Ikelos (The Ephemeral: Book 2)

Chapter 45

"Wait, wait, tell me again! What did you say to him, like, word for word?" Valerie demanded, her open smile growing wider and wider by the minute.  She looked like an inhabitant of Tartarus in the campfire's eerie glow.

My cheeks burned as I recounted my flirtations with Demon-Will. "Something about how pitiful it'd be to die without knowing a woman's touch."

She screeched and flopped backward on her tent pad, flailing around in the blankets.  "I can't believe you said that!"  She giggled between her fingers. "A certified coquette. I'm so proud."

I buried my face in my hands. "I didn't know what else to do. I just...tried to impersonate you, and it worked."

"Of course it worked!" she exclaimed, rolling on her side and perching her head on her hand. Brown eyes creased above a silly grin.  "A pretty warrior tempting a demon with her body? In that husky voice? I bet he lost his mind."

"I think he was just curious about the experience," I said, thinking back to what really snagged the creature's attention: underutilized sensations and morbid curiosity.

"Oh, I'm sure he wasn't the only one," Valerie teased, wiggling her eyebrows. "Will was probably quaking."

I threw her travel pillow at her face. "No."

She dodged the assault, tsking me. "You know it's true." 

I glanced aside, thinking of the dreadful prison kiss and Will's response to my apology.  He'd said he didn't blame me for what happened—that he was simply upset about putting me in that position. It should have made me feel better, but all I could think about was how he'd accepted blame for someone else's choices. Again.

Valerie's smile faltered at whatever she detected in my expression. "He's just conflicted right now, babe.  It's easier for him to focus on the battle ahead than your weird sexual tension."

I bristled. "It's not sexual."

She rolled her eyes.  "Romantic, then."

"Not even."

When she realized I wasn't joking, she stared at me for a couple heartbeats, completely thrown. "Wait, all that about Will not being your boyfriend...you weren't just saying that to save face? You really think what you have is platonic?"  

I raised my brow, shrugging slightly, but I wasn't able to meet her scalding gaze.

She loosed an incredulous puff of air. "Honey, you ventured into an evil king's palace to save that idiot. You brought him back from possession.  Now, he's so afraid of hurting you, he doesn't know if he should stay or leave or burrow into the dirt.  Does that not tell you anything about the way you feel towards one another?"

I didn't like where this conversation was headed, not at all. I could actually feel my walls rising around me, heavy and burdensome, but absolutely necessary.  Like a fork scraping against bone china—picking at something pure, something pristine—Valerie's words left me fraught and uneasy. They threatened one of the few control variables left in my life, a constant already unraveling at the seams.  And I couldn't afford to lose that patch of stable ground.  To redefine it.

"We're friends," I said quietly, but even as the word left my mouth, I knew how ridiculous it sounded.

I now understood what real friendship entailed.  Friends supported each other in times of need.  They teased you, and they challenged you.  But my connection with Will ran deeper than my network with Valerie and Nova and Rover.  The two of us were connected by an intricate, subcutaneous system, and that made us partners.  Two sides of the same broken weapon.