Chapter 22

22

A fter a quick shower to get rid of the still pervasive blood remaining on top of the scratches, Ambra throws on a deep green shirt that sits close to her skin, the fabric moving and flexing with her motions. It shows off a bit more of her chest than she’s used to, but in a way that her skin is a shocking contrast with the color.

She frowns down at her chest. The hint of the scars, from where they carved up the body in the merge, trail up from underneath the left breast, visible with the cut of the shirt.

The few times the body had seen them, she had cried. Had cried that nobody would want them, that they were ugly with the vicious marks.

Gurlien dresses in another one of his button ups, a bright cardinal blue, and Ambra’s getting the sneaking suspicion that no color truly looks horrible on him. That everything he puts on will find a way to be complimentary.

He raises an eyebrow at her outfit, as she fits on the green-tinted sunglasses on her face. “In a different world, you’d be very popular at a punk bar.”

She glances down at herself, but nothing stands out terribly much.

“They’re a bit loud,” he says, which makes more sense. “Loud and generally crowded. But with the shaved head and those boots, you’d have a lot of attention.”

She wrinkles her nose at him, touching the side of her head, where now a soft smudge of hair covers her scalp. It’s past the prickling stage, thankfully, but it still sticks in the back of her mind as wrong.

“Misia,” she starts, and it’s almost a bit easier to say her name this time, “liked fancy cocktail bars. Or wine bars. The types with cheese and bread and olives and we could sit and read without anyone interrupting us.”

“She took you to a few of those?” Gurlien asks, packing an extra shirt into the backpack.

“A few,” Ambra hedges, then shrugs, not quite embarrassed but not quite settled. “Didn’t have much time to do things like that.”

Gurlien hesitates, as if thinking through his options, and she could watch him contemplate things for a while.

“Want to go back to one?”

She takes him to a small one in the southern side of the West Coast, where the air is far less chilled and controlled fire burns in a brazier on the patio. Twinkling lights are hung, criss crossed over the small outdoor area, and plush furniture is tucked into every corner.

It’s one that they went to all of twice, and Ambra had enjoyed the looseness that Misia felt after three glasses of the light wine, had enjoyed the sensation of the muscle between her shoulder blades relaxing until it no longer felt tight.

Ambra tugged Gurlien along to a two-person lounge chair in the back, with a low sitting table of wood next to it. It has a wonderful view of the entire patio, while being relatively tucked away, and a standing heater next to it casts a warm glow over it.

“Okay, alright,” Gurlien says begrudgingly, “this is far better than I thought it’d be.”

“No one bothered us here, it was great,” Ambra says, and it’s dim enough she folds up the glasses and slides them into the front pocket of the backpack.

There are a few people on the patio with them: three men with many empty wine glasses in front of them—their collars loosened and their faces open, two young women with glossy lips leaving smudges on their glasses, and a couple sitting close on a bench, their legs touching and their heads bowing together as they whisper.

It’s just warm enough that Gurlien sheds his jacket, rolling up his sleeves.

“This is why I try to stay in the northwest,” he says, before a waiter drops off the menus printed on thick, textured paper.

The waiter, dressed in a crisp black shirt, gives Ambra a warm smile. “Good to see you back,” he says, and the back of Ambra’s neck prickles at something in his tone.

She sits back, deeper into the couch, and the smile doesn’t fade as he turns his attention onto Gurlien, handing him the menu.

“We do wine by the glass and the bottle, depending on tastes,” he narrates to Gurlien, who nods, and even though Ambra’s the one who’s been here before, he’s far more comfortable than she is.

But still, his expression is far away and grim, even while reading the wine list.

“The body liked these two,” Ambra says, pointing at the menu. “I enjoyed these ones the most.”

They’re two different sections entirely, and the body—Misia—had been incredibly delighted that their tastes could be so far away from each other, even when they were using the same taste buds.

“Interesting ramifications,” Gurlien mutters, “so a demon has different preferences than the body they’re in. Does this extend to dead bodies?”

It’s the wrong way of looking at things. “You don’t really eat in dead bodies,” Ambra says. “You can, but everything is the same taste, like everything feels somewhat the same to the touch and everywhere is the same temperature outside.”

Gurlien pauses to consider something, before reading more of the menu. “That falls in line with what the other experts say.”

It’s enough of a tendril of a hint that Ambra sits up.

“I’m not telling you more,” he grumbles, without even glancing at her, like he knows what she was reacting to. “How are the reds here?”

