Page 18 of Demon's Beauty

Another flash of memory.

Blond hair, crimson eyes, dimples.

A frisson of magick, warm and inviting.

“His name is Finn.”

“Finn?” Her eyes go as wide as I’ve ever seen them. “Your mate is Finn? Nighfall?”

“Apparently.” I press my fingertips to my temples, trying to massage away the budding ache there.

A burst of laughter slips out of her, but she immediately stifles it with a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. It’s just… Finn? Really? I never would have thought…” Shepauses for a moment, considering. “You know what? No. I can see it. The two of you are—”

“Not a thing,” I cut in. “The two of us are not a thing.”

“Alright. Whatever you say.” She stands from her seat and walks over to a bookstand at the side of the room, where the familiar, heavy-bound tome of Ariana’s grimoire sits.

“Finn Nighfall,” she says under her breath with a small, amused snort as she cracks the book open.

“What?” I can’t help but ask. “Is there something wrong with him?”

“No. He’s just… well, Finn is a bit of a… character, I think you’d say. He’s very well-known at court.”

I want to ask her exactly whatwell-knownmeans, whatcharactermeans.

But pressing her would mean I… care.

It would mean I’m invested even a little in this wholematething, that I see any kind of future where Finn and I are… anything.

And that’s not the case. Absolutely not.

“Let’s just get to work,” I grumble, standing from my seat to join her at the grimoire.

On the bookstand, there’s another sheaf of papers next to Ariana’s book. It contains painstakingly written translations to match the pages, with notes about where the text needs more research.

“Allie’s work?” I ask.

Vayla nods. “Yes, the queen has been working on it as she has time.”

The queen. Allison Hawthorn—Ashblood—is a queen here. I should probably remember that.

She points to a place in the translation. “This is where I’m stuck. There are ingredients listed here that don’t have a moderntranslation. Queen Allison and I were trying to determine what Ariana was referencing.”

“I might be able to figure it out in context,” I say, scanning the rest of the page, the other ingredients, Ariana’s narrative about what she was trying to accomplish with this particular brew. “May I?”

“Please do.” Vayla gestures to the page and steps back. “Pull up a chair and get comfortable if you want to. I’ll be harvesting some fern hearts if you need anything.”

She gets to work on her harvesting, I get to work on deciphering text, and for the next hour it’s easy enough to pretend.

Pretend I really did come here to earnestly collaborate with the demon court’s healer.

Pretend I’m not currently a fugitive from the coven.

Pretend nothing at all happened when I went to Seren’s room this morning.

The work is hard, exactly the kind of tedious and annoying I thrive on. Everything Ariana wrote is centuries out of date. Between the way language naturally evolves over time and the fact that most of what she was working with in her potion brewing comes from the demon realm, it’s hard to make any kind of sense of it.

But magickal principles apply across realms. Once I know the ailments she was trying to treat with these potions—fevers, aches, rashes, other various maladies—and can get a foothold with a few familiar lines of ingredients, I can start filling the rest in for myself.