Dancing With the Devil

Chapter 26

I was worried about Jace.

He would have long talks with Violet, and I think they were making progress, although I couldn’t be too sure. They locked themselves away in their room and wouldn’t come out for hours on end. When one of them finally did emerge, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Jace usually had a defeated, anguished look on his face. He walked with his head down, shoulders hunched. Nothing like what demon royalty should hold himself. Violet usually cried. I comforted them both as best as I could, but I could only do so much. For the most part, I could dry Violet’s tears. Jace took some comfort from me, but I wasn’t who he really wanted. Needed.

Xavier was hell-bent on ignoring him, though. He never made contact with Jace’s pleading gaze. When they passed each other in the hall, Xavier would move as far away from him as possible. Being in the same room was out of the question. If they accidently brushed up against each other, my mate would cringe away, ignoring Jace’s expression as it crumpled from his reaction.

The way Xavier acted put a rift in our relationship too. I thought he was acting like a big baby. He wouldn’t even talk to him to try and fix things. We got into our fair share of fights, but thankfully they never surmounted to anything other than yelling, then one of us storming off to cool down, usually to see Dawn or Ignis. I had attempted the silent treatment once. It hadn’t lasted more than an hour before I gave into his gentle caresses and apologizing kisses.

We kept our arguments carefully secluded, far out of Willy’s hearing range. He was settling into the castle beautifully, and the last thing Xavier and I wanted was to disrupt that. He was always kind, thanking the servants and wondering if he could help them. They politely declined every time. After he realized that he wouldn’t be able to help them work, he made it his personal mission to entertain them. He would talk to the chefs for hours, asking about different spices and herbs. The food lovers were more than happy to babble on about their passion, going into great detail to describe what the plants looked like before they arrived in the kitchen, where they originated from, and their purpose for going into certain dishes. Willy became their official taste tester after no more than a week.

The maids and servants that cleaned also coddled our son. Not a single person could deny his big, blue eyes and shock of curly, blond hair. Even the security guards that had arms as wide a tree trunks stooped to Willy’s level, crouching on their heels and listening attentively to him. Willy inquired about everyone’s families, their jobs, and their personalities. He practically took on every single person as his mentor, learning cooking, guarding, cleaning, and, of course, ruling the demon race from his dad and grandfather.

Jonathon and Felicia seemed to be the only ones not having a problem with Jace after the incident. Jonathon, of course, had been beyond furious, and he had sentenced Jace to be punished as any other criminal. Normally, the penalty would have been death, but since he had killed his father, Jace received imprisonment and lashings for two days. Violet was allowed to see him because of the six hour time limit part of their bond, but he was otherwise left alone. I comforted Violet to the best of my ability, but nothing could stop her waterworks when she saw the thin, angry red lines crisscrossed along Jace’s back when his punishment was done.

Jace’s parents welcomed him with open arms. Felicia gave him an earful, but within a day the three were acting as normally around each other as they did before the incident. Within reason, at least. Maybe it was Felicia’s motherly instinct that made her forgive her son—that I could understand. If Willy had committed murder, I would still forgive him. For the life of me, though, I couldn’t understand why Jonathon put the past behind him so quickly. Xavier asked him the same question. I was impressed with his answer, causing me to forgive Jace shortly after Jonathon did.