Neither Ambra nor Misia had appreciated them that much. “Too bitter,” Ambra replies. “Felt like our mouth was drying out and stained the teeth.”

“Fair enough, sounds like what I like,” Gurlien says, flagging down the waiter again.

He ordered one of the cheese and bread plates—a spicy one, apparently, Ambra didn’t even know those were a thing—and they both ordered a glass, the emotional exhaustion eating away at both of their motions .

The wine comes first, and it’s one of the pale pink wines that Ambra had enjoyed before, so she settles back into the lounge chair, curling her legs underneath her.

Gurlien sips at his, then nods, as if impressed, relaxing in the chair next to her.

“I don’t think you’re a dick,” Ambra starts, and Gurlien just raises an eyebrow down at his glass. “I think the College chews people up and makes them act in ways they never would have if they had any other options.”

“Sure,” Gurlien mutters. “I could have very well done everything without attempting to manipulate them.”

She watches him from underneath her eyelashes. “True.”

He doesn’t quite flinch from her words, but takes a long drink from his glass, the wine so dark no light can shine through it.

“I tried to apologize a few months ago, before Delina showed up,” Gurlien says, voice even quieter than before. “But they didn’t believe it was sincere, and I don’t blame them, and I got frustrated and made it worse.”

Ambra can easily imagine that happening, with how prickly and pointed Axel was to Gurlien.

“And?” Ambra asks, and he squints at her. “I’m not great at human morality, we know that, but you tried to make it better, and now you’re trying to live differently.” She takes a sip of the wine—it’s just as light as she remembers, and she’s briefly grateful that it’s the same. “Isn’t that the core of trying to be better?”

“I guess,” he mutters, before his face twists. “You’re a lot more forgiving than people are.”

“They don’t, I don’t know, need to forgive you for you to be better, right?” she asks, curious, and he slates his eyes towards her, like he’s expecting her to be sarcastic. “Humans have done so many wrongs in the world, nothing would ever be accomplished if they all stood in one place feeling bad after they tried to make it better.”

“Would you forgive Nalissa? Or Boltiex?” he asks, and she scowls at him. “If they would swear to never control you, swear to never contact you again, would you let them go?”

“Are you asking that to just the attention off of you?”

That surprises a smile out of him, brief.

Ambra sets the glass down so her hands don’t shake. “If they released the leash, I might let them go,” she says, but it still reeks of a lie, after the torture and the control. “I wouldn’t believe them if they just swore. They swore to the body that she’d be safe.”

“Fair enough,” Gurlien says, before they lapse into equally moody silences.

The breeze through the patio ruffles in the shaved side of Ambra’s scalp, ruffling the short hair there, almost to the point of distraction.

Before Gurlien sighs, like the quiet gets to him too, even though they’ve had entire days where they’ve barely spoken.

“The last drink I had was the night at the bar that you interrupted,” he says. “This is a far better drink.”

Ambra has vague memories of a neon green cocktail splashing against the wall when Maison flipped the table, but she hadn’t paid it too much attention, all her focus on the orders flowing through the leash and the compulsion locking her limbs into movement.

“I would hope so, that place had sticky floors,” Ambra responds. “I would know, your Half Demon tackled me to them.”

“He would absolutely get insulted if you call him my Half Demon,” Gurlien says, grasping onto the distraction, before she sees his analytical mind finally kick in, sees the hunger for knowledge light up behind his eyes.

She settles back on the couch. This Gurlien, this want for information, this she can handle. This she can speak to.

She’d say anything to him to keep him in this place.

“How much of your actions and words were controlled?” he asks, gripping the stem of his wine glass like a pencil he could take notes with. “I know there were orders, how much individual parts were controlled?”

Ambra opens her mouth to respond, but he pushes onwards.

“For example,” he continues, and she grins at him, “before the bubble, you did a motion like this,” he gestures with his hand, and it must’ve been her shattering a piece of furniture. “Did he control that or did you? Why the motion if it’s just power?”

“It was compulsion, not strict control,” Ambra replies, and he nods, encouraging her on. “With the compulsion, like following an order, it makes me do whatever the command is, but it doesn’t always—strictly—determine how. My orders were to capture the Half Demon, maybe the necromancer, and to kill you and the alchemist.” The horror of what almost happened that day, that she was so close to never be able to have this conversation with Gurlien, if they had been just a little less competent. “I was focusing on the nec…Delina…because…obviously,” she says. “With a Necromancer in the room, it was hard to even glance anywhere else.”

