The Demon's Surrender

“Welcome to the—oh, it’s you,” said Sin, almost colliding with a broad chest and tipping her head back to see Nick.

“We thought we should make an appearance,” Nick drawled. “Since we’re meant to be allies.”

It was a jolt to look into his black eyes, after Merris’s. But there was no human struggling in there, Sin reminded herself. There was just this boy she’d known for years; there was just this demon, eternal and cold, and nothing else.

She didn’t know what that meant.

She did know that he was dressed all in black, for dancing, and whether he was boy or demon, he was the best partner she’d ever had.

Sin smiled at him. “Welcome to the Market.”

He looked down at her, dark lock of hair falling into his eyes, mouth curving. He looked like the perfect partner for tonight.

“Did you save me the first dance?”

Beyond Nick’s shoulder Sin saw Alan lingering at Carl’s stall, bright head bent over an array of bows and arrows. She waited for a second, but he didn’t seem aware of the weight of her attention, didn’t look up to catch her eye.

Alan presented a problem, but for the first time Sin had an idea how to solve it. Before the attack at school, it would not have occurred to her that Alan might appreciate a performance.

“Better than that,” she told Nick. “I saved you the last one.”

Sin took a time-out from dances and accepted a plastic cup of water from Chiara. Then she noticed the slice of fever fruit floating in it.

“You’re just basically a bad person,” Sin told her, and sipped.

Chiara gave her a serene smile, which changed into a slightly more wicked smile at a hovering tourist. Sin took a gulp of water, laced with a taste that raced down her throat burning sweet and strong.

She swallowed and said, “What does everyone think about Alan Ryves?”

“I never think about Alan Ryves,” said Chiara.

Matthias the piper, thin as his own instrument, came by and stole the cup right out of Sin’s hand. “Personally, I like him.”

The dancers en masse gave Matthias a very startled look.

Matthias gestured to his throat and said appreciatively, “Beautiful voice.”

“Do you care about anything but people’s voices?” Chiara asked.

“Yes,” said Matthias, considering. “But I can’t think of any-thing I care about half as much.”

Tonight’s theme for the dances, the ones intended to attract tourists who might then stay to pay for answers from demons, was fire: September had come in cold, and the tourists could huddle around the lines of flame and see dancers catapult through them, dance along them, juggle lit torches enchanted to draw scenes on the air. More Market people had come to watch than usual because of the beckoning warmth of the flames.

Nick was taking his own break from the dancing and sitting with Alan on a log by one of the banked-up fires. Alan was talking to Nick and laughing, his hands making shapes of shadows against the firelight.

“Tell you what I’d do,” Chiara concluded after a thoughtful pause. “I’d take them both. That might be fun.”

“They’re brothers,” said another dancer, Jonas. “That’s sick.”

“No, it’s okay because they’re not actually related,” Chiara argued.

“That’s a demon,” Matthias observed mildly. “Nothing about it is okay.”

Everyone fell silent at that reminder. Nobody wanted to think about demons these days, to admit that if demons were unspeakably corrupt, then they should not let Merris lead them. To think about what lay behind Nick’s eyes was admitting that they were all treading on black ice.

Everything had been so much simpler when Sin could just hate both brothers.

Except she had not been able to hate Nick for long, only from the time when she’d learned what he was until she’d met him again.

She’d always found it easy to hate Alan. But she couldn’t do that, either. Not anymore.

“We made a bargain with them,” Sin said. “The Market always keeps its bargains.”

She remembered Merris’s face, and how demons kept their bargains. That did not stop her from swinging to her feet, taking another drink of fever-touched water, and going over to the spot by the fire where Nick and Alan were sitting. Nick was stretched out like a portrait in charcoal, all black and white in lovely lines, and Alan animated and firelit in red and gold.

They looked up as she came toward them, identically wary.

“Time for our dance?” Nick asked.

“Yes,” said Sin. “And I wondered if Alan might like to sing for us.”

Alan stared. Sin widened her eyes at him, schooling her face into a picture of innocent inquiry.

“Are the dancers going to play nice?”

“If you are,” Sin said. “Maybe.”

She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t for things to be easy, after years of being at daggers drawn, as if all she’d needed to do was reach out once.

She reached out and Alan took her hand. She was startled by how that felt: Alan’s hand strong and gun-calloused, but holding hers rather carefully, as if he was worried he might hurt her.

It was ridiculous to be startled. She knew Alan was usually gentle. She’d been watching him play with children for years. And she’d seen Alan kill whoever got in his way, whenever he had to.

She’d just never really thought about the contrast of how he presented himself and who he actually was. Not until he’d stepped between two armies and taken her brother and a magician’s mark.

Sin looked away as he levered himself up from the log—surely he didn’t want her to see him struggling—but she didn’t let go of his hand when he was up. She led Alan to where the dancers were talking, Nick stalking in their footsteps like a jungle cat on bodyguard detail.

“Alan’s going to sing,” she announced.

“Cool,” said Chiara, who knew a cue when she heard one.

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” Matthias told Alan.

