Astaroth winced. Ozroth spoke with the ingrained bitterness of someone who had been told those things many times. “I don’t remember saying that, but I’m not going to say it again.”
“Oh, please.” Ozroth laughed bitterly. “You don’t have to pretend to be some new, improved person. Clearly you’ve fooled Calladia, but you can’t fool me.”
Astaroth snorted. “Like anyone could fool Calladia. You should give her more credit.”
Ozroth’s irises were metallic gold, and when he cocked his head, it made Astaroth think of a bird of prey. Déjà vu spun his head, and for a moment he had a vision of a small boy with gold eyes and small black horns looking up at him trustingly.
“Damn,” Astaroth said, rubbing his temples. It wasn’t that his head hurt—Isobel had taken care of that—but he was becoming increasingly aware of the pressure of memories building up. It was like floating on dark water, unable to see the danger lurking beneath the surface but knowing it was there. He leaned against the wall for support.
Ozroth’s face flickered from adult to young and back again. “What is it?” the demon asked, crossing his arms and scowling.
Across the street, a family was out for a walk. The father was a pixie, the mother human. One child had tiny pink wings, the other none, but they looked thrilled to be out together.
Astaroth imagined their lives as they grew older. Would the wingless child envy their sibling? Or would those minuscule wings be one more trait to love, the same as a mop of red hair or a crooked grin? Would the parents try to change or hide those half-breed traits, or would they embrace them?
Embrace them, he decided, considering their bright smiles. And those children would make it to adulthood feeling valuable just as they were, rather than feeling like they fell short of an impossible expectation.
Astaroth had done the opposite. He’d taken in a young child, then shaped that child to reflect the person Astaroth had secretly wished he could be: a pure-blood, ruthless demon, unafflicted by the doubts and fears of humans.
There was no such thing as a demon entirely unafflicted by doubt or fear though, or if there was, it would be someone like Moloch, whose worldview had become an exercise in sadism.
“When did I take you in?” Astaroth asked.
Ozroth’s forehead furrowed. “Right after my father died during the French Revolution. I was six years old.”
Astaroth winced. That was very young. And yes, bargainers were trained from youth—Lilith herself had trained him in secret on Earth until he’d grown old enough for her to realize he could pass as a full demon—but Astaroth knew his methods of teaching would have been far less cordial than his mother’s. “And then?”
Ozroth settled against the wall beside him. His eyes tracked the family across the way, too. “You took me to your palace in the Obsidian Realm, where you raised me to adulthood.”
Ozroth’s rumbling voice tugged at a stray thread in Astaroth’s brain. The Obsidian Realm was a barren, black wasteland below an extinct volcano. Astaroth closed his eyes, focusing on that thread of connection. “Tell me more.”
He heard Ozroth’s heavy sigh. “It was cold. Stone walls, stone floors. Only the basics required for survival and learning, because you said forming any kind of emotional connection to a person, place, or object would give my enemies a weapon to wield against me.”
Astaroth’s throat felt like it was being squeezed in a fist. It was similar to what Lilith had taught him. “Be cautious about your emotional connections,” she’d said long ago. “They can be wielded against you.”
She hadn’t told him he wasn’t allowed any connections though, had she? She’d taught him to conceal his human tendencies and limit emotional outbursts around others, but she’d never commanded him not to have them at all.
“Go on,” he said.
“You trained me in bargainer magic, had me read demon and human histories, taught me swordplay and torture techniques.”
At least that was standard for young bargainers, so Astaroth hadn’t failed in that sense. An effective bargainer was a knowledgeable, well-rounded one.
“You told me the most important thing a bargainer could be was cold,” Ozroth continued. “？‘Make your heart ice,’ you said. ‘No one will ever be able to hurt you.’？”
Had Astaroth been right in that? In some sense, perhaps. But now he saw an ugly truth. “In doing so, I hurt you though. Didn’t I?”