Chapter 28

28

I t might be a few moments, it might be an hour, but Delina can feel that Maison's feet have gone cold by the time she hears Gurlien and Chloe return behind them.

"So you got him back, that's good," Gurlien says, and a tremor runs through Maison's shoulders at that, still pressed up against Delina. "Can you explain what happened?"

Maison slowly withdraws from where he's clutching her, and his cheeks are wet.

"Gurlien, give it a moment," Delina says, and Maison scrunches his face, obviously pulling himself together. "That was disorienting."

"I'm not surprised," Chloe says, and that at least gets Maison to shake a bit loose. "You disappeared, that's disorienting for anyone."

He takes a deep breath, shaking out his hands, before settling his confident mask over his face.

Delina hates it.

"So the death in the hands of the necromancer is what gets you to go full demon," Gurlien lists out. "That doesn't make any sense, but it does explain why they were never able to get you to do it before." He looks over at Delina, critical. "You're okay?"

"I'm fine," she repeats, and she is. Nothing feels awful, nothing hurts.

"Even I saw that gold flash," Chloe says, muted, and Delina winces. "That could've killed you if he was a bit less skilled."

"None of that was due to skill," Maison says, finally, and even his voice is raw. "I couldn't control anything."

The words settle in the clearing like a bomb.

"Congrats," Gurlien mutters, finally. "You'll have to practice at something for once in your life."

Maison refuses to let go of her hand, even when they're all inside back in the warmth, and Delina's not about to make him.

He hasn't spoken since the clearing, and he's shivering, even though his skin is warm enough that he should be fine, and that alone makes Delina shoo him into her bedroom and shut the door behind them, despite Gurlien's token protest.

"Sit," she orders, pointing at the bed, and he does, even though there's no compulsion behind her words. "Scan me. Do that energy reading thing you did before. See that I'm okay."

He just gazes up at her, his face pinched.

"Please?" Delina hazards, and there's a ghost of a smile, gone too soon.

"I'd rather not do anything right now," he says, wan, but he swipes a thumb across her palm. "I could've killed you."

She doesn't quite know how to rebut that, or how close she came to actually dying, so she sits next to him instead.

Ever so slightly, he leans against her, shoulder to shoulder.

"Good to know that I can't compel you still," Delina says, staring down at the baby blue carpet. "I didn't want that to last forever."

"It would only last until you took the string off," Maison replies. "It would've fallen off in eighty-two minutes."

"Precise," Delina says, and he shrugs, still against her. "Gut instinct?"

"Yeah," he replies. "It was just something I knew. I don't know how I knew, but I knew."

"Weird," Delina comments, half because it is and half because she didn't know what else to say. "Well…sorry for that whole fiasco. Definitely wouldn't have tried to pull the death if I knew that was gonna happen."

"If I knew that would happen, I would've been prepared, and would have told you to order me to not hurt you as soon as it was tied," Maison says, full of frustration, like this was a foreseeable event. Like they could've anticipated this. "If I knew, I would've made sure you couldn't get hurt, I would've attempted to control the…" he mimes teleporting with his hands. "I would've been able to actually do something."

"That's not fair to yourself," Delina says, and he sighs, rubbing his face. "If you haven't had access to a part of yourself your entire life, how were you to know how to control it?"

It's a bit too real for her.

"Okay, point," he says. "I don't like that I hurt you."

"I feel fine," she burst out, breaking the contact to face him, still sitting on the bed. "I feel fine, I got dizzy for like a second, but I'm not in any pain, I'm not even that cold."

"Of course you're not," Maison replies, as if that's the point. "What do you think Demons take?"

It's not something she's thought of before. "Energy, I guess?"

"They take pain," he says, and his voice breaks again. "They take pain, until the pain takes from your body and you die."

"Well, that's grim," Delina responds, then glances down at her hands.

Of course everything had to be complicated once more. Of course there couldn't be an easy part of her magic, there couldn't be an easy to process emotional moment. Of course her heart hurts at his upset, after all the drama, and she still wants to push herself to fix it, somehow.

And that's not even processing the kiss, right before all of this happened.

"All my life, they've tried to get me to go full demon, and you manage it by accident in an afternoon," Maison says, and it's barely past lunchtime so she rolls her eyes a bit at that. "How the hell is it that you're just blowing by all the metrics that have made up my entire life?"

"Do you think it was the necromancer or the bond thingy?" Delina asks, unable to stop herself from wondering which parts of all of this is because of that bond.

"Necromancer," he replies immediately. "Any necromancer—"

"What, all two of us?" Delina interjects.

"Any necromancer would've had the same response. I think." He sighs again, reaching out and pulling her hand into his again, and she's not going to deny him that comfort. "I feel like shit."

Before she can even help herself, she flashes a scan at him. There's still a shiver running through his body, his head aches dully, and his stomach is roiling.

He doesn't flinch at that, just blinking through it.

"You'll be okay," Delina says softly. "No permanent damage or anything."

"How are you not scared by me?" Maison bursts out at that. "You should be, I dunno, running in terror and never looking back."

He still cradles her hand.

And there's a flippant answer, at the tip of her tongue, but she waits and lets that float away. Lets herself think of what may be the real answer.

"I don't understand," he says, after she's silent for too long.

"If we're being honest, it's probably because I didn't quite grasp the danger," Delina admits, and she hates saying that. "I just thought you were going haywire or something."

