When they’d finished eating, Daisy helped Aurelie clear the dishes while Jasper and Des returned to the workshop to finish the second row of stones. Daisy had affixed a third of the metal plates to the stones in the order of Aurelie’s diagram. Soon, she would be ready to engrave the runes. Just so long as she had everything translated.
Finally, around ten o’clock, Daisy yawned so wide Des heard her jaw creak.
“It’s time to go,” Jasper said. Aurelie had gone to her laboratory to feed Mephisto while they finished in her workshop. “I can’t believe we have to work tonight.”
“I know.” Des wiped the sweat from his brow, astonished by how quickly the hours had passed. They were nearly finished with the stones. It had been a successful day’s work. If he didn’t think about it too hard, he could almost convince himself he hadn’t abandoned his principles entirely.
“You’re worried about her here alone, aren’t you?” Jasper asked.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know,” Daisy said. “She handled that demon pretty well yesterday. I think she can take care of herself.”
“But she shouldn’t have to,” Des said.
“No. No one should.” Daisy stretched up to pat him on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
He scoffed. “For what?”
“For being open-minded enough to listen to Aurelie, to understand that there’s a different way of being in this world from the one you’ve always known.” She handed him his breastplate. “Most of us didn’t grow up in this. We got to see a world that wasn’t only about demons. You didn’t have that privilege.”
“Serving in the Iron Guard—”
“Is a privilege,” Jasper and Daisy said in unison.
“We know,” Jasper added. “But Daisy is right. I’m not saying it was your best idea ever to fall for a girl who conjures demons. But it’s nice to see you happy for a change.”
Was that what this feeling was? Happiness? Des looked up to see Aurelie standing in the doorway, watching him. She may have heard what Jasper said, that he was falling for her. And for reasons beyond his comprehension, he wasn’t humiliated at the thought. Maybe he’d never get to marry or have a family, but for the rest of his life, he would be able to say he knew what it felt like to lose his mind over a girl.
Pretty fucking fantastic.
Chapter 32
Aurelie
In the morning, Aurelie stretched languorously, having spent another night dreaming of Des. It was better than dwelling on her uncle in a cage, or Everard’s demon sniffing about the university, or the trouble she could be getting the demon hunters into at this very moment.
Des hadn’t said he was falling for her, but he also hadn’t contradicted Jasper, and the look he’d given her had made heat pool in her chest and flow like molten lava to her core. If she could have found a way to manufacture and bottle that feeling, she’d be the wealthiest woman alive, no matter how many demons she spawned in the process.
She knew that demon hunters didn’t marry. She knew that the odds of this portal working and demons being officially eradicated were so slim as to be negligible, because if it were possible, surelysomeonewould have done it before. Which meant that she would likely die alongside her uncle, and Des should be the furthest thing from her mind. But she was eighteen. Her frontal lobe wasn’t fully developed yet. And what was death compared to falling in love?
As she began to boil water for coffee, she noticed that Mephisto hadn’t touched its dinner last night. She couldn’t remember the last time it hadn’t finished a meal; if anything, it generally demanded seconds. She pulled the jar of cockroaches out of the armoire,slowly unscrewing the lid, a sound that normally acted as a siren song for the demon. But there was still no sign of it.
Puzzled, Aurelie searched along the floorboards and even in the Load Lightener, but Mephisto wasn’t here and likely hadn’t been all night. A horrible feeling crept over her. What if Everard had taken it? Or used his link to demons to summon it? She’d known Everard wanted the creature for his own purposes, whatever those were. And she had been too busy living in a fantasy world—one where she had friends over for dinner; one where she hadfriends—to realize it was missing.
She swallowed her tears. If she completed the portal, Mephisto was going to be summoned back to the demonic realm. It might be happier there, where it belonged, among its own kind. But even as she had these thoughts, she knew they were untrue. Mephisto was happy here, with Aurelie. It was yet another sacrifice in her path to saving her uncle.
Until recently, she had thought of herself as someone curious and methodical, inquisitive and wise. But the painful reality was that deep down, she was a girl of hope and heartstrings, too. Love would break her as sure as it would any other girl, if she let it.
She finished her coffee and removed the bandage on her wound, relieved to see it was scabbing over. She let her shift fall to the floor and stood before the full-length mirror on her armoire door. The juxtaposition of her smooth, pale skin and the ragged scratches across her chest was jarring, ugly even. She’d never thought much on her physical appearance before, but now, imagining Des seeing her like this, she wondered if the scars would forever remind him of her traitorous actions.
Illegal inventor. Demon consorter. A brand she would carry with her the rest of her life.
She had known the demon hunters wouldn’t come until well after nightfall, and yet she realized she’d been hoping Des would come earlier anyway by the disappointment she felt when he didn’t. But there was no time to waste. Using a tool she’d found in Mr. Morel’s workshop, she took a sheet of copper and began to practice engraving shapes in it.
It was so much harder than it looked. The burin, a tool with a round wooden handle and a metal shaft leading down to a diamond-shaped tip, was easy enough to hold. But it took years of practice for a skilled metalworker to wield it with strength and finesse, to create the curves and intricate details needed for Elder Vansion. Aurelie’s first attempt looked like that of a child practicing their letters: wobbly, crooked, and unrecognizable.
Afraid she was going to ruin a noticeable amount of Mr. Morel’s copper sheets, she decided to work on her own copper kettle, which she’d soon covered in dents and chicken scratches that were so embarrassing she knew she’d have to scrap the kettle altogether. This was impossible. What she needed was someone with excellent penmanship and strong forearms. Someone good at keeping secrets who wasn’t busy today.