The library was, without a doubt, my favorite room in the house. Three stories tall, all leather and wood. Rather than blacks and grays, this room was done in browns and reds and golds and smelled of leather and yellowed paper, dust and imagination.
I hadn’t been allowed to borrow from it. I could have easily learned to hate books by association, but no. I was a bookworm to the bone. Not even the director had managed to beat the love of fiction out of me.
That happy thought led me to a warning I owed Asa. “I need you to promise me you can handle this.”
“Define this.” His shoulders stiffened on my periphery. “What do you expect to happen?”
“When he gets mad, he gets physical.” I couldn’t look at him. “Don’t get between us, okay?”
“That’s a big ask,” he growled. “I don’t know if I can make that promise.”
“Try?” I kept my gaze on the floor out of habit, shrinking myself as he sometimes did, and I hated it. “For me?”
“All right.” He shoved his hands into his pockets to hide his clenched fists. “I’ll do my best. We both will.”
The daemon was the wild card. I had to trust he understood I didn’t need saving. It was too late for that.
When the door swung open, a solid hour later, an unimposing man bustled into the room. Late forties or early fifties, thereabouts. I used to wonder how long he had looked like that, but I didn’t anymore. Black suit, white shirt, glossy shoes. He wore the template for the Black Hat suit. Thick frames completed the look. I wasn’t certain what secret purpose they served, but his vision was flawless.
Unable to resist its insidious draw, I dipped my gaze to the black lacquer cane with mother of pearl inlays and tasted bile.
“Elspeth.” The director sank into a wingback chair and gestured for me to take its partner. “You’re a difficult woman to get ahold of.”
Neither Asa nor I sat, which earned me an indulgent smile. He ignored Asa altogether, for which I was glad.
“And you’re a difficult man to avoid.” I smiled too, and mine was sharper. “What do you want?”
“For you to sit, for starters.” He thinned his lips. “Can you be civil for a few minutes?”
Counting back from ten, I strove for calm. “Does the name Calixta Damaras mean anything to you?”
“The former high queen of the Haelian Seas?” His cane tap, tap, tapped. “What about her?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I answered your question truthfully.”
Gritting my teeth, I hated how easy it was to fall back into this dynamic with him. “She was your lover.”
The old man went deathly still at having been called out for their tête-à-tête.
“Who told you that?” His knuckles whitened around the cane. “Did they imply—?”
Here we go.
Scorched earth commencing in…five…four…three…two…
“That my father was half daemon?” I kept my arms stiff down by my sides. “That I’m a quarter?”
“What you are,” he said as cruel magic sliced through the room, “is my granddaughter.”
The acknowledgment of our relationship, in front of Asa, struck with the precision of a knife.
When I recalled how he never claimed me, I was wrong. He had. Several times. In front of servants.
“Confirm it or deny it,” I growled, the leash slipping on my temper, “but I want the truth.”
“Who told you that?” he repeated. “Who dared breathe life into those old rumors?”