“Does your honor demand I stand?” Aedan flicked water off his fingertips. “Or can I keep my seat?”
“You may remain seated.” Asa cut his eyes toward me. “Are you sure you want to bear witness?”
“He’s half dead already,” I protested. “Can’t you let his wounds finish him off?”
“That sounds painful.” Aedan scrunched up his nose. “And it would pollute the creek.”
Asa took a step forward, and flames licked over his arms as the daemon took control.
Slabbed with muscle, his daemon half towered over me. Skin dark red, it was feverish to the touch. Black rosettes formed random patterns down his legs and over his bare feet. Thick horns in the same midnight shade as his long hair curled from his temples over his head. His pants, strained to bursting, were all that survived the shift. Asa trashed fancy suits by the dozens, and it warmed my heart to imagine the director footing the bill.
“We’re on a case.” I planted a palm on his chest. “You can’t kill him until we close it.”
Those were the rules, as Asa had explained them to me, and I planned to force him to stick to them.
This might not be official yet, but it was a case. Clay had given me forty-eight hours.
“Rue.” The daemon tossed his head toward Aedan. “He challenge me.”
“I know, and I’m not saying you can’t fight it out later, but look at him.”
Playing dirty, I raked my fingers through the silky length of his hair. “Give him a few days to heal.”
“I can’t decide if you’re trying to help me,” Aedan muttered, “or torture me.”
“Do you really want to die that badly?” I glared down at him. “You’re seriously begging Asa to end you?”
An uncomfortable pressure built behind my breastbone, making it hard to breathe without discomfort, and my eyes itched. Maybe it was that sliver of manufactured conscience wedged into my brain, forcing me to grow, but I could tell this was wrong.
It was wrong.
“Why does it matter to you?” Aedan cocked his head. “You’re a black witch. I’ll even give you my heart.”
An unwelcome rumble in my stomach earned me a bitter smile from Aedan and made me double down.
“I’ve done a lot of terrible things in my life,” I told him, fumbling to put my thoughts into words.
“That’s hardly shocking.” A smile sparkled in his eyes. “Black witch, remember?”
“What opened my eyes was finding myself the guardian of another person, a good person.”
“Love truly is blind.” His eyes widened to comic proportions. “Astaroth is hardly an innocent.”
“Not Asa.” I kept petting the daemon to keep him distracted. “A child.”
Aedan opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, shut it again, gaping like a fish out of water.
Once he got his jaw working, he asked, “Black witches foster too?”
“No.” I had never heard of a single instance. “This was a special circumstance.”
“I don’t understand.”
Setting aside his confusion, I worked to gain momentum for my argument to offer him some clarity.
“The child looks to me as a role model,” I explained, keeping it vague, “a protector, a provider. I couldn’t remain the monster I had been my whole life unless I wanted to extinguish a bright light by hauling the child into the darkness with me. To be what the child needed, I had to change. I had to do better. I had to be better.”
Gaze sliding down to the rippling waters, he listened, which was as much as I could ask of him.