A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch （Glimmer Falls, #2(89)
She laughed awkwardly. “You may need your eyes checked, but thank you.”
He frowned. “I’ve noticed you don’t like compliments.”
“I don’t get a lot of them.” She knew how to react to a challenge or insult—hit back—but she’d never quite known what to do with praise.
“Then clearly I need to compliment you all the time.” Astaroth ducked his head and pressed a kiss to her bicep. “Tell me more about this Sam wanker.”
Calladia sighed. “He didn’t like me working out. He thought it made me look too masculine for his tastes.” A sentiment her mother had echoed, so a younger Calladia had let them convince her that was a bad thing. “So I stopped working out, stopped speaking up, stopped swearing. Then he wanted me to lose weight. I made myself small and quiet and biddable, and it was never enough.” The critiques had grown crueler, until she’d dreaded the sound of his footsteps outside the apartment in the evening.
“It never would be,” Astaroth said. “Some bastards want power but don’t know how to get it without tearing other people down. If they can’t earn respect on their own merits, they’ll create a victim with no choice in the matter.”
His eyes held the weight of ages, and Calladia was struck by the vast difference between them. Astaroth looked young, and he could be as funny and petty and ridiculous as any human, but he was very, very old. “If Sam was problematic at fifteen years older than me, then what is this?” she asked, gesturing between them.
“The problematic part is when an older partner specifically chooses someone young and naive to take advantage of or demean,” Astaroth said. “I’m interested in you for who you are, exactly as you are. And you’re fully capable of . . . what did you threaten me with again? Exploding my testicles if I try any funny business.”
Who you are, exactly as you are. Flustered by the praise, Calladia scrambled for a joke. “It helps that you’re a very immature six hundred.”
“Precisely,” Astaroth agreed. “I’m fairly sure I haven’t experienced emotional growth since the Thirty Years’ War.”
That blatantly wasn’t true—because what had the last few days been, if not emotional growth?—but Calladia appreciated the attempt at humor. It made it easier for her to finish the story.
“Anyway,” she said, “I finally came to my senses, thanks to Mariel.” Mariel had staged a few interventions over the years, but Calladia had been too blinded by love to listen—and later, too browbeaten. “She wasn’t getting results reasoning with me, so she did something tricky after Sam proposed. She invited me to come hiking with her back in Glimmer Falls.” Mariel had never been a fitness nut the way Calladia was, but she loved hiking, and the two of them had spent countless hours wandering the woods together. “We hadn’t gone in a while, and Sam had been limiting the time I spent with my friends, but he was out of town one weekend. So I drove up to Glimmer Falls and joined Mariel on a hike to the hot springs.”
She could picture it clearly. Calladia hadn’t exercised in a long time, and her workout pants and tank top had hung loose. When she’d looked in the mirror, she hadn’t recognized the frail woman playing dress-up in the old Calladia’s clothes.
“I couldn’t keep up,” Calladia said. “I used to run half-marathons, but I was winded within minutes of starting a gentle hike. After fifteen minutes, I nearly passed out. It was then I realized Sam hadn’t been improving me the way he claimed to be. Instead, he had made me weak.”
She’d cried her eyes out at the side of that trail while Mariel had held her and whispered assurances that this wasn’t the end, and she would be strong again.
Then Mariel had driven back to Sam’s apartment next to Crabtree College, helped Calladia pack her things, and brought her home.
“I dumped him by text,” Calladia told Astaroth. “I couldn’t bear to look at him again. He blew up my phone for a few weeks, then moved on. His new girlfriend was posted on Pixtagram within the month.”
Silence fell as her story concluded. That hadn’t been the real end of it, of course. It had taken time to build up her strength and confidence again. It would still take time for all the damage Sam had inflicted to heal. But like building a muscle, the places she had torn had become stronger with time. She would never let anyone make her feel small again.
Rain pattered gently against the tent, and wind soughed through the trees. It was wet and cold outside, but under the blanket with Astaroth, with magic glowing overhead, Calladia felt warm and safe.
Safe with her enemy—who would have thought? But she’d thought Sam an ally once, and look how that had turned out.
Astaroth cupped her cheek. “You’re strong.”
“Now I am. Back then I wasn’t.” It was embarrassing how much time she’d spent letting Sam tear her down. She hadn’t recognized the bars of her cage until she was too weak to open the cell door and escape.
“Being strong doesn’t mean winning every battle. Sometimes it means surviving to fight again.”
Her vision blurred with fresh tears. “Wow,” she said with a watery laugh. “That’s deep. Have you thought about writing advice columns?” Dear Sphinxie from the Glimmer Falls Gazette couldn’t touch his level of eloquence.