“So the strict control, you wouldn’t have focused on her, instead been more methodical?”

“Depends on the handler,” she says. “Korhonen was good at crafting the compulsion to leave as much room for combat as possible while not letting me do my own thing. His philosophy,” she pauses for a brief second, to comprehend how easy it is to talk about all of the sudden, “was that I would always be better at combat than he could think to control, so he would let me determine the order of actions.”

“See, this would all be interesting in the theoretical,” Gurlien says, and the waiter drops off a slate slab full of meats and cheeses and strange jellies. “All interesting ramifications, all absolutely horrific in the real world.”

One of Boltiex’s assistants had once said something to that account. But had still done the experiments nonetheless.

So instead of answering, Ambra just swishes the wine in her glass, in the idle motion that the body would always do. “Korhonen honestly thought the bar fight would be done within seconds,” she says, as if speaking around her existence, speaking around her presence then, would make it easier. “He thought that faced with me, the Half Demon would immediately fold.”

“Yeah, that was a stupid thought. He literally died for her. Literally. Necromancer’s bringing anyone back is terrifying.”

Ambra nods, staring out at the small patio, something small and disquieted inside of her. Like they should be talking about something else, doing something else, besides just talking about their violent pasts. Like some sort of small talk, some sort of normal conversation, something where they could both forget the relative nightmare they’re in.

“What do normal humans talk about when they’re not dealing with unstable magical experiments?” she murmurs. “Most of my interactions before this were with scholars, and…Misia…certainly taught me that that’s not the norm.”

“What was she like?” he asks, and his voice is way, way more gentle than she’s used to .

“Fairly sure that goes into unstable magical experiments,” she says.

He shrugs, his fingers idle around the stem of the wine glass. “People talk about their past. Current interests, events, what they did. Past friends, family members, past lovers.”

That certainly explains that, and Ambra curls her feet underneath herself on the lounge seat, staring at the wine.

“All my ice breakers usually revolve around me trying to show how smart I am,” Gurlien says, which surprises a smile out of her. “Right out of the gate, impress them with intelligence.”

“That’d be easy for you,” Ambra murmurs.

“Before I got kicked out, I tried to impress people with being competent. They weren’t going to like me because of everything else about me, but they might if they saw how good I was at anything.” He sets the wine glass down, idly picking at the plate in front of them. “It worked maybe thirty percent of the time.”

“When I communicated with scholars, about half the time they ran in fear,” Ambra says. “The other half were intensely curious and willing to barter knowledge for…a variety of things.”

“Sounds about right.”

The waiter swings by with another glass for Ambra, and they both eye it.

“Have you ever been drunk?” Gurlien asks. “I feel like this is something we should know before too long.”

“Not alone,” Ambra answers honestly. “And with Misia, we just got relaxed.”

Gurlien considers for a second. “Can you teleport while impaired?”

She raises an eyebrow at him, and he lifts his hands in defense .

“I don’t know, demons are a mystery, can demons even get drunk without human bodies? Nobody knows.”

“Wights have an alcohol that can get us impaired, but it leaves a horrific headache so I avoided it,” Ambra says, then pulls out her phone. “What do we want to bet that the experts would have ideas on if I can?”

“Oh, they’ll find that amusing,” Gurlien says, scooting close to her so he can see her type on the screen.

It’s not lost on her that he didn’t press her further about Misia. That he briefly touched on the topic, received her brush off, and then pivoted.

It’s another little kindness.

AMbrA (7:42 PM): Any red flags around getting drunk?

Immediately, both people start typing, and Ambra and Gurlien share a smile.

“I’ve never met either of these people, not in person,” Gurlien says, then equivocates. “Well, I’ve been near one, but I wasn’t conscious for it.”

“Ridiculous,” Ambra informs him, before her phone buzzes.

T (7:43 PM): Drink lots of water and have a meal with it.

MEL (7:43 PM): Don’t blow things up.

T (7:44 PM): I have NEVER blown anything up while drunk.

MEL (7:44 PM): Liar.

Ambra gives Gurlien a quick, impish smile, before typing.

AMbrA (7:45 PM): But all my abilities will be the same?

T (7:46 PM): If you’re anything like me, yes. Just less precise.

MEL (7:47 PM): Don’t teleport anywhere new.

