80

Alvis is glowering at Min, whose expression has chilled as far as you suspect they're capable of. You're not sure either of them would listen if you voiced your own opinion, so you turn to Meredith. "And which are you recommending?"

Meredith blinks, as though she hadn't expected to be asked for her opinion. "Either," she says, "so long as it works." She glances back over her shoulder, toward Pasema. "You must decide something, and commit yourselves to it, but I have no preferences beyond that. I'll leave you to discuss that with your allies. For the moment, I need to be going."

"What?" Alvis frowns. "Is this how it works? You allow us the faintest bits of information and then disappear again?"

"You know what you need to know to make your decision," Meredith says. She's still looking toward Pasema. "The portal will be tearing wider and wider. More of my people will be pulled through. Frightened, like the one from before. I want to be there to greet them. Speak to them, before their fear consumes them and they do things they'll regret."

Before you can respond, she vanishes. Alvis throws his hands into the air, and even Min looks faintly perturbed.

Next

By the time the sun has properly risen, the roads are again as crowded as they were on your way to Pasema, making further discussion of Meredith's revelations difficult. Alvis doesn't seem inclined toward conversation at all, muttering unusually terse responses whenever you're greeted by your fellow travelers. Without hesitation, Min picks up the slack, chattering eagerly and occasionally playing a verse or two on their instrument for interested passers-by.

"Elith will be crawling with demons before we even make it to Archa if you do that every time," Alvis grumbles after Min plays a particularly long segment of their song about you for a pair of traveling merchants.

"I thought you wanted the people reassured, and this is the way I know to do it," Min remarks, bending to stow their instrument again in its case. "I think we can all agree the world ought to have faith in you, regardless of other differences. I've no objection to you becoming genuine heroes, you understand, so long as you intend to do it properly."

Perhaps as a peace offering, Min appears to be selecting the sections of their song that are calculated to make you sound good, not to cast doubt on your story. And they do have a point—whether you intend on telling the truth or not, it never hurts to have a care for your reputation, though it's difficult with Cadafel weighing on your mind.

They do follow, of course, but your purposeful expressions and stern gaits seem to cow them, and they stop their diversions with the other travelers. The chatter you hear about yourselves on the road shifts from friendly to awed at your obvious determination. Several people you pass are pleased at your clear drive to meet your goals.

Min raises no objections once they notice that your strategy seems to be working well enough, and the tension leaves Alvis's shoulders for the first time since Pasema.

Next

You're not far from a town when night falls, but you decide to camp on the edge of a forest by the roadside rather than venturing to the inn. You're accustomed to sleeping in the wilderness to give yourselves more freedom to talk, but Alvis is still disinclined toward conversation.

"There's no point in talking about it further before we get back to Archa," he says when you prod at the subject of Cadafel and your future plans. "Particularly now that Letha's involved her princess. We can't very well make any decisions without her now."

He pulls out a book from his traveling bag to aid in ignoring you, so you wander over to join Min, who's absorbed in tuning their instrument on the other side of the campfire.

"Do you know what the strangest thing about Ithos is?" they murmur without looking up as you sit down next to them.

Min raises their head. "No. Not exactly."

"What is it, then?" you ask.

"It's not so much your violence toward demons," Min muses, "as the way you've cut yourselves off from them completely. There are demonic scholars listed beside human ones in Sienhan history books. Demonic ancestors in family portraits, often for multiple generations. But they're so impossibly foreign here, even though you're much closer to them. And then you segregate your magical institutions in the oddest ways…."

You don't immediately see what that last part has to do with demons, but something else has caught your attention. "Demonic ancestors? In human families? Is that…common?"

"Well, not when we've been shut on opposite sides of a portal for three hundred years," Min says. Your shock seems to surprise them in turn. "You're familiar with the concept, certainly. You've heard of a man named Damian Fairgrieve?"

"Him and no one else, aside from his family," you point out. You're certain you would have heard it mentioned if there were more demonic sorcerers running around.

"But you can't really have thought he was the only one?" Min examines your face for a moment. "Well, where were you imagining my power came from?"

Min smiles. "You needn't look so shocked," they say. "My demonic ancestry dates from four centuries ago. There's no trace of it left at all in our bloodline except the occasional magical quirk."

You shake your head to clear it, focusing on what you're relatively certain you know. "Demonic powers aren't passed down beyond the first generation, though. Verity doesn't have them. No one in her family did but Damian Fairgrieve."

"If they appeared in every descendant, I don't think you could have pretended they don't exist for this long," Min says, shrugging. "No, it's rather rare. My family thought the magic had died out of our line entirely before I was born, actually." They pause to scrutinize your face. "And they were pleased to be proved wrong, of course. It's not a brand of shame. Our mages would much prefer there were more of us left."

You've tried to learn as much as you can about demons since the prophecy returned, and the notion of them passing their powers down through bloodlines isn't entirely unfamiliar, as you think it through. Then a thought occurs to you, one that chills you to your core.

"The…sorts of magic that demons pass to their human descendants," you say slowly. "Does that include all non-elemental magic? Does that include…illusions?"

"It does, in our experience in Sienha," Min says with an easy nod. You're not sure they're giving this revelation the gravity it deserves. "I'd wondered if the idea had occurred to you before, actually."

Next

"You think I'm part-demon?" Your mouth has gone dry.

"A very small part, if it's any consolation," Min says. "Three hundred years, and all that."

"I was joking about everyone being a demon just now," you say faintly.

"It was actually very funny," Min says.

Alvis is staring at you from across the campfire, hand frozen in the middle of turning a page. "You were orphaned quite young, weren't you?" he asks. "So perhaps they never told you, or you can't remember. Or it's been centuries and they didn't know themselves. It…does sound possible, Jun. And it would explain a great number of magical incongruities."

"It's so odd to think of keeping it a secret, even from a child," Min muses. "There really is a portrait of the demon my mother's family descends from in our front hall, you know. That wasn't a rhetorical example."

You were, in fact, orphaned at a very young age, young enough that your connection to your family has always been tenuous. You know your parents' names, of course, and that they passed away in one of the winter fevers that sweeps periodically through the country. You're sure they weren't any kind of demonic overlords, but your personal recollections are hazy at best.