No problem at all.

Chapter Six

Amalia dropped her notebook on the table. “I’m done. I can barely see straight.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “We should go to bed.”

Our work was spread across the coffee table—the cult grimoire, textbooks, notes, scribbled translations, and large copies of the demon mage rituals. We’d been working on it since getting home from the guild meeting, and the clock on Amalia’s phone showed 1:10 a.m.

At my mention of bed, her gaze slid to my bedroom door. “Has Zylas left for his nightly wandering yet?”

“No, he’s still attempting to dissect the amulet’s magic.” In my room, since our “zh’ūltis” arguing over translations had kept distracting him.

She grunted. “I’ll stay up a bit longer, I guess.”

It took my weary brain a moment to put together her motivation. “You don’t have to chaperone me, Amalia. If he hasn’t left by the time I’m ready to sleep, I’ll kick him out of my room.”

At her skeptical look, my gut twisted with shame and anger.

“Seriously,” I snapped. “I explained it to him and he understands. We just got our wires crossed, okay? The whole food-sharing thing and all.”

“I told you not to feed him,” she muttered under her breath. “All right. I’ll get ready for bed first then.”

She trudged into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Desperate to think about something else, I pulled out a large sheet of brown paper and began drawing out the initial summoning spell for creating a demon mage.

The bathroom door popped open and she crossed the living room. “See you in the morning.”

“Have a good sleep.”

Quiet settled over the apartment as I traced out the array. The Arcana portions were familiar, if complex, but peppered throughout the spells were spiky demonic runes. Amalia had explained that summoning arrays didn’t actually require a demon’s magic. The runes acted as identifiers, describing the demonic aspects of the spell in the same way Arcana runes described earthly elements or effects.

I copied them out one by one, gooseflesh shivering over my arms. Anthea had created this spell; I’d seen the experimental versions in the Athanas grimoire. How had she incorporated these demonic runes? Had she learned them from a demon and added them herself? Had she somehow convinced a demon to build the summoning array with her?

Setting my pencil down, I pushed off the floor, stretched stiffly, and dropped onto the sofa. With my limbs sprawled out, I gazed toward my bedroom, wondering when Zylas would finish so I could sleep. My eyelids drooped, heavy with fatigue.

A shadow appeared in the doorway. Zylas padded silently across the living room, the amulet’s chain hanging from his fingers.

His timing was too perfect. He must’ve picked up on my desire to sleep. I couldn’t hear much of anything from his mind, but I caught occasional whispers of his thoughts—and every time, I was surprised he hadn’t blocked me out. Maybe it was harder to lock himself down now that he’d opened up to me.

He glanced over our mess on the coffee table, then tossed the amulet in my direction.

As I caught it with fumbling hands, he sank down to sit on the floor in my usual spot, his back against the sofa and his shoulder brushing my knee. A long sigh slid from him.

“I do not understand it.”

Why did his husky voice in the dimly lit room make me shiver?

I uncurled my fingers, the amulet cupped between my palms. “What don’t you understand?”

“There are three spells, na? One to break contracts. One to open a portal. One that is demon vīsh.” He let his head fall back against the seat cushion, dark hair tangled across his forehead. “The demon vīsh. I do not understand it. It is not attack vīsh. It is not defense vīsh. It is not anything vīsh. It does not do anything.”

“But it must do something,” I muttered, tracing the Vh’alyir sigil in the medallion’s center.

“I do not know what.”

“Can you guess?”

“Guess? Vīsh is not for guessing.”

I arched my eyebrows. He peered at me upside-down, then huffed and lifted his head from the seat cushion. Propping his arm on his upraised knee, he perused my and Amalia’s notes.

My gaze drifted from him to the amulet, and I rubbed my thumb across the metal disc’s worn edge. “It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?”

He looked up from my drawing of the summoning spell. “Ih?”

“This amulet is thousands of years old.” Quiet wonder spread through me. “My ancient ancestor made it, and it probably belonged to at least one of your ancestors too. It spent millennia in the demon world, passing from one demon to another. How many hands have touched this?”

His eyes, slowly widening, slid to the medallion.

“Thousands of years,” I whispered, “and somehow it made it back to us—to Anthea’s youngest descendent and a Vh’alyir Dīnen.”

Zylas turned. His warm hands touched mine, cradling them the way I cradled the amulet. He studied the medallion like he’d never seen it before, lips parted with faint astonishment.

“How long did it belong to Vh’alyir?” He canted his head. “How long before Lūsh’vēr stole it?”

“We’ll probably never know.”

He sighed, his hands sliding away from mine. “Perdūsa Ahlēa valāra salith īt lidavisa ah’kan.”

I blinked at him. “Huh?”

“It means … Ahlēa makes the sun fly and rain fall. It is a thing I learned … words that the wise payapis say.” He wrinkled his nose. “It is zh’ūltis to fight the sun, she said.”

“Wait.” I leaned toward him. “Do you mean a payapis told you that? To your face? Aren’t payapis the super-powerful demon matriarchs?”

His breath hitched, as though he’d said something he hadn’t intended to share, then he turned back to the coffee table.

“I assumed you’d never met a matriarch,” I exclaimed, alight with curiosity. “Aren’t you terrified of female demons?”

His shoulders twitched in an irritated way. “I am not terrified,” he growled. “I am ahktallis so I do not die.”

I am smart, I silently translated. “But you said you run away from females. When did you have a conversation with a matriarch where she told you—what was it again?”

“Ahlēa makes the sun fly and rain fall.”

“What is Ahlēa?”

His irritated glare swung up to me, then he jabbed a finger at my drawing of the summoning array. “Ahlēa.”

I looked from the paper to him and back. “Huh?”

“This is Ahlēa.” He pointed at the rune again. “It is here. In the human vīsh.”

Confusion buzzed through me, and I slid off the sofa to sit beside him, leaving the amulet on the cushion behind us. “No one knows what those demonic runes mean. Amalia said that summoners just copy them as they appear in the spell.”

His brow furrowed. “You use vīsh you do not understand?”

“Not me, but humans in general … I guess so.” I tugged the drawing closer. “You can read these runes?”