Soulbound

32. Ashe

I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean why I was born?”

Nadia dips her bread in a bowl of curry, her white orbs avoiding my stare, and my blood begins to boil. She chooses now to ignore me?

I slap a palm on the table, rattling the platters and drawing the attention of the room. “Answer me!”

“Shaant ho jaen, chhotee juganoo. Control your temper in my house.”

Calm? I was sitting on the precipice of finally getting the answers I've sought for centuries and she was stalling. And after a point that she brought up, no less. How can she expect me to be calm with any of this!

“Tell me what you meant by that,” I seethe. “Why are witches after me? Why did demons attack me out in the open? What the hell do you know?”

“Ashe, love,” Catalina speaks up, though I detect the faintest hint of trepidation in her tone. Good, she should be scared. “You know how dramatic Nadia can be sometimes. She meant nothing by it.”

“Cat,” I growl, not even bothering to glance her way. “Shut up.”

I have known secrets all my life, but for Nadia—a demon who raised me as her own since I was a child and who has never kept anything from me before—to suddenly reveal that she was keeping perhaps the biggest secret of all? I expected as much from Catalina, but not from my own family! How many times have I asked her about my origins, about why I had to be kept hidden and why I was born with a soul ring? How many times did she lie when she said she did not know?

I can barely feel the pressure from Dani's hand as she tightens her grip on my own and my lips set into a frown. She has seen me angry before and the fire in my blood may not be glowing now, but if Nadia did not answer me soon then the barista would get a good look at just how furious I can really be. She will see then the monster that I've tried so hard to keep from her.

Nadia meets my glare with the calm collectiveness that only a demon could muster. “Finish your thali and then we will talk. I went through all this trouble to cook and I will not have my efforts wasted by your sour mood.”

My mood? I open my mouth to retort but Rose beats me to it.

“So what kind of demon are you?” All eyes turn to the blonde as she takes a bite of her food. “What?” she asks with a shrug. “Red's outburst is going nowhere and I'm genuinely curious. Apparently bird demons exist”—she quirks a brow in Dani's direction and I feel like a spectator to some inside joke—“so I was wondering if there were other types. It's a perfectly harmless question.”

“It seems that everyone brought an appetite for questions to my table and no appetite for food.” Nadia sighs. “And I really do not like that term.”

“What, demon?” Rose leans forward. “But that's what you are, isn't it? A demon? With, like, fire and brimstone and all that?”

“I am no elemental, if that is what you ask.”

“Jesus, Dani, what the fuck did you drag me into? A fantasy role playing session?” The blonde snorts as she turns back to Nadia. “So you're saying that you're, what, a lesser demon?”

“You say that word like it is a bad thing.” Lightning crackles in her hollow sockets as the demon threads her fingers together and fixates her stare on the two humans. “Demons, as your kind has come to know us by, are not as evil as your religious teachings lead you to believe. We have been around for much longer than you, longer even than your human concept of good and evil. You only call us demons because you do not understand what it is we are and you love to categorize that which is beyond your comprehension, as if that gives you some sort of power over it.”