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Octavia’s earphones sat in the desk drawer of her room, which was in a palace that had been her father’s palace but was not this palace. This palace, this ballroom, belonged to her grandfather, who couldn’t be bothered to show up for the gala being held tonight in his honor. Despite this, Octavia, in her instinct to shut out the world, occasionally found her talons worming into her purse, groping for the wires that she knew weren’t there.
Instead her talons landed on her phone, which she tilted up so the screen would turn on while still in her bag. The time showed 2:15 a.m. and she tried not to let her beak clack in irritation. The last time she’d checked had been a mere ten minutes ago. The gala was set to end at 5 a.m.
Octavia sat across from her mother and next to her Uncle Andrealphus, and as she looked up from her purse she tried to check what they were doing. They’d been seated at their own table tonight — something that pissed off both Stella and Andrealphus but Octavia was glad not to have to talk to anyone. Still, sometimes other gala guests would come over to say hello while Octavia stared into space, and right now they were speaking to a buzzard and penguin who Octavia had never met before. When she was sure nobody was paying attention to her, Octavia opened up her phone and then tapped her Sinstagram app.
Octavia smiled. The app was still on her profile page, and she took the opportunity to check the picture she’d posted earlier in the evening — the first selfie she’d taken in months. As much as she hadn’t wanted to come to this gala, she liked how she looked tonight. Her headfeathers were held back by a small golden tiara crown and clipped on the left side of her head with a barrette of pink diamonds formed in the shape of a star. Her dress was black silk with an off the shoulder neckline from which hung a tiered tulle overlay decorated with large pink stars made of glitter that fell to the length of her elbows (there was a similar black tulle with a star pattern hanging from the drop waist, but you couldn’t see that in the picture). She’d also swapped out her regular pink choker for a black one with a pink star.
Fit check for Grandfather Paimon’s gala! read the caption.
Octavia scrolled down. She’d nuked the comments on her account months ago — partly because creeps started leaving nasty comments but mostly because she didn’t want to see her dad’s old comments (and he’d deleted his account shortly after the trial, anyway) — but she still wanted to check if she had any likes. In the past whenever she had to go to one of these things her dad would help her get ready, would fuss over her clothes and headfeathers and tell her how pretty she looked. (Octavia used to love it, but it became annoying and condescending as she grew older.) When she’d finished getting ready tonight, Octavia had hoped her mother would be impressed with how she looked, especially because she’d done it all herself — no dad, no imp servants — but Stella just said, “Oh good, you’re ready on time” and nothing more.
As Octavia scrolled down, she felt a cold elbow dig into her ribs. She looked up to see Andrealphus glaring down at her, whatever conversation he’d been having apparently done now.
“Put that away,” he hissed. “It’s rude.”
Octavia frowned, but let her phone fall back into her purse. As she slumped back in her chair, stroked the feathers on either side of her arms beneath the tulle, she wanted to ask what was the point when no one was talking to or paying attention to her, but she knew it would only risk her mother and uncle taking her phone away again. They only let her take this one back after she’d blocked her dad …
Maybe Octavia had missed a clock somewhere in this ballroom. She let her head turn fully around to survey it, even though she’d looked for a clock upwards of fifteen times since dessert had been served and couldn’t see any. Her family’s table, one of about twenty in the ballroom, was on the farthest side of King Paimon’s empty dais — something that reflected Stella and Andrealphus’ heightened status but didn’t put them at the center of anything. (It also gave them the shittiest view — if Paimon had been here they’d be staring at the back of his throne.) At the other end of the ballroom near the entrance, a lone imp worked an open bar and a string band of incubi and succubi played a cover of Verosika Mayday’s new hit song, but none of the gala guests were dancing to it, at most gave the band a few chirps or hoots of delight when they recognized the tune.
Ugh, Octavia was way too bored if she actually considered dancing.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Octavia said as she stood up, carrying her purse on the crook of her elbow as she did so. Maybe she could kill some time looking at her phone in one of the stalls for a while.
