“Some of it,” he said, crossing his arms. “I remember you hitting me.”
“Well, at least it’s a start,” she said with a cocky grin. “I’m sure you’ll remember the rest of the beatdown soon.”
The casual way she spoke about it set his teeth on edge. “You sound awfully cheerful about it.”
“And you seem upset, though I’m not sure why. We’re enemies, remember?”
“Because . . . because . . .” Dash it, he wasn’t sure why he was angry either. It was just that after all they’d been through together, being attacked by her stung. That the attack had happened before their recent adventures didn’t seem to figure in to his addled brain. With memories popping up willy-nilly, it felt like she’d punched him moments ago.
And why did she have to say it like that? We’re enemies, as if that neatly summed everything up. As if she still saw nothing more in him than a foe to be vanquished.
“You had it coming, if that helps,” Calladia said, oblivious to how her words had skewered him through the heart. She looked around the bed, and her brow furrowed. “Where did the pillows go?”
“Hang the pillows.” Astaroth rubbed his temples, struggling for calm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Calladia grabbed a pillow from the floor and tossed it in his direction. “That I beat you up? I thought I had.”
Pain stabbed through his head, and his eye twitched. “It was completely unprovoked.”
“Mmmm, was it though?” she asked skeptically, chucking another pillow and narrowly missing his face.
She wasn’t taking this seriously enough. He batted the next pillow aside. “I didn’t do anything to you,” he argued, “and then you hit me and insulted my hat—”
“It was a terrible hat,” she said.
Astaroth gasped, because now he recalled it wasn’t just a good hat; it was his favorite. “That fedora cost more than four hundred quid and came custom from my favorite London haberdasher!”
Calladia scoffed and shifted to kneel facing him, apparently giving up on the pillow wall. “I don’t know why you’re buying hats using sea creatures as currency—”
“I said quid, not squid.”
“Either way, you overpaid.” She looked him up and down condescendingly. “You looked like the flag bearer for the incel cause.”
Astaroth made a face. “The what?”
“Incels,” she said. “Does the word ring a bell?” When Astaroth shook his head, she continued. “If you forget anything you might have learned about them, it’ll be the best thing amnesia does for you. Incel stands for ‘involuntary celibate,’ and they’re misogynistic fuckwads who think women owe them sex.”
Astaroth’s fingers dug into his pillow as he contemplated ripping it apart. “You think I’m a misogynistic fuckwad?”
She blew a hank of hair out of her face, then gave him a mean smile. “They like fedoras is all I’m saying.”
She was likely kidding, but Astaroth’s irritation was spiraling out of control, heading in too many illogical directions. What was he really angry about? The hat? The dismissive way she spoke about beating him up?
Or was it because he’d come to trust, admire, and—curse it—like her, and that memory had been the emotional equivalent of getting punted in the crotch? Which she had done after the throat punch, he now recalled.
Was his anger even directed entirely at her? When he remembered the cynicism he’d felt facing her in those woods, his stomach churned.
Rather than performing a more in-depth interrogation of that uncomfortable feeling, Astaroth barreled on with the argument. “So you do think I’m a misogynistic fuckwad. Even more laughably, you think I’m a celibate one.” The gall. He’d been bedding men, women, and nonbinary folks of multiple species for centuries and doing a grand job of it. Nothing but rave reviews.
Calladia’s cheeks turned pinker, and a combative light shone in her eyes. “That’s what you’re upset about?” The humorous edge to her voice was gone; she wasn’t teasing any longer, but picking up the gauntlet he’d thrown down. “Not that you might be a misogynist, but that I might think you’re not getting laid on the regular?”
“No—”
“I must have missed your travel concubines,” she continued, voice rising. “Or did you leave your Fleshlight in your other pants?”
“I don’t even know what a Fleshlight is.” And he’d never employed travel concubines, of all things.