Alan slid his fingers easily out from between Sin’s, watch glinting in the firelight under the frayed edge of his shirt cuff. He hesitated briefly and then curled his fingers around one of the belt loops on his jeans, as if he felt he should do something with his hand.

“Didn’t you try to throw me to the magicians last time we met?” he asked Matthias.

“Sure,” Matthias replied, flashing his skull-like grin. “But I didn’t mean anything personal by it.”

“That’s all right then,” Alan said, sounding truly amused. He smiled by degrees, like a stage curtain being opened by someone who knew how to do it, making you wait just long enough.

Most of the dancers thawed enough to smile back, and Sin was startled to realize that she had been wrong all this time when she’d assumed Alan was winning over all the old guard of the Market just by being an enormous nerd. He had charm.

He’d just never bothered to use it on Sin.

“We have the exact right guitar for you,” Matthias said, trying to usher Alan away to the other pied pipers. “Don’t ask me how I know. I always know. I’ve been watching your hands.”

“I feel very reassured,” said Alan. “Also a little violated. There is that.”

More than a few dancers laughed as he limped past on his way to the pipers, and Sin was still lost in amazement that it was all so simple: that Alan could make them laugh like he was any guy.

She’d never had a problem charming other guys. There had to be a way to reach this one too. She had to be able to thank him somehow.

Sin was still thinking this over when the drums started a new rhythm and the tourists all took notice. Sin exchanged a glance with Nick, then reached out and took his hand. It felt different, Nick’s fingers strong enough to break her hand and nothing about his still face to make her think he wouldn’t.

The fires were crackling around them both, racing in thin glittering lines on all sides. Sin could see her dancers tumbling through fire, striking poses, getting into position. The audience was waiting. Nothing was moving but the flames, the hissing of the fires like a fraught whisper in the hush.

The drumming and piping rolled together into a soft, thrilling start. The guitar riff rippled out, startling and sweet.

Alan leaned forward, serious and intent. The firelight turned his eyelashes into gold and shadows behind his glasses.

He began to sing.

He had the kind of voice you had to dance to, something that moved honey-sweet and slow through Sin’s blood until his voice rose and flowed like a river, and she found she was already in motion, carried along with the sound. Nick’s hands grasped her waist and lifted her high into the sky, and Sin planted a foot against his chest and launched herself tumbling and hurtling through the air.

Nick caught her as she came back down. Usually the dances for the tourists were so much less thrilling than those for demons, pale shadows of the real dances, the ones that demanded skill.

She wasn’t bored now. Alan was singing a Goblin Market song turned into something new and strange by guitar strings and that voice.

“Sweet to mouth and low to sigh. Come buy, come buy.”

Sin was a bit above average height and all muscle. It was a luxury to have a partner strong enough that she didn’t have to worry about him doing lifts: a partner strong enough for anything. Nick picked her up and spun with her, and she curled her fingers around the tense swell of his arms. She knew the kind of tableau they made. She slanted a glance over at Alan to see if he was paying attention, but his head was bent over his guitar.

New lines of fire were lit and raced between them, bright lines of flame splitting the earth. Their shadows were cast dark and dramatic against the ground. Sin turned away from flames and partner, swaying into the shadows, Alan’s voice following her as she went.

“I have wandered through dark woods, I have been worse than lost.”

Sin was warm from dancing, but she shivered at the sound. She danced a few more steps to the strumming of guitar strings, then dived backward onto her hands, twisting through the air and making it look easy. She was scattering fever blossoms as she went, shreds of scarlet sliding through her hair and down her arms, crushed petals marking the places her bare feet touched.

Through fire and darkness the demon came and caught her. Sin slipped away from Nick once, twice, their shadows tangling though they did not touch. She fought in a stylized mock battle, neither of them using weapons, the audience making small noises as she dived low and Nick pinned her to the grass, muscles weighing her down effortlessly. Sin shimmied out of his grasp on her wrists, thrown up over her head, and leaped to her feet to flee.

Nick grabbed her before she did and threw her, though it must have looked to the audience as if she’d flown. Sin stretched out her arms, her dress billowing around her like shadows, her legs curled under her, tumbling through the air as if it was water. She landed on the stone pillar in the center of the hill, poised as if to take flight.

“I have tasted fever fruit. It was worth the cost.”

Sin stood outlined against the lights of London, feeling the rapt eyes of the audience on her, the eyes of all but one. She drew her hands up along her body to her head, and heard the ripple rising from the crowd as she began to undo the fever blossoms and ivy binding her hair.

Her dancers were moving slowly and gracefully around the pillar where she stood, arms curving over their heads and swaying. Nick just stood, watching her.

Sin cupped the red flower in her hand and then threw it. It arced through the air like a bright bird flying home, like a compass swinging to true north.

Alan caught it almost automatically, and then paused. For a moment he simply sat with one arm around his guitar, his face wiped clean with shock.

Then he ducked his head and looked up again. With sudden color staining his cheekbones vivid red, he met Sin’s eyes and smiled.