Mr. Wrinkles rubbed himself against my shins, his purring too soft for me to hear down below, but vibrating up my leg all the same. “He’s not a ‘creature,’ Mother. He makes me happy. I thought we were supposed to revel in the things that bring us pleasure.”
The visage of Asmodeus rolled her eyes and sighed. “I wish I hadn’t taught you that. Very well. It can’t be denied that the feral little feline helps temper and calm you. Perhaps one day it will even serve as a fine familiar.”
I tried not to scoff. Mother wasn’t wrong, exactly, and I’d thought very much the same myself several times in the past. The difference was that I saw Mr. Wrinkles as a companion with potential for a little magical augmentation. All Asmodeus saw was a four-legged arcane battery.
“But you must know why I’m calling on you today.”
My face betrayed nothing, but my muscles stiffened. “I have a good feeling,” I said.
“Dantaleon says that you skipped your lessons again.”
The words were so simple, and not at all spoken in anger or disdain, but still the receiving room felt darker. Somehow I was just a boy again, waiting on my mother’s punishment.
“I’ve had enough lessons,” I muttered.
The jewels adorning Asmodeus’s body tinkled as she mockingly turned her ear towards me. “What was that? Surely you didn’t just say that you’ve ‘had enough lessons.’ Because then you’d be prepared to fulfill your destiny. Then you’d be prepared to shatter heaven and earth in my name.” The braziers around me flared, throwing flames up to the ceiling. Mr. Wrinkles yowled and scampered towards the doors, scratching and hissing. “Well, Quilliam? Are you prepared to destroy the universe?”
My gaze fell to the ground. “No, Mother.”
Asmodeus scoffed, her tone haughty. “Then clearly you are far from prepared. Clearly you have plenty more to learn from your long-suffering mentor.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She paused, letting the weight of her words linger. Her jewelry clinked again like little bells when she folded her arms in expectant annoyance. But when she spoke, her voice was sweeter, affectionate. I swallowed in silence, still staring at the ground. Something was coming, and I wasn’t going to like it.
“And so I come with an opportunity for you to prove all that you’ve learned, and to demonstrate your own talents. All that time spent with your books must amount to something, yes?”
There was a laughing edge to the way she referred to my books, not dissimilar, perhaps even worse than the derision dripping from her tongue when she described Mr. Wrinkles as just some creature.
“This is a chance,” Asmodeus continued, “to prove that you are worthy of my love.”
Ah. There it was. I had my suspicions that the offspring of the remaining Seven didn’t have it much better off, but growing up under Asmodeus’s thumb had shown me that demons expressed affection very differently from how humans did. Even my own siblings – none of whom I’d ever met – probably felt similarly. To demons, love was a four-letter word to be used sparingly, primarily as a bargaining chit, or a tool of emotional blackmail. Hugs and kisses were for show, or for sex.
I couldn’t say that I’d ever truly felt like Mother loved me. If anything, she loved the idea of me as I appeared in her aspirations and imagination, as the bare-chested warrior-sorcerer who would burn the sky and the soil with flames I would sing from my own throat. I had few, if any memories of being tucked into bed, of even sitting down to dinner with Mother, things I understood to be very normal activities for human parents and offspring.
Hey, not all the books I read are about conjuring tornados and dropping houses on witches. I like a little fiction here and there, too. And fine, human television can be very entertaining, too.
Asmodeus snapped her fingers impatiently, knocking me out of my thoughts, and I finally remembered where I was. “Quilliam. Are you listening? You have a job to do. One grand, final demonstration.” Her lips drew up into a smile that positively radiated sinister intent. “Your last chance.”
I blinked at her, my mouth dry. “My last chance?” I croaked.
8
“This isn’t good,” I told Pierce, loading up my plate with potatoes, then more potatoes. “This is completely fucked up.”
“Calm down,” he said, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow, like that was supposed to help. “I could barely understand you when you barreled in here panicking and blathering about some assignment from the prince. Slow the fuck down.”
I waved a fork in his face. “First of all, I wasn’t panicking. And second of all, I don’t blather.”
Pierce rolled his eyes, shook his head, then moved on to the asparagus spears. The aroma of cheese and browned breadcrumbs wafting up from my plate evoked a sense of comfort and warmth on most days, but even a heaping serving of au gratin wasn’t going to distract me from the gravity of Mother’s assignment.
No, it wasn’t an assignment, was it? That had sounded far more like an ultimatum. I looked around the banquet hall, at the dining table for thirty that only Pierce and I ever ate at. I gazed longingly at the buffet line kept fully refreshed and stocked all hours of the day by a small army of scurrying, mostly invisible servants. All of this, every meal served out of gigantic golden chafing dishes, everything prepared for me – even my own home? Gone in an instant, if I so much as failed or disappointed Mother.
“You’re not going to fail,” Pierce said reassuringly, as if he’d read my thoughts.
“I don’t think you’re understanding your place in all this, Pierce. If this doesn’t work out to her precise specifications, you’re out a home, too.”
His hand froze as he served himself another heaping spoonful of potatoes. “Nah. Come on. No way that’s gonna happen.” He chuckled nervously. “R-right?”
I set my plate
