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“Asmallfavor,” I countered. “Nothing violent or dangerous, not to me or anyone else.”
Phaidros hemmed and hawed for several moments as if considering, but I’d seen his eyes when I bartered. He knew he had me hooked and was just reeling me in.
Still, I wanted answers. So I could only hope I wouldn’t regret this when he finally settled and offered me his palm. “Deal.”
We shook.
“Good. Now tell me why everyone hates me.”
Chapter XIX
Thedemonarchedabrow at me as he took another leisurely sip of his ale before setting it down and turning fully toward me.
“How much do you know?”
It was a gamble. Was he pumping me for information?
In any case, my gut was not to fully trust Phaidros. He’d helped me, but as he said, he wasn’t prone to any altruistic tendencies. “Assume I know nothing.” It was probably close enough to the truth.
“Very well.” Phaidros cast a glance to the neighboring tables and flicked his wrist, the stars etched on his skin dancing in the motion.
The noise around us dampened. “What did you do?” Nothing looked different, but my skin tingled.
“Just because you’re paying for information doesn’t mean everyone else gets to hear it for free. Besides, I’d assumed you’d want some privacy for this, and short of trekking a few miles outside the city, a noise-canceling spell is about the best protection you can get from curious ears.”
Magic, as I’d suspected. The book I’d read on demons had only mentioned portals as being part of the Libra demon domain. “Can all demons do this?”
A flash of pearly white teeth. “As I said, I’m not just any demon.”
I wasn’t about to trade more favors for clarification, so I urged him back to the task at hand.
“So why do they hate me?”
“They resent you for leaving them behind.”
“But I never left them,” I grumbled. What did that even mean?
“I suppose when I say ‘you’ it’s a bit murky. You share the same soul as the old queen, after all.”
This was what Cole had hinted at a few times. “So they think I’m her?”
“You’re the same soul,” Phaidros repeated. “But even the same soul born twice into the same circumstances will be different, and obviously, yours is quite different. I couldn’t speak to your previous personality, but I’d expect you to share several core traits and values, but not identical. Your previous incarnation was considered rather charming from what I recall, and you don’t quite pull that off.”
I’d bargained a favor for a personality critique on how I wasn’t Miss Manners. Somebody kill me again.
“Physically, though, you’re identical.” The demon looked my features over from head to toe. Not leering, but it made me want to recoil all the same. “I’m sure that’s quite confusing for your former husband.”
I jerked back. “Cole was my husband?”
Phaidros nodded. “He didn’t go by that name then. The king left this plane and went who knows where, visiting only intermittently through the following decades.”
Either Phaidros was playing dumb, or he really didn’t know where Cole had gone. Still, I was reeling from the revelation. He’d called me his queen, but no one had been willing to elaborate on what that had meant.
“And that was when I left?” I asked, trying to piece together what I’d learned in the past with these new revelations.
Another nod, as if he wasn’t leveling my understanding at this very moment. “I can’t speak to the precise reasons for your demise, but I gather there was a terrible amount of self-sacrifice involved when you cast yourself to Tartarus. Of course, that bit of information is tip-top secret.” A cheerful wink. “So, with the general public not knowing the reason their queen disappeared after ruling for a millennium and you showing up all willy-nilly like a teenager, some are a bit touchy. Others are simply trying to ingratiate themselves with you.” He tipped his cup towards my necklace, which even now I fingered while I tried to take in everything he’d just told me.
There was no point in correcting the fact I wasn’t a teenager but rather twenty-one, if I counted my time in Hell, when he’d just told me I’d ruled with Cole for a thousand years. And gone to the pits.
