Page 31 of Hell Burns Between Us

“Cheers.” He held his glass out to her in a toast, and held her gaze. “Perine.”

A wry grin graced her face as she clinked her glass to his. “I know this is leaping a bit, going from surnames and jumping straight to nicknames but… You can call me Peri, if you like.”

“I like Perine better.” He took another long drink of his cocktail. “It’s a… lovely name.”

She gave him an odd look. Then, suddenly wide-eyed, she gasped out a laugh. “The purification smoke! You’re being…” Her brows knit. “Honest?”

He sighed and looked pointedly away from her, willing the conversation to drop there. He could feel her scrutinising him, attempting to fit all of his pieces together. To understand him.

“When did you learn sign language?” Oleander asked, shifting the subject to something less focused on him and his too-honest musings.

She groaned dramatically. “Look, I’m… I’m going to come out of this looking a bit obsessive.” She exhaled a long breath. “When I realised Hemlock was Deaf, I just studied him whenever we were around each other. I made notes in a notebook about what I thought certain signs meant. He wouldn’t be the only Deaf being I’d ever meet, you know. I even wanted to take a class, but…” She huffed out a laugh. “That mortified my family, so here we are. I can now nervously sign a few words and most letters.”

Oleander hummed low, considering her words. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he asked, “Do you want to talk about what happened earlier?”

He let the question linger between them, trying to appear calm and collected, as though it didn’t matter whether she chose to confide in him.

Perine shrugged. “What’s there to talk about? I just said a lot of insane things.”

Oleander leaned into the arm of the chair, his head resting casually in his hand. “Whatever you said is how you really feel. But if you’ve been denying it for a long time, the truth had to fight its way out. Which… might have been rough on you.”

A blush bloomed across her cheeks, and she glanced away. After a long pause she asked, “I’m assuming the smoke has finfolk scales?” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Right? That’d encourage the self-reflection part. The overpowering smell? That’d be from laurelin bark. Or wait, would it actually be—”

“Perine.” He really liked saying her name. “I have no fucking clue.”

“Don’t you want to know what you’re putting in your body?” she asked, aghast.

“No. I only know how it works. The rest is—” He waved a hand carelessly. “—useless information.”

A tentative smile tugged at her lips. “I guess not everyone likes to debate potions.”

“We can’t all be Brennessel Croft.”

“No, we certainly cannot,” she agreed, and the smile she’d been fighting won out, an amused grin spreading across her face.

They sat in companionable silence. Thousands of demonkind gathered in the gardens far below, a harmony of soft cream clothing. From high up, lounging in their cushiony loveseats where it was quiet and they were alone, the ceremony felt meditative.

Last year, when he’d tried to join Wisteria and Hemlock here in the atrium, they had very pointedly kicked him out. So, feeling reckless, he’d convinced his friends to imbibe the purification smoke with him as an ill-advised joke. Amiran, his partner at the time, had been especially against the idea. This later made sense when he very swiftly broke up with Oleander, calling him “too arrogant and lazy” before rushing out of the room.

While Oleander later made peace with Amiran and they agreed to be friends; his other long-time friends had revealed wonderful truths such as, “They’d befriended him for the chance that they too would be included in his father’s inner circle.”

Oleander had been alone much more often after that.

His father, Asmodeus, was speaking to the other Grand Dukes off to the side. They rarely joined in on the revelry.

Breaking the silence, Perine asked, “How do you get so many fairies in one place? They’re basically non-sentient, fluffy balls of light, right? I thought there was no real way of controlling them.”

He glanced at her, smirking. “We ask them very politely.”

She rolled her eyes and went back to sipping her drink. “Doesn’t the Devil live here? In the Rune Circle? Have you ever met him?”

“If I’d known I’d be pelted with so many questions, I never would have—”

She interrupted him with a scoffing laugh. “Oh, come off it. I’m hardly known for being a quiet observer.”

He sighed into his drink. “In theory, he lives here, yes. But I’ve never seen him or heard anyone mention where he lives. It’s really only your Circle that takes him so seriously anymore.”

“You don’t read the Silver Book?” Her eyes searched his earnestly.