MEL (4:47 PM): Or sleep with anyone new .

“Oh that has interesting connotations for them,” Gurlien murmurs, and Ambra elbows him. “What?”

“You keep on dropping hints about something I’m not allowed to know!” she says, and Gurlien’s phone buzzes.

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“It’s just…it’s Chloe, asking me what the hell I’m doing, and a picture of Chance,” he says, glancing at it, and as he’s reading it, Ambra snaps a picture of him with her phone. “Are you serious?”

“She sends you pictures of your cat, she’ll probably appreciate a picture back,” Ambra says, sending it over.

The motions of the phone are starting to feel natural to her.

It’s a good picture, regardless. Gurlien’s lit by the glow of the heater and the twinkling of patio lights, holding his phone in one hand and the glass of deep red wine in the other.

Three dots show up from Chloe as she types, before it disappears, and Gurlien’s phone buzzes instead.

“You are doing a decent job at endearing yourself to her,” he informs Ambra, the hint of a smile on his face.

She grins at him in return, then pokes at the platter of food.

When here before, she had let the body control their actions, let Misia decide what to eat and drink, with Ambra mostly existing in the background.

But still, the act of putting the meat and cheese on a thin wafer is almost automatic.

“So this ‘T’ says to eat a meal?” Ambra starts, holding up one of the wafers. “Does this count?”

“Traditionally,” Gurlien replies dryly, still tapping on his phone. “According to Axel—” Ambra wrinkles her nose, “— T got very drunk once and didn’t eat and was hungover for almost three days.”

“Can she heal?” Ambra asks, and Gurlien eyes her, like he doesn’t want to answer that. “Fine.”

AMbrA (7:53 PM): Important question: is it possible to heal away a hangover?

T (7:53 PM): No.

Mel (7:53 PM): Yes.

AMbrA (7:54 PM): Great.

Ambra sets her phone down on the table, then raises an eyebrow down at the food again.

There’s a strange detachment inside of her, twisting and growing at the day.

She had almost lost control, had almost killed someone who wasn’t one of the Five. Who didn’t have any defenses that could hold her back, regardless of the traps she had set. Manipulations or not, pressing all of her emotional buttons or not, Ambra shouldn’t have lost control like that.

It would’ve been better to leave no trace.

And if she’s being completely honest with herself, it had been Gurlien’s presence there that held her back.

Had been Gurlien’s presence, had been him talking so candidly about his past, had been him answering her questions, that had calmed her down. That had stopped her from spiraling into despair, that had pulled her out of the quagmire of emotions she had no real way of escaping on her own.

And here she is, having a glass of wine with him, joking and texting people, as if she hadn’t been trapped by the chemicals in her brain just a few scant hours before.

“I have a human question,” she says, turning towards him and setting down her wine.

He raises an eyebrow, tucking his phone into his pocket .

“What, you ask demon questions all the time,” she says.

“I didn’t say a thing,” he informs her, and there’s a looseness about him right now as well, as he gestures for her to go on. “Go ahead, ask.”

“How do humans form bonds?”

He listens to her question, absorbs it, then holds up a finger.

“One, not nearly on the same level as demons, we’re just not like that,” he says, and a rush of gratefulness hits her, that he’s listening to her question seriously and treating it like any other scholastic approach. “Most humans don’t have intrinsic mental connections to other beings, that’s just not the truth of biology like demons do.”

That’s not new information, having observed and read about humans for ages, but it’s still nice to hear.

“Two, emotionally…” he trails off, pinching his lips together. “Emotionally, it varies human to human. Some will form affections and loyalties to people incredibly fast, some it takes ages. Some form friendships with dozens of people and care about them all deeply and truthfully, while some only care about maybe two other people.”

“Misia was like that,” Ambra murmurs, taking another sip of the wine to drown out the immediate tightening of her throat.

It’s so strange to say her name.

“Some are friendly with many but close to few, some are friendly to only a few people but care deeply about them, it varies so drastically it never stops being confusing.” Gurlien watches her, like he’s expecting to read something across her face. “Some people fall in love many times, deeply and quickly. Some it takes years to develop to just one person and they never get over the loss.”

“That sounds more like demons,” Ambra says. “If your Necromancer ever left the Half Demon, he’d never get over it.”

“So demons are hopeless romantics, got it,” Gurlien says, and the sarcastic tone makes her smile. “Never would have thought, what with all the murder.”

