It could be like this between us, he thought. Days spent fighting the world and each other, nights and lazy mornings dedicated to peace. His witch was a powerhouse, a warrior queen, but even warriors had to rest between battles.
It was who they let themselves rest around that mattered.
Calladia shifted. “Freaking bulldozer,” she muttered.
Astaroth bit back a laugh. His fingers gently flexed on her waist. The onesie was soft, but he felt the firm line of her body beneath it.
Had rubber ducks ever been so arousing?
Calladia made a grumpy noise. “Where’d you get the fedora?”
Astaroth froze. The words echoed in his head, ringing like a bell. Where’d you get the fedora? Where’d you get the fedora?
Where’d you get the fedora, a pickup artist convention?
His temple throbbed, and his head spun. Astaroth closed his eyes, swallowing against nausea.
A memory played out, one bracketed with green pines and sprawling brambles. The background was hazy, but one thing was clear and sharp: Calladia, standing with her fists clenched, a furious expression on her face. Her hair hung loose to her lower back, and she was wearing the same outfit from the first day: leggings patterned with daisies and a blue tank top that said Sweat Like a Girl.
In the memory, Astaroth stood opposite her, his white suit clean of blood and a black fedora covering his horns. His hand rested on the crystal skull topper of his cane sword.
This motherfucker is Astaroth of the Nine? the Calladia of memory asked. Where’d you get the fedora, a pickup artist convention?
Memory Astaroth and current Astaroth were united in their outrage. I don’t take sartorial critiques from people wearing spandex, he’d sneered.
Nearby, a short pixie with pink-and-green hair expressed alarm. Another of Calladia’s friends, presumably. Whatever she said was lost, because Calladia was walking toward Astaroth, cracking her knuckles, and she was all he had focus for.
The last few days had taught Astaroth to be wary when she looked like that. The emotions captured in the memory didn’t match what he felt now though. At the time, Astaroth had been full of disdain. He’d considered her annoying and irrelevant. Beneath him.
So you’re the demon who’s been destroying the forest? Calladia began tying her hair up, and Astaroth instantly knew this memory was about to devolve into a fight. The demon who destroyed my best friend’s greenhouse? The one trying to force Oz and Mariel to make a bargain?
He’d looked at her soul then, opening his demon senses. It was brilliant, pure in its power. And Astaroth, greedy demon that he was, had wanted to claim it for himself. Seize a new victory out of the bitterness of recent defeat. Maybe with her soul as an offering, the high council would allow him to amend the terms of the wager. He could still come out on top.
Astaroth’s sweat had felt cold in the forest air. Moloch couldn’t win. Not before Astaroth revealed . . .
But the particulars of what Astaroth needed to reveal drifted away like mist.
Do you want to become a princess? he’d asked, determined to find the price that would convince her to hand over her soul. Own a diamond mine? Say it, and it’s yours.
I do want something, she’d said, stopping just out of reach, but I can’t get it through a deal.
What had she wanted? He desperately wanted to know. He’d wanted to know back then, too, but for a different reason. Until he knew her vulnerabilities, he wouldn’t be able to use them for his own ends.
It was strange, feeling this split in himself. It seemed impossible he’d ever viewed her with sneering disdain, yet the memory was definitely his.
I can give you anything.
No thanks. I take what I want.
He’d noticed her beauty even then. The mix of classically delicate features and visible musculature had been interesting. His mind had traveled down speculative paths, considering what the angry, pretty witch would take if she could.
Then she’d punched him in the throat.
In the present day, Astaroth yelped and twitched. Calladia instantly sat upright, shoving hair out of her face to reveal flushed cheeks and heavy-lidded eyes. “What is it?” she asked, voice still blurred by sleep. “Who’s there?”
He sat up, too, powered by a burst of outrage. “You punched me in the throat!”
“I did?” Calladia looked down at her hand, then back at him, blinking slowly. “Sorry, I’m an active sleeper. You look fine.”
“Not in your sleep,” he said through gritted teeth.
She squinted at him, and he saw when her mind finally caught up with the conversation. “Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh! Wait, did your memory return?”