Yosepha looked back to her, face stern and hard. The angel always had a stern look, but ever since the incident, Mia had snuck a few peeks of her looking sad, vulnerable, and even scared. No matter how much Mia tried to connect with her the past few days, Yosepha avoided her, refused to make eye contact, refused to talk to her. And for some reason Mia couldn’t even begin to understand, the angel seemed more comfortable being open with Romakus. Every night when the group found a hole to sleep in, Yosepha sat with Romakus, and the demon held her with his wing.
He protected her.
“What? Cold feet?” Romakus asked, and he turned enough to look back at her as he walked toward the swamp below. “Bit late now.”
“No.” She caught up to him and looked past his wing to the enormous valley ahead of them. “I mean, uh… not enough to stop me. But I wanted to say you should slow down.”
“Slow down? Did you not see the thousand demons behind us?”
“I did, but we’ve outrun them. They didn’t even spot us.”
“Tregeeras are skilled trackers,” Yosepha said. “They might still find us. Romakus was right to push the group.”
Angels were apparently comfortable walking long distances, like humans, but demons definitely weren’t. Even the light ones like Yulia looked worn out, and she spent a lot of her time on her brute friend’s back, like Mia did Vin.
“I understand that, but if we go into the Black Valley broken and tired, it could get bad. Right? And it’s a swamp. Anyone with hooves is going to have a hard time.”
Romakus snorted. “What do you suggest? Snowshoes?”
“I’ll have you know I’ve worn snowshoes before!”
“Typical Canadian.”
“That… is not fair.” Wait. Did she ever tell Romakus she was Canadian? “I didn’t live in Northern Canada, anyway. But my point is, we’re going to have to change gears, and like this, you’re gonna wear everyone out.” If Romakus knew what a snowshoe was, he knew what changing gears meant.
“She has a point,” Yosepha said. “Tacitus is not likely to follow us into the Black Valley. Once we’re in the valley, we should slow down.”
Romakus growled down at Yosepha, and of course she just stared up at him like he was a pushover she could break with one good punch. Maybe she could. Her wings would take a long time to regrow, maybe months, but she’d eaten Galon’s heart. Maybe she could kick Romakus’s ass now?
“We still planning to avoid Alessio?” Mia asked.
“Of course,” Romakus said. “She’ll want to kill you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
After an annoyed, drawn-out, practically theatrical sigh, Romakus flapped a wing at her.
“Imagine you hated someone. You really, really wanted to get revenge on them. You wanted to grind them under your heel. You wanted to see their eyes as you break them. And then you found out they’d had an aneurism and died in their sleep, and–”
This was about Mia taking Alessio’s chance for revenge. Bleh.
Mia held up a hand. “I’m not capable of that kind of hate.”
The demon looked down at her, eyebrow braised.
“Everyone’s capable of hate like that.”
“Says you.”
Romakus turned, and the group stopped on a dime. Snarling, playful demeanor gone, he squatted down in front of Mia and set his gaze on hers from only six inches away.
“Demons understand hate, Mia. We understand it well. We understand rage and lust, and we understand hate. We’re born understanding it, written into our blood by Lucifer themself. But the hate a human is capable of, the insidious, seething, infectious hate that devours you and destroys you from the inside out? Hate that spreads through your veins and turns your insides into nothing but bile? The quiet, patient hate, willing to wait years before finally getting perfect revenge? That is a level of hate a demon cannot reach, but humans reach all the time.”
Mia did her best to maintain eye contact, but her mind jumped back to the memory of the hateful wife who poisoned her husband. How long had she planned that kill? How much had she hated her husband every night for who knows how many months or years before finally settling on murder?
“I… didn’t say all humans,” she said, “just me. Others, I’m sure, too.”
“You don’t think if I found your brother and killed him in front of you, in a way so heinous that poets would write plays about me, would make you hate me that much?”
That was enough to grab her eyes again, and she stared death into him as hard as she could.
“No. I wish it would. I wish I could hate that much. But I know myself well enough to know that no, I couldn’t hate as much as you think I could.”
Romakus met her gaze, and the two of them stared at each other for uncomfortably long, until Mia felt Vin’s presence behind her. Not that Vin scared Romakus, but her bodyguard at least gave the Damall leader a reason to not be too mean.
“At any rate,” Romakus said, getting back up and resuming the march, “Alessio hated Zel, a lot, enough to rival human hate. They’d been at each other’s throats for centuries.”
“So, you think if Alessio finds out I killed Zel, she won’t be thankful? She’ll be angry?”
“Of course. You took what she wanted.”
“Maybe,” Yosepha said. “She could be thankful for the strategic opportunity.”
Laughing, Romakus patted the angel on the head, earning a snarl from her and a slap to his wrist.
“Demons don’t fight each other for strategic reasons,” he said. “They fight each other because they want to.”
“I thought demons wanted to rule Hell?” Mia asked.
“They do, but because they think it’s the best way to get the best wars. They want to fight. They want conquest. They don’t want peace.”
“That makes no sense! If a demon eventually takes over all of Hell, they’d…”
“Be very, very bored.” Romakus laughed, and it almost sounded merry, as he took the first step into the black fog.
“Stay back,” Yosepha said, and she shrugged her wing stump in Mia’s direction. They both froze.
“Yosepha, you’re–”
“Do not worry for me, Mia. I will be fine.” Shrugging her shoulder as if she hadn’t just tried to push Mia back with her missing wing, Yosepha summoned her armor in a gentle flash of gold light, and marched ahead. The two holes in the armor’s back where wings should have emerged held only fleshy, ruined nubs.
Sighing, Mia slowed down until most of the group passed her, and she again walked with Kas, Vin, and Adron. And Livian, apparently.
“I can see you trying to soothe all who will listen,” Livian said. “Stop.”
“Why?”
“Because we are demons, and angels. We are not humans. We aren’t molded by circumstances like humans are. We simply deal with them.”
“What? That can’t be right. Everyone’s molded by the things that happen to them in their life. Romakus just told me Alessio hated Zel. That has to be because of stuff that happened between them, right?”
“It’s not the same. Humans are… You evolve and adapt. With demons, and probably angels, we…” She frowned as she looked down and held her chin in one of her four hands. “It’s different. It’s why your gorgeous bodyguard can stay locked in a spire dungeon for centuries and not lose his mind, where a human would. It’s why angels can do their duty for millennia without pause.”
Mia looked back to Adron, and the vrat nodded. She looked to Kas, and he nodded. She looked up at Vin, and he didn’t nod, but he did his usual quiet rumble that was his yes sound.