Quick note:

God Touched - again, not something I've touched on yet here. In Six's own words (from another story): "“I guess you could call it a game. A bloody one. The gods decided they could not fight each other, for fear of destroying the world. So instead they fight with us. Like dogs, or roosters, something to gamble on while they tear one another to shreds. They allowed themselves one fancy - a special rule to make the ‘game’ more interesting. Before a chosen child leaves the womb, their god leaves a mark upon them. With the mark comes a power. Only one, but it can be anything a god is imaginative enough to think up. That power is supposed to give each God Touched an edge in any altercation a god wishes them to have on their behalf. Other than that, we are essentially human. I knew a boy once, his god gave him the ability to not be noticed. Not invisibility as such, because he was always there, but if he so chose you could look straight through him and never even realise. It was like your gaze just slid right off him. Some would think such a thing not as useful as additional speed or strength, but being really fast did not help when he could just walk right up and shank you in the back.” 

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Dell was furious, of course. I knew he would be, and the thought of it terrified me, terrified the wolf. It felt like it took me far longer to calm down, to control the way my heart frantically flip-flopped in my chest, than it did the woman I had actually maimed. She had barely twitched, even as she walked me through stitching the worst of the gashes. My hands had quaked with vicious tremors the entire time. By the time our companion had returned, Six was perched on the couch again, hands neatly folded in her lap, with little more than a hastily applied bandage to show for our shared ordeal.

If I hadn’t been watching her like a hawk for even the smallest indication of pain, I would have missed the way she tensed slightly as he came through the door. I could feel the anger flicker to life in Dell in a way that was almost visceral. Strangely, it was not so much directed at me as it was at her.

Six gave the demon nothing, resorting to the queer blankness that both of them fell into occasionally, an unconscious sort of armour to shield true emotion. Sometimes the way they both reacted to things was so similar, almost mirrored. I could not help but think of the time that must have spanned between them, that shared experience brought such similar reactions.

It was as if the whole room held its breath for a moment. For one horrible, terrible moment I thought they might clash, and I honestly could not decide who would win. While the demon was the obvious choice, I had the feeling that the strange little God Touched would have given him a run for his money.

“Six”

Her gaze was incredibly flat and lifeless, even as she met Dell’s gaze. For a heartbeat, she let him hang.

“I have it under control.”

To listen to her speak, I believed it. She sounded in control, all the roughness her strange accent leant her having disappeared along with the bloody rags I’d meticulously cleaned her arm with. She was not quite back to the sing-song, soothing tone I was used to, but she was damned close to it.

Dell was so tightly coiled that his glamour had started to slip, a little more of the demon bleeding through his human guise with each passing second. Six sighed, watching the unsettling flicker of inky black that stuttered into and out of existence along his arms and neck. It was only when she rose to her feet that I could see the pain in the way she struggled a little more than usual, in the slowness and care she took to not lean on the bad arm. By the time she had put herself between the twitching nightmare creature and myself, Dell was sporting half-corporeal horns. She reached up with her uninjured hand, and touched Dell’s cheek.

“Dell. I have it under control.”

The demon wavered, and the juddering hold over his glamour wavered and disappeared as his eyes closed. He was all demon now, fearsomely tall and horned. Dell was a true spectacle to behold. There was a fairytale quality to him, like he had stepped out of a tale, some dark story to frighten children. Every part of him was bold, fantastically wrought in monotone greys and blacks. There was no doubt that he was a child of Hishin. Even without the horns he was imposing, tall and broad. But without the tenuous glamour that kept him human, he was something so much more. His chin tipped forward, and his long straight hair, so unfathomably black that it bled into the darkness of neck and arm, framed his face, ghostly pale, so that it almost looked as if he was a man, drowning with only his chin above water level.

“He isn’t Connie. You don’t know-”

“It’s fine, Dell.”

He looked so frustrated and lost then that it almost felt like an invasion being present in the room with them. It was as if their world had shrunk to just the two of them. Not for the first time since coming here, I could feel a connection between them that ran deep. Far deeper than anything I had a name for. It was not like the relationships I was used to, urgent and messy and full of raw emotion. What lay between the two of them was not some fling, some petty love affair. I hesitated to even label it as ‘love’ at all. I’d seen it, for a fleeting moment, when they had first brought me out into the light from that dark, dark place I had been imprisoned in. A twin blankness, a solid, unwavering front that had made me think of time more than anything else. Like they were two stones, side by side, weathering life itself.

I knew a little of how demon contracts functioned. The fact that Dell existed at all indicated that they had probably entered into a contract at some point - there were precious few else he could have been connected to. But even that did not quite explain it.

“I just need you to be safe. To get you home-”

“In one piece. I know,” She smiled, even as she interrupted him. “I’m working on it, I really am.”

Home. Home for them was across a vast sea, a land that my countryfolk had barely even known existed and had never been able to reach. Arbor, god of the oceans, had always seen to that. Ships were torn asunder upon his waves. He was a dark younger brother to the god of death himself, and a viciously fickle lord of his domain. The thought of them going, of leaving, twisted my stomach into knots of dread. It was something I tried not to think on; had tried to ignore in the time that had elapsed since I had come back to the light. In such a short time, they had come to mean so much. Like a final life line, thrown to me just when I thought I was lost for good. I did not deserve it. Part of me screamed for me to let go, to just give in and sink. But I wanted so desperately to stay with them.

Soon they would be gone. Then I would be left with nothing, except a disease in my blood and a great, violent beast that rested behind my eyes. I did not want to go back to the way things were, to the way I was before. I wanted to beg, to throw myself at their feet and plead with them to take me with them. But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. I kept my teeth tightly clenched on that thought, that compulsion.

I was far too dangerous to be permitted to stay. My actions, unthinking and misguided as they were, had proven that.