I expected to find a greater demon of envy—or of avarice—when I drew close to the shouts. This part of the city was older, more tired in the way the rooves sagged, and it had probably only just escaped the fire.

While I found chaos, the creatures I beheld instead were definitely lesser demons. Looking like a dog with the dog removed, they were quadrupedal, pale gray, and sleek, with few enough identifiable features to be very unnerving. Save for immense jaws and rows of sharp teeth, however.

From a derelict building five of them ran, one clutching a bleeding arm in its mouth. Weaving to avoid the slow humans, I skidded to a halt in front of the lead demon. Rather than shrinking away from me, it turned its attention to me, and an itching buzzing scratched plaintively against my mind.

It thinks I’m a human.

And perhaps it’s best if others think the same right now.

Unfortunately, I’d pulled up close and the things were fast as they turned and dove at me, lead demon only a few footsteps ahead of the stragglers.

I punched it, right on the nose. Hard.

Bone crunched, and the demon bounced backward toward the others, which dodged with unnatural, fluid alacrity. I whipped around to knock the next two back with my tail, only to realize I didn’t have a tail right now.

Two heavy shapes thudded into me, teeth tearing through leather and digging into skin. Someone shouted, and I rolled with the pair just in time for the other two to pile onto me. Great, another outfit’s ruined and I look like a chump.

Limbs pinned, I realized I had essentially two options: get more limbs, or immolate. The chaff clinging to me weren’t a true threat, but if that fifth went for a human…

Through the growling, I heard another shout, and felt one of the demons biting me shudder. Of course, that only made it bite down harder.

Well, I was legally allowed to be a demon—as far as I understood. If someone else was trying to get these demons off me, I didn’t want to be the reason their death went from “probable” to “inevitable.” I reverted from my human form and pushed off the damp cobbles with my two free arms, tail whipping me around into a roll.

Two demons came with me, but the other two were flung free. I heard a curse, and saw a young man in vestments of Dhias staring at me with wide eyes, frozen mid-swing of his spear. Behind him, the street was empty—cleared out.

He started to say something, to raise his glowing spearpoint at me, when I sighted the fifth demon, leaping up from the side he’d just turned away from, wicked burns covering its side. There wasn’t time to shout; I tore and kicked the last two demons off me and sprinted for the other.

The young Church man looked at me like he was staring down death, but I ran past him, wind whipping at his robes. I caught the other demon by a foreleg and the throat and slammed it down into the cobbles hard enough to shatter them. Then again.

Before I could finish it off, the other demons all turned toward the man, his attention still on me as he raised the spear.

“Shoot them, not me!” I shouted.

He fired—at me of course. Holy magic burned into my shoulder… and it hurt a lot less than it ought to. No more than getting slashed by Seyari’s wind during training.

Again, I ran past him, and again I batted away demons. With him here, I can’t focus any of them—and I can’t use my magic either.

“Kill these and then we’ll talk!” I shouted, my back to his.

“Wha—”

I grabbed him, swinging him around and out of the way of another leap. He stumbled a little when I set him down, and I didn’t wait to hear whatever inane thing he was going to say. Finally, a clear shot!

Drawing on my magic, I leapt forward, fire extending my claws into dagger-sized blades. Two heads hit the ground before I fell under another pile of demons. Rolling and grabbing and tearing, I came up in a haze of burning blood and viscera just in time to catch another bolt of holy magic to the chest.

“Shoot them!”

“I missed!”

That… was not the response I expected to hear. Worse, we’d missed one demon in the chaos, and I only noticed it mid-leap, moments from colliding with the young man.

The demon never impacted. Twin spears of ice impaled it, rooting it to the side of a building like a grotesque sculpture. A third pierced its skull not a second later, killing it.

“’All ice mages ever do is form spears,’ huh? I suppose they’re not wrong.”

Immediately, I recognized the voice. Yevon Styon, hand held out in front of him, strode toward us from a cross-street one block away. His usual slouch returned as he got closer.