His jaw works, tight, and she runs her thumb along his knuckles. Like she used to do when he was upset about something, anything, back in their little condo in Prescott.

Then it was usually the neighbors, or a nebulous work ‘thing.' Not a bout of spontaneous change in magic that resulted in him literally teleporting and then hurting her.

It feels just as right now as it did then, and that bubbles up an entirely different well of emotions.

"And you called me pretty," she points out, and he groans, rubbing his face. "That was nice."

"Delly, you were overwhelming," he says, now flopping over on the bed. "I never want any demon to see you ever, if that's what they'll see."

"You'll have to paint it for me," Delina says, and her heart beats a bit at seeing him on her bed.

It's all such a bad idea.

"The entire world was dark," he continues, still covering his eyes, as if the lack of sight would help him talk about it. "I couldn't tell where the trees were, what I was standing on, or what temperature the air was. It was like I just…stopped existing, and the only light I could see was you."

"Romantic," Delina comments, and he opens his grey eyes long enough to give her a dirty look.

Right. Because all of this familiarity and all of this connection and they're still exes.

They had made out even, still exes. He still lied to her, lied about her entire life.

"I meant literally," he says. "Like a physical light, and everything else in the world was dim."

She doesn't have a quippy comment for that, so she stares up at the ceiling, instead of him.

"You know they're gonna make you try to practice again, right?" Delina says, and he sighs again. "I'm gonna have to start keeping dead bugs on me to do that with, aren't I?"

He tilts his head over to look at her, and she's still sitting next to him, with him on the bed. "I won't blame you if you never do that again," he says. "I won't blame you if you never look at me, if you never talk to me again. You could have died, Delly, and I would have been the reason for it."

The sarcasm dies at the tip of her tongue, as she looks down at him. At the line of his jaw and his neck, at the rumpled undershirt.

There's self-loathing on his face, out of place, and she's not quite sure she's ever seen that expression on him before.

"Okay," she murmurs, and stands so she's facing him.

He sits up, immediately, and the desire to rest her arms on his shoulders and cradle his face hits her like a brick. To run her fingers through his soft hair, until he closes his eyes and leans into her.

"You're upset," she starts, quiet. "You're upset and that's okay."

He opens his mouth to respond, but she holds up a hand, stopping him short.

"Do you want me to never talk to you again? Or are you saying it out of self-sacrificing bullshit?"

He closes his mouth.

"I don't like the self-sacrificing bullshit," she declares, and there's a ghost of a smile on his face, almost there, and she'll take it as he stares up at her, still sitting on the bed, and her so close.

He reaches a hand out to her, tentative, settling it on her lower back. Like with just one tug in, he would pull her on top of him. Kiss her, overwhelm her, with her straddling him and him in control of all of it.

Of course, he doesn't.

For a few wild seconds, she debates pushing towards him, making the move herself. Debates grabbing his hair and kissing him herself, see what he does.

If this morning is any indication, he'd kiss her right back.

She could have it back, she realizes with a jolt, with his arm strong around her and he stares up at her, eyes grey and beautiful. She could have him, just as devoted as before. Face this new world of magic and the dead together, with him right next to her.

And because of the fucking demon bond, he would do it in a heartbeat.

His lips part, at something on her face. "Are you okay?"

"It depends, are you going to go more into the self-sacrifice bullshit if I say otherwise?" she asks, and risks brushing his hair away from his forehead.

"If I promise not to?" he asks, voice low, like he's reading into her mind.

"I'm just confused," Delina admits, and it's not the suave self she has in her mind, and for a few minutes she considers walking away from the conversation. "Things keep on changing faster than I can get a grip on them, and this is just one more of them."

She doesn't specify what ‘this' is, and he swallows, his arm tightening around her back, and for a wild second she thinks he is going to do it, going to thoroughly mess up any sort of balance they've reached, and for a wild second she hopes that he does.

"We'll practice more," he says, instead, going for the obvious safer option. "It'll be too good of an advantage for you to have a full demon in power on your beck and call than to not."

Delina bites back the disappointment at that, and sees it mirrored in his eyes, so she pulls away, and his arms fall back down.

"Do you want to go get drunk?" she asks, and he blinks.

Of course, the moment they peek their heads out of the room, Gurlien makes them sit on the couch and walks Chloe through a barrage of diagnostic spells that do nothing to Delina but make her nose itch.

All they tell anyone is that Maison is, indeed, back to normal and Delina is a little lower energy than she otherwise would be.

All things she could have told them.

All things she could have told them, and Maison's gaze on her is heavy, lingering, until she abruptly stands from the tests, her heart beating too hard in irritation.

"Am I in any danger if I go have a fucking drink?" she asks, probably sharper than is polite.

"It's like…three PM," Chloe starts, which isn't helpful, before she cranks her head to look outside. "And it's either going to rain slush or snow tonight, that's not gonna be fun."

"It snowed in Prescott. Sometimes." Maison also stands, shaking out his hands, like the scan affected him way more. "You said there was a dive bar?"

Gurlien narrows his eyes at him, then at Delina. "Just because you saw her as a demon doesn't mean it's a good idea to sleep with her again," he says.

Delina closes her eyes. "Look, I did a weird death thing and now I want a coping mechanism."

"Alcohol's not a great one," Chloe says, but she's already reaching for her bag. "Dive bar?"

"Dive bar."