemons came from all over to watch, place bets, to see and be seen. Potential mates paraded in front of him. Potential allies courted him. Potential, in its hedonistic glory, was in abundance.
The spectacle appealed to the darkness within me, yet another reason I dreaded my inaugural bout. It worried me how much I might enjoy it when it cost Asa to end lives for the sake of preserving his own.
“There were things I had to do before meeting my demise,” Aedan joked. “She was not pleased by them.”
“Your younger siblings.” Asa returned his attention to the moon. “You fostered them.”
During the copycat case, we discovered one of our suspects was fostering a teenage troll from a wealthy family in exchange for a boon. Otherwise, the girl would have been hunted down by her older siblings to clear the path to their inheritance.
This had a similar ring to it, and it would explain why Aedan missed the last round of challenges.