“The murder ones are the more emotional ones,” she informs him, and gets a smile in return, a relaxing around his eyes. “Still can’t believe Maison slept with a necromancer.”

“To be completely fair, he didn’t know she was one until about a month and a half ago.” For a few seconds, he stares into his glass, as if he could read something from it. “Chloe gets crushes fast, decides she likes a person but takes forever to trust them fully. She’s fast to be friendly, fast to be kind and nice, but I think she trusts maybe two people.”

“You’re one of them,” Ambra points out.

“And the other is someone she won’t even tell me about,” Gurlien says, then fixates his gaze on her, under the twinkling lights of the patio. “I tend to like people long before they like me and most people never do.”

Ambra resists the urge to roll her eyes at him, instead presses her knee to his, like he did to her when Axel was grilling her at the restaurant. “Then most people have a limited view,” she declares.

And a revelation like that deserves one in return, a balancing of the books. He answered her question, he deserves to ask one back.

“Go ahead,” Ambra says, when the silence tilts towards long. “Ask me something.”

“Dangerous thing to say,” he teases back, then narrows his eyes, as if his brain is stuck.

“What?”

“No, there’s just ages of demonology studies and I have no idea which question I should ask first,” he says, taking another sip, and the waiter sets down another glass for him. “How old are you?”

She blinks at him. “I don’t know.”

“Off to a good start. Do you know any demons who’ve had more than one bond?” His eyes are sharp, despite the glass of wine he’s already drunk.

“That can’t be the most pressing question of demonologists for centuries,” Ambra says, before settling back in the chair again.

There’s the immediate wish to deflect, to get the attention off of the question and all it implies. He would know what it implies, spending the time with her and hearing who knows what from Maison and his ‘experts.’

“Do I know any, no,” Ambra hedges, and she can see it dawn on him, immediate. “I don’t know…exactly what will happen to me.”

Impulsive, she reaches up, sliding a finger underneath the leash, at the still sore skin, and Gurlien’s hand settles on his wrist in return.

“I’ve never seen a bond last beyond the death of one of the members, and this one still exists,” Ambra says softly, and the words settle between them. “I don’t know if it’s because of the experiments or if because they used it to control me.”

He regards her, and there’s something different than the scholastic lens he’s been tracking her with.

“So, more experimentation nonsense,” she says, forcing cheerfulness in her voice. “Every demon I’ve talked to has been horrified, so I have that going for me.”

Surprising her, he clinks his glass against hers. “And I’ve been exiled away from the only social group I know how to interact with, cheers. ”

It’s a nice bit of levity, and despite all the drama of the day, despite all the emotions, she lets the wine seep over her tongue, lets the small bit of camaraderie keep her above water.

He takes a somewhat large sip from his glass, the deep red liquid shining in the twinkling lights. “Do demons have gender preferences?”

It’s a relatively ridiculous question. “Demons don’t have a gender unless they’re in a body, not really,” she says, then shrugs. “It’s not set in stone, I’ve known some who only find male bodies, some that only find female, some that make it a priority to switch around. I never paid attention to it, mostly.”

His lips twitch. “Such a different experience than humanity.”

“It is astoundingly weird to be in one form for so long,” she says, and it still hurts. “I don’t know how humans can for their entire lives.”

“So you don’t pay attention to gender,” Gurlien says, almost to himself.

“I mean, I observe it,” Ambra says. “Humans and some Wights get very angry if you don’t at least recognize what they’re doing with that.”

Another twitch of his lips, this time into something resembling a smile.

The patio is slowly filling up, people trickling in, and besides a few curious glances their way, nobody pays them that much attention. Like they’re two normal people having a drink together, as common as anything else in this world.

It’s a soothing thought, somehow, that despite everything, she could be…normal. Have a life others wouldn’t blink at. That maybe she won’t need to exile herself away, avoid the world for forever. That despite the heartbreak, de spite the loneliness and the loss inside of her, that she’d be okay.

“Try this one,” Gurlien instructs, drawing her attention back to the present, pointing at one of the luridly reddish meats. “It’s too spicy for me.”

Before she can even shift, he’s already piling some of the meat together with some cheese on one of the wafers, handing it to her.

“I think, after all of this, we should really find out all your limits in terms of spicy food,” he says, just as seriously as before, as if just as worthy of scientific experimentation as her power. “See if there’s something you actually can’t handle out there.”

After all this.

“Sure,” Ambra says, and her heart beats a little bit faster at the idea.