Page 33 of Demon's Beauty

And Finn…

I can’t think about Finn.

I can still barely handle theideaof Finn, of having a demon… a demon… well. Anyway. A demonwhateverhe supposedly thinks he is to me. Let alone knowing he had a front-row seat to seeing me so disgustingly vulnerable.

So going back and talking to him is out of the question.

Maybe I could sit here forever.

Maybe I could disappear into the forest and never face any of it.

Sounds pretty good, actually.

“Did you fall in?”

Vayla’s voice from the trees startles me, and I scramble to my feet. She has a hand part-way over her eyes, her head facing to the side.

“You covered up? I wasn’t sure if you were planning to take a dip or something.”

“I’m good.” I let out a weak laugh. “And with how cold it is, I’d probably be dead anyway if I went swimming.”

“Is it?” Vayla stops next to me on the bank and runs her hand through the water. “Huh, maybe because demons run a little warmer than humans, it doesn’t feel so bad.”

“Really? How much warmer?”

We spend our walk back to camp discussing the differences between human and demon physiology and how it relates to healing, and it’s the best distraction I could have hoped for. While not the most scintillating topic, it gets my mind racing on the implications it could have for Ariana’s grimoire and the potions she was working on. She was a human witch living among demons, after all.

At camp, everyone is already hard at work.

Tents are set up in a wide circle around the clearing, all their entrances facing inward to where two of the guards are piling logs and branches for a bonfire. Between the tents, lantern poles mark the way, to be lit later when the sun dips down behind the mountains.

“We’ll bunk together,” Vayla says, nodding to a tent on the opposite side of the clearing.

“Just like summer camp,” I muse, then wave my hand at her questioning look. “Sorry. Human thing.”

As we work our way around the circle of smaller sleeper tents to the larger canvas structure where Vayla is setting up a temporary workshop, she points out a few demons we pass, giving me names or making brief introductions. Though, she explains, a lot of them are just here for pack-in and pack-out and will head back to the court once we’re set here.

It’s a struggle for the names not to escape me immediately, and I only manage to hold on to half of them by the time we make it to the workshop tent.

I’m… not great with people.

Not great with names. Not great with socializing.

Maybe it’s all the years I’ve spent tucked away in my workshop, alone for long hours with my herbs and my brews. Some fundamental capability for socialization has withered away.

There’s a group of guards setting up another tent beside the workshop—not as big, but one that looks to be their center of operations as they unload rolled-up maps and a variety of weapons.

“Glenson you already met,” Vayla explains as we approach the assembled guards. “He’s the one in charge of this whole expedition. Beside him are Petyr and Veron, and just there is…”

She rattles off a few more names, but I’m only half-listening. Hidden behind my sunglasses, my eyes start to wander. Over the camp, the demons moving around the clearing, the mountains in the distance, searching until they find—

I look away as soon as I meet Finn’s eye.

I hope he’ll take the hint, but as soon as he spots me, he’s striding across the clearing. Morning sun gleams off his golden curls, highlights the curves of his wings, and makes him look like some kind of fallen angel as he half-jogs over to me.

“I got you some water.”

Oh. Right. That.