“H-high Priest Styon!” the young man stuttered, seemingly forgetting he was standing next to three times his mass of blood-soaked, furious demon.

“Yevon,” I said coolly.

“What?” The high priest held up his hands placatingly. “I came as fast as I could; I think I did pretty good all things considered. I’ve even given you two a little bit of privacy.” He gestured around us, and only then did I notice a fine wall of wind, and unusually thick frost riming windows.

“You Holiness, what about…”

“You can call her a demon, you know. She doesn’t mind.”

“Don’t speak for me!” I protested.

Yevon smiled faintly, eyes still lidded. “Do you want to mind?”

“Not really, I suppose,” I growled.

“Good.”

I hissed.

The young man looked between us rapidly.

Yevon chuckled darkly. “She’s far from harmless, but as I’ve observed her she’s proven time and again that she’s either the greatest wrath demon manipulator the world’s ever known, or she’s more reasonable than half the people I have to report to. Not like that’s a major accomplishment, but… well you get my point.”

“You… observed her? Are observing her?” The young man looked like he was about to give himself a neck cramp looking back and forth.

“I’m watching her, yes. She’s… different from other demons. Wants to play nice with humans.”

“I…” The young man settled his gaze on me, finally, and I returned his inquisitive look with a tooth-free smile. “I guess she did save me; I was… in over my head. But are we really going to just let her go? And if she’s a good demon, then why aren’t more people talking about her?”

“They will soon. I believe you’ve a ball to prepare for, Marchioness?”

“Marchioness!" the young man hissed, snapping his mouth shut after the single word.

“I do, yes.”

Yevon walked closer, then closer still, until he was right next to me. “You need a bath.”

“I fail to see how that’s important right now.”

“Me too.” He leaned up, meeting my gaze just enough that I could see the full irises of his pale blue eyes. “You don’t look like you’ve succumbed to your wrath.”

“Context, please.”

Yevon shrugged. “A report crossed my desk where I’m staying here in Linthel. Some big hullabaloo about some idiot who got himself killed because someone didn’t listen. I was simply worried about who that someone was, because I’d be very cross if they’d ignored my warnings.

“But… well, it’s a fine sort of line. The kind that’s blurred so much there’s not a whole lot of point even considering it a line. And I think that particular someone passed—if only just. They really should be more careful in the future, perhaps a bit more open.”

I glanced down at the young man. “Are you being cryptic for his sake?”

“No, for fun. Well, maybe a little bit of both.” He ruffled the young man’s head. “This is Kord, a promising young acolyte who’s going to make priest soon if his altruism doesn’t kill him. 

I finally took a good look at Kord. He looked a lot like Yevon’s opposite: short and somewhat rotund, he had a wide, honest face and bright eyes.

“Oh, and Marchioness?”

I sighed. “Yes, Yevon?” Using his first name again got me a glare from Kord, but I ignored it.

“Your sister sends her regards. Things may still work out well for her, but she appears willing to make matters…” He glanced clinically at the unblemished crimson skin of my chest through the holes in my shirt. “A bit more complicated.”

“I believe in her!” I beamed, trying to see if acting overly-cheerful would get under his skin.

Not so much as an eyebrow twitched. “Any idea what’s behind this? There was another lesser demon loose last week, out at a farm nearby.”

For a moment, I debated telling him, but I decided ultimately to use a half truth, fashioned as close to his infuriatingly casual cryptography as I could. “There are a couple of big bad demons with big bad plans, and I’d bet this is their doing by proxy. The runts here came out of that building if you want to look." I pointed at the derelict building.

“Don’t you want to come with, Marchioness?”

I shook my head. “I’m taking your words to heart, Yevon. I’m going to go take a bath first.”

Specifically, I thought, at King Carvalon’s castle. Though I’ll need to wash and change at the Company first.

“You might want to be a little less red, first. Your skin—not the blood.”

Donning my human guise, I found myself thankful for the outfit’s cloak covering all the damage. “Until next time.” I nodded, then turned to leave, walking past the pile of eviscerated demons.

