He scoffed. “How can an aberration ever be considered a good thing?”
“Being different is just that: being different. It isn’t a crime.” Her voice rose as she continued. “My mother would say I’m an aberration, too, but do I give a shit? Absolutely not. And you shouldn’t either.”
By the way she was nearly shouting, Astaroth suspected she might, in fact, give a shit. He remembered the tense conversation he’d overheard at her childhood home. “You think your mother expects you to be exactly like her?”
Calladia kicked a rubbish bin at the edge of the curb. “She expects more than that. She wants a daughter, heiress, campaign manager, and hype woman all in one. Pearls and pantsuits and lipstick and all that bloody nonsense.” She apparently realized what she’d said the moment Astaroth did, because she barreled on. “And now your Britishisms are rubbing off on me—great. The point is, I’m not bloody polite or scheming or diplomatic or whatever-the-fuck-else she expects. I’m rude and loud and too masculine for her standards, and I’m a disappointment to the family who will never make anything of myself if I don’t fall in line and become the perfect little Cunnington cunt.”
Apparently he’d hit a nerve. He liked it though. He wanted to hear her rant about anything and everything, especially if it meant she was opening up to him.
Opening up to him? Lucifer, had he really just thought that? In practical terms he’d experienced less than a day of being half human, and already he was growing mawkish.
Calladia cleared her throat and yanked on her braid again. “Anyway, that’s not important. Back to your situation.”
Astaroth wasn’t going to let her get away with that misdirection. He fumbled for a response to make her feel better. “I think you’re perfect just the way you are.”
Calladia stopped walking. Her head snapped around. “What did you say?”
That had been too close to a confession of his growing infatuation. “Well, ah . . .” How to salvage this so she didn’t sense his glaring, Calladia-sized vulnerability? “Obviously not perfect, perfect,” he clarified. “You aren’t some goddess, even if you’d be an excellent model for a statue of Athena.” Wait, not better. He rushed onward. “What I mean to say is, you may be rude and loud, but some people find that interesting, and any talk of being too masculine is nonsense springing from a strict sense of the gender binary most species have moved beyond. You are wholly yourself, and that in itself is perfect, because anything else would be a lie.”
He lapsed into awkward silence. That had been way too much. Any moment now she was going to smack him upside the head and tell him he was the worst.
Calladia looked shell-shocked. “Wow,” she said. “That was actually really sweet.”
“It’s not sweet,” Astaroth hurried to say. “You have many less-admirable qualities.” He tried to come up with one. “You talk in your sleep, for instance. Horrific.”
Calladia laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up.”
“Gladly.” He’d started to sweat from nerves, so he wiped his forehead as nonchalantly as he could.
“And hey,” Calladia said, shifting from foot to foot. Her eyes darted before meeting his. “Thank you. For being sweet.”
“Yeah, well, don’t count on it. I’m still a horrible, irredeemable monster.”
“Of course,” she said, looping her arm through his. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” When Astaroth stared at where she was touching him, Calladia rolled her eyes. “Come on, you secret softie. Let’s find a place to stay.”
Astaroth let himself be towed along, marveling that somehow, despite having little practice with honesty, he’d managed to say the exact right thing.
* * *
“This is it?” Astaroth looked skeptically toward the canopy of a very thick, very tall tree. Rungs were hammered into the wood, and a structure was perched halfway up, mostly obscured by branches.
Calladia looked far too chipper for someone about to spend the night in a tree. “Best views in town, they said.”
The eponymous proprietor of Tansy’s Treehouse was a griffin, so it made sense they’d offer accommodation many meters off the ground. Tansy had spoken English with remarkable clarity for someone with an eagle beak, but some garbled screeching was to be expected with griffins, and Astaroth had failed to understand that a cozy room with good views translated to you’ll be sleeping in a flimsy wood shack in the fucking sky.