The two main bathrooms were in an alcove outside of the ballroom, each attended by an imp of the matching gender. (Between the two bathrooms there was a third single stall marked with the image of a male and female Goetia with an egg, which Octavia assumed could also be used by anyone else.)
“Do you require anything, Your Highness?” asked the female imp as she opened the door for Octavia.
“No, thank you,” Octavia said, although it was tempting to ask the imp to bar the door for the next half hour.
When she was inside Octavia walked past the sinks and the small fountain that served as a birdbath, chose the stall farthest from the door and locked it. It was nice to have some time alone, even if it was sitting uncomfortably on a toilet seat. She dug her phone out of her purse, re-opened the Sinstagram app so she could see her post again, then finally scrolled down to see her likes. When she did, she ground her beak.
moonlight_howling_666 and 47 others liked your post.
Octavia couldn’t believe it. Loona was still following her? Octavia hadn’t seen the hellhound since … well, since the last time she saw her father, she supposed. The memory of that day was still a little fuzzy — all anger and sorrow and the most cutting things she said to her dad occasionally breaking through the haze, stinging in her mind in an ugly mix of triumph and guilt — but she supposed Loona was there, supposed Loona had heard all of those things she said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Octavia touched her talon to Loona’s screenname. Loona was mostly a selfie girl, often showing off shots taken in front of a full-length mirror of whatever new outfit she’d picked up at Stylish Occult that week. Octavia smiled as she scrolled through pictures of Loona in sheer shirts with pentagram patterns or corset dresses decorated with bats. Loona’s style didn’t really match hers, but Octavia wondered if she would also like to buy one of the messenger bags Loona had paired with a cute gray distressed shirt and baby blue distressed jeans …
… and then she saw a picture of Loona with her dad. With her dad and him.
Octavia turned off her phone before she could even process what she’d seen, but her heart was still pounding. She took a deep breath, let it out in a distressed trill.
Then the door to the bathroom opened.
“— did we ever get a real explanation why King Paimon isn’t here tonight, Iris?”
“Mon Diable! Do we ever, Asteria, mon ami?”
“Well, there was that time he claimed a cult trapped him in the body of a teenage boy in Utah. I mean, I can’t imagine such a thing.”
“Quelle absurdite …”
Octavia slowly crept toward the bathroom stall door, looked out between the spot where the door met the frame and at the two Goetia women who were talking. She’d … met them before, she supposed, perhaps at one of her mother’s parties. They were both marchionesses or something like that. Asteria looked particularly familiar — a tall blue jay with shining black eyes one of which was half-hidden by a crest of headfeathers that popped up like a mohawk and then drooped down over her eye — and it was hard to forget Iris — a hummingbird with green and light brown feathers who was unusually short for a Goetia, about the size of a tall imp.
Iris leaped up so she was sitting on the sink counter next to the birdbath, kicking up her bare feet and only slightly ruffling her wide green and hot pink Rococo-style dress in the process. She adjusted her silver and magenta tiara on the bottom of her pouf of headfeathers while Asteria retreated into a bathroom stall closer to the door, already hiking up her much more understated gown — a floor-length blue linen dress with flared sleeves trimmed in black with a repeating symbol Octavia found somewhat familiar.
“I’m just saying I’m surprised they even showed up given King Paimon’s lack of appearance,” Asteria said, her voice echoing in the stall.
“Qui?” asked the hummingbird.
“Prince Stolas’ family.”
Octavia could feel her body go tense, had to prevent a squawk from escaping her throat.
Iris shrugged and continued talking even over the flush of the toilet. “Bon, though people come to these parties whatever they are going through, tu vois? We are sitting with Naberius, no? He just cheated on his wife Lenore again and they are both here.”
“You know that’s different,” Asteria said. She was out of the bathroom stall now, had flitted back to the birdbath to start washing her face and headfeathers. “You know that trial wasn’t the whole story.”
“Mais oui,” Iris said with a shrug, “but everyone knows about Prince Stolas fucking the imp. It’s been an open secret since the imp humiliated Stella at that party.”
“Oh, I can’t imagine! And now they say he’s living with the imp and his hellhound, like they’re a family,” Asteria said, the last word ugly with sarcasm.
Then the marchionesses were laughing, derisive guffaws interspersed with tweeting and chirping.
Octavia ground her beak. Shit, was there any way to get out of here?
“Bien entendu, it is a tragedy though, no?” Iris dipped a hand into the water, started preening herself along with Asteria. “For Stella, yes, it’s not so good. But you know who I really feel sorry for?”
“For Princess Octavia, right?” Asteria was done with her makeshift preening, ran her claws through her black crest. “Oh, I can’t imagine what that poor girl is going through. If that were my father I’d just be humiliated! I’d never show my face anywhere.”
Octavia clutched her purse tightly to her chest. Her hands dug into her arms beneath the tulle of her dress as her face grew hot beneath her feathers.
“Oui, oui,” Iris said. “I explain it to my husband Shax this way. It’s one thing for a man to cheat. Lots of men cheat. But cheat with a man? Cheat with an imp?”
Asteria outright gagged. “So revolting! Can you imagine putting one of those disgusting red dicks in you?”
Iris shuddered so hard her feathers puffed up. “C’est contre nature … you’d have to be a freak to want that.”
Asteria laughed so hard she chirped. “Do you think it’s thick? Or slimy? I can’t even imagine …”
Really? Octavia seethed. You seem to be imagining a lot…
“But now poor Octavia, everyone knows what cette petite fille’s father is all about,” Iris tweeted. “Now she has to carry that. She has to live with that. It’s not fair.”
“No, no. That’s what I always say,” Asteria puffed out her feathers and shook the rest of the water off of her. “Lenore tried to play Heaven’s Advocate with this.”
“Beurk!” Iris leaped off of the sink countertop. “‘Oh, he couldn’t help it? Some people just love who they love?’ Bullshit! It’s a choice.”
“I completely agree,” Asteria said. “You choose to love your spouse. You choose if you’re a man who wants to fuck men or not, and you choose to fuck imps.”
“Mas oui,” Iris said with a nod. “I think it’s a disease, really.”
“Of course it is …”
Octavia frowned. Wait, how is it both a choice and a disease?
“... anyone who would want to do that is probably unnatural since birth.”
“The Princess never had a chance, hein,” Iris let out a dramatic sigh as she and Asteria walked back toward the bathroom entrance. “It’s King Paimon’s fault, I suppose, for putting him and Stella together.”
“Well, of course. This is all a disgrace. It really would have been better if the princess had never been born. What kind of life is she going to live now? She’ll be screwed up forever …”
“Evidemment …”
The door mercifully slammed behind the marchionesses, although even after it was closed Octavia could hear the female imp outside asking those fucking bitches if they needed anything.
“Fucking bitches,” Octavia repeated as she stumbled out of the bathroom stall, the words feeling awkward and wrong on her tongue even as she kept trying to grip onto them and feel them because at this moment she wanted to take every nasty word she could think of and fling them out like spells, like hexes. “Fucking bitches, fucking assholes, fucking shitty fucking cunts …”
She’d never been this incandescently angry before. The rage seemed to vibrate through her hollow bones, left her body somehow feeling both hard to move and unsolid. When she made her way to the birdbath she couldn’t even focus on her own reflection, and after she splashed some water on her face (which took two tries to pick up the water for some reason) and made her way to the actual mirror it was still hard to see, hard to focus.
Octavia shut her eyes, dug the palms of her hands into her eyes as hard as she could, ordered herself not to cry. As she tried to calm down the memory of being young and in her dad’s arms, of him stroking her back as she cried, came to mind. She pushed it away. Then she pushed away every other ugly thought that tried to worm its way into her mind.
Why didn’t you leave that stall? Why didn’t you say something? Why are you getting so upset anyway when you know it’s all tru—
Octavia picked up her purse from off the ground. (When had she put it there, though?) Then she walked out of the bathroom on unsteady feet.
When Octavia left the bathroom she groaned. The marchionesses had made their way back to their table — which was actually close to Octavia’s own. As Asteria approached the table, Octavia saw a white gander dressed in a Lincoln green tunic and a matching bycocket hat with a large white plume pull out a seat so she could sit down. Iris, meanwhile, sat on the lap of a white stork wearing a goofy light blue landsknecht hat with white cuts and matching blue tunic and white sash that Octavia assumed must be her husband Shax. Or at least Octavia hoped so, given that he clacked his beak and smacked the hummingbird’s ass as she sat down. There was another Goetia at the table as well — a raven in a long black dress with a platinum tiara whose headfeathers fell along both sides of her head like a veil.
Octavia looked over to her family’s table, saw an imp pouring out glasses of wine for her mother and uncle. No, Octavia wasn’t ready to go back to her seat. She made her way to the bar, waited patiently on a stool at the end closest to the ballroom entrance until the imp working there noticed her and came over.
“Hi,” she said, mumbling the words low and deep under her breath. “I want alcohol. Will you give me alcohol?”
The imp smiled, all big yellow teeth that split the bottom of his face open like one of her dad’s old carnivorous plants. Except no, this imp didn’t look like a plant. This imp looked like … well, looked like him.
Well, not exactly like him. If she’d seen the two imps next to each other, she wouldn’t have thought they were twins or anything like that, even without the white scar tissue or that tattoo that looked like a heart if you were far enough away. (And wasn’t he actually a twin? Oh yes — but the twin was a sister.) Still, she could have believed this bartender was a long-lost cousin. He was about the same size, although more heavyset with thicker limbs and a bulging belly, and his horns didn’t curl back but out to the sides, ending in a corkscrew shape at the tips.
The imp reached below the bar and pulled out a small crystal ball. “Hand on the orb, little lady,” he said.
Octavia sighed. How was it that this imp even had the same twang in his voice? She put her right hand on the orb, not surprised at all when it turned a bright shade of red.
“Magic ball says you’re underage. No can do on the alcohol, kid.”
“I suppose not,” Octavia mumbled. She leaned her elbows against the bar, ran her talons through the front of her headfeathers and let out a low hiss.
The imp crept closer to her. “Hey, sorry. Rules are rules. Can I get ya anything else, sweetie?”
Octavia stared back at the imp. Why was he calling her “sweetie” and “kid” and “little lady” and things like that? Most imps who worked for the Goetia family were trained to be as emotionless and deferential as possible. This was … this was weird.
“I don’t know … Ugh. What’s … what’s the most fattening drink you have?”
The imp’s yellow eyes widened, then scrunched up as he thought. “Um … I think we’ve got a milkshake machine in the back.”
“Yeah, OK …” Octavia sighed. “I want a milkshake.”
“OK, I’ll get ya a—”
“I want—I want a really thick milkshake,” Octavia clarified. “Like — like concrete consistency milkshake. I want to struggle to get this thing through the straw.”
The imp blinked a few times. “Well, I think the machine can do that setting …”
“I want it in a mason jar. Like those really big ones.” Octavia held out her hands in an oval, showed the imp that she wanted something about as big as her head.
“OK, thick, big milkshake —”
“And I want it to have caramel sauce and sweets inside — the chocolate pieces and the marshmallows and the hundreds and thousands.”
The imp looked quickly around, then pulled out a paper and pen and started scribbling furiously. “What’s hundreds and thousands? Do ya mean sprinkles?”
“Yes, those.” Octavia kept talking, her speech growing faster and faster as she spit out the rest of her order. “I want chocolate fudge and I want chocolate syrup. I want a big spoonful of peanut butter right in the center. When I stick a straw in this I want to suck in pieces of brownie, but I want to rip my beak through a whole slice of double chocolate cake and a whole cup of whipped cream before I even hit something liquid! And I want cookie crumbs on the outside of the whole jar, not just the rim! Because I want to take a picture of this drink for my Sinstagram and I want people to think, ‘Sweet Lucifer, how would you even drink this? Where would you even start?’ And then I want it to break into a mess as soon as I touch it and pick up pieces of it off the tray before I even get to eat it …
“Because …” Octavia let out a long sigh. “Because that’s the kind of drink I need right now.”
The imp still scribbled furiously on his pad for a full minute, and when he was done his yellow eyes darted back and forth quickly across the page, like ping-pong balls.
“So, uh …” the imp finally said. “What flavor of ice cream is this thing?”
Octavia blinked a few times. “I didn’t say that?”
The imp shook his head. “Nope.”
“Oh … vanilla is fine. I don’t need anything extravagant.”
The imp made a weird choking sound, wrote a few extra words on his pad, then coughed into his hand. “OK, I’ll … I’ll be back in a bit. Got to see if we have an extra slice of double chocolate cake lying around …”
Octavia sighed as the imp scurried off. She wasn’t completely sure where that had come from. Was she even that hungry? Or was this just how she responded to overhearing two bitches talking about how she never should have been born?
A sick, hollow feeling took root in Octavia’s chest. She found herself reaching in her bag for her headphones again, and when she (of course) couldn’t find them, she checked the time on her clock. 2:35 a.m. Satan, hardly any time had passed …
Octavia let her elbows rest on the bar counter again. She tried to see what the string band was doing, then heard two more Goetia settling at the other end of the bar. She turned her head completely around on her neck to see who they were, and then when she did she immediately snapped it forward again, trying not to squawk.
Leraje and Shax — marquises of Hell and the husbands of those bitches — were behind her.
It was the emblem on the back of Leraje’s Lincoln green cape that made Octavia realize where she’d seen him before, the one with the giant bow and arrow. He used it as a watermark on all of his social media posts, and was fond of posting pictures from the big game hunting trips he would go on with his wife. Octavia actually remembered the most recent one — the one that had gotten the both of them in trouble. Leraje and Asteria had been sitting on a pile of five endangered hellbison corpses, holding their magic crossbows over their heads while two hellhound coyotes wearing leather and feather headdresses — presumably their guides — sat at the foot of the corpses looking bored.
Meanwhile, it was Shax’s sash that jogged Octavia’s memory of the stork. It was struck through with pins, some of which looked like genuine military honors but most of which seemed like bottle caps or stuff he’d picked up at restaurants or conventions. Octavia turned her head slightly and saw Shax reach over the bar counter. Shax grabbed the crystal ball and a lemon zester and slipped them in one of several pouches on his belt, so easily and thoughtlessly it seemed like a reflex.
When he did that, Octavia suddenly remembered when Shax had visited their palace and one of her mother’s necklaces had gone missing. Her dad had gone over to Shax’s palace and had gotten the necklace back quickly, but Stolas came back looking shellshocked, told Stella about how Shax’s palace — including the ballrooms and the hallways, everything but Iris’ room — was filled with boxes and boxes of stolen things and garbage and even nests. (“They’re not even trying to have children!” Stolas said.)
In retrospect, that seemed like one of the few times Octavia’s mother had ever genuinely laughed because of something Stolas had said … most of the time she laughed at him because she thought he said or did something stupid …
“Where’s that bloody imp?” Leraje asked after a minute, then scoffed. “I swear to Satan, the staff starts slacking off whenever King Paimon’s not around.”
“Maybe he found someone here to fuck,” Shax snickered. “Who do you think the next impfucker will be? Vassago, right?”
“Ugh, bite your tongue.”
Shax let out a laugh that turned into a beak clatter. “I can’t believe they sat us next to Stella and her brother.”
“I can’t stand that — that sissy,” Leraje said, saying the word like he was trying to keep back the worse one. “Too many of those freaks in the family if you ask me. At least Andrealphus isn’t our blood.”
“Hmm, well … I guess it’s in our family still with the princess.”
“What a waste of a precautionary heir. A girl needs a real man as a father, not whatever the fuck Stolas was.”
Shax let another one of his stupid clacking laughs. “Sometimes you need to prune a branch of the family tree … Hey, wasn’t Prince Stolas into plants? He would know …”
Octavia dug her talons into her arms. When Asteria and Iris had made her angry it had been a slow boil, but what Leraje said made her anger flare like a grease fire. She thought she smelled ozone in the air …
Why do you even care? She tried to tell herself. You don’t even want kids.
But that wasn’t the point. Octavia grabbed a few of the feathers on her arm, rolled them experimentally between her fingers, pulled on them a little bit and wondered how much it would hurt, really …
Not for them, Starfire … said a voice in her head
Octavia closed her eyes. What was she doing? That wasn’t her dad, she was just talking to herself …
The doors near the bar opened and Octavia heard the imp’s voice. When she wasn’t looking at the imp, he sounded even more like him.
“Hell-o Gentlemen, sorry to keep ya waiting. On a special mission. Almost complete. What are we drinking tonight?”
“Whiskey,” Leraje honked, clearly not charmed by the imp’s efforts to smooth things over. “And my wife wants a Merlot.”
“And my wife and I want two dry martinis, lots of olives,” Shax added, then whispered loud enough that everyone could still hear. “Last time we got to keep the jeweled skewers.”
Leraje snorted. When the imp went back to his work, Leraje started talking again. “Honestly, that banishment may be the best thing that ever happened to Stolas’ daughter. Now she won’t be poisoned by his influence anymore.”
“Probably too late. He brought that imp home all the time. I heard he even fucked it in his daughter’s room while she was there, liked it better that way …”
“That’s a fucking lie,” Octavia muttered under her breath. She gripped the feathers tighter.
Then Octavia felt a clawed hand on her arm and flinched. When she looked to the side she saw the imp staring back at her. She wanted to curl up and shrivel away under his gaze.
“Go back to your seat, Princess,” the imp whispered. “I’ll find ya later.”
Octavia reeled back in surprise, even though a warm feeling grew in her chest.
“Ahem!” Leraje yelled out. “I said I wanted whiskey! Where is my drink?”
“Coming right up, My Lord!” the imp said as he ran off.
As Octavia left the bar — her head turned as far away from the Marquises as possible — she marveled at how cheerful the imp sounded. Maybe he was just used to it, maybe he just knew how to hide it but … it had to suck to be spoken to that way, didn’t it?
When Octavia came back to the table, her mother and uncle were laughing about something — she took the bottle of wine being already half empty as an explanation.
“Octavia, where in the seven rings have you been?” Stella crowed, sounding a lot happier than Octavia could imagine anyone being right now. “We’d thought you’d fallen into the toilet.”
“Hmmm, if I had to guess, her phone probably ran out of battery,” Andrealphus said with a snicker.
Octavia let out an annoyed little trill, but otherwise just shrugged.
“Oh, what’s your problem now, anyway?” Stella asked, a slight slur to her words.
Octavia frowned. Her parents hadn’t started drinking heavily around her until the last few years, and even then she rarely saw them completely plastered. Yet she’d noticed how different they acted when the liquor began to take hold of them. Her dad would retreat into himself, become sullen and quiet when he wasn’t trying to put on a happy face for her. Her mother, however, became goofier and happier … and a lot meaner.
So maybe that’s why Octavia decided to be so blunt. “I’m bored and I want to go home.”
“Ugh, and what do you do that’s so interesting?” Stella scoffed. “Sorry I took you from another night of scrolling on your phone and listening to your dreadful music and had you actually make an appearance in society for once.”
Andrealphus laughed at that one, his beak still curled up in a smirk even as Octavia glared at him.
Fuck it, Octavia thought, and pressed forward anyway. “Well, why do we need to make an appearance when Grandfather can’t even be bothered to show up?”
The careless, pleased expression that had been on her mother’s face melted and warped. She was scowling at Octavia now, her red eyes taking on a brighter glow.
“Because we have a right to be here,” Stella said.
Octavia noticed that when her mother said “we,” her eyes briefly switched from looking at Octavia to looking at Andrealphus. Then Octavia remembered what Leraje had said, and how he had put her mother and uncle outside of the family. Did King Paimon do that, too? Was that what they feared? Was that why Octavia was here? To legitimize their place?
Before she could think of the greater implications of that, she heard chattering and squawking from the other side of the ballroom. The noises were coming closer, forming into discernible words.
“Oooh!”
“That looks good …”
“¿Qué es eso? ¡Damelo!”
Then Octavia saw it. The bartender imp carried the milkshake on a giant