Behind me, I heard Kord asking how a demon could hold a noble title as the unnatural frost melted from windows and the sounds of the city filtered back into being. Retrieving my pack from where I’d left it, I swung by the Gelles Company, cleaned up under a barrage of questions I didn’t really answer, and returned to the castle.

Soon enough, I was in my temporary chambers, thankful I’d not met Tina and been forced into some other whim of the king’s. I stripped, including my human guise, and entered the bathroom, marveling at the comfortably-cool smoothness of the polished stone underfoot.

Dulled claws clacked pleasantly as I turned to face the ostentatiously-large mirror. Looking back at me was a body I’d grown so familiar with, but so rarely seen. High cheekbones, stern lips, and demonic, faintly glowing eyes; I looked every bit the villain of a novel.

Black sclera and vertical pupils, wide in the bright midday light of the bathroom… funny how that’s just become normal. Likewise, my body was unreasonably sculpted, but also normal. I cocked my hips, swinging my tail to one side, and put two fists against one hip.

I ran my face through a variety of expressions, then tried a variety of poses. I tried demure, coquettish, and nonthreatening first. From parody to passable, I tried to match them to how I’d been posturing myself. Then, I did the same for looming, confident, and aggressive.

Often, I held my shoulders a little slumped. My tail was too relaxed, and the angle of my head and open expression really tilted toward the nonthreatening. I lifted my chin, narrowed my eyes slightly from too-open, straightened my posture, and shifted my shoulders.

The effect was impressive, even for a first attempt. Instead of looking unsure, overtly-affable, and relatively—very relatively—nonthreatening, I looked downright dangerous.

I’d made this posture before, often seemingly instinctually. But now I had a better focus, and I better idea of how. Just today, by being decisive and confident, I kept Kord from dying and kept him focused on the fight instead of my morality. Well, mostly, anyway.

But all this posturing was more than enough vanity for one day, and the coolness of the room was getting to be a bit much for my extremities. So, I took an oil that smelled pleasantly of lilacs and drew myself a bath as per Mary’s instructions.

Of course, I also made it as hot as I could, resulting in water that certainly wasn’t boiling, but steamed more aggressively than any “safe” bath. Once everything was set, I slipped in, facing the high window that looked out across a cloud-streaked winter sky.

I turned a little, resting on one hip and the side of my tail, my lower two arms guiding and moving as I shifted myself with the upper two. The bath was large, meant for at least two people, and while the contour of the tub was a little awkward for my feet, I curled my tail tip into a cozy spot before sliding down until my chin was barely out and my horns had hooked the back rim. There I stayed, switching hip occasionally, but otherwise luxuriating in the water, kept hot easily by my magic.

I missed Seyari; I wanted to share this with her. Even if her new wings could get in the way sometimes, she still liked me holding her, and my lower arms especially felt the emptiness.

On a much less sexual note, I would have loved to show Joisse the palace—perhaps the library as well. Draw her up her own bath in a room across from mine and Sey’s. I sank a little lower and blew bubbles in the water. I need this for my own castle. Or, at least a nice tub and a hand pump.

True relaxation… this was close. Close, but not quite. Envy’s war wasn’t yet here, but it was coming—if today’s attack was any indication. Lesser demons like that could potentially be a random occurrence, but I’d bet they were all or part envy, and the number and timing were just too coincidental. While the root cause was definitely my problem, this single incident could be handled by the city guard or Yevon.

I stayed in the tub until I was informed by a knock and a distant voice that dinner would arrive shortly. After a lavish meal spent in human form, I floated around my chambers until nightfall, when I retired early ahead of an equally early start tomorrow.

In bed, I stared out the open curtains at the moon. I didn’t feel tired in the slightest, just as I hadn’t particularly felt hungry. All the same, wandering around all night wasn’t really an option. I glanced at my pack where I’d placed the book I borrowed for Sey. She won’t mind as long as I don’t tell her the plot, right?

At the very least, this night without sleep or company might not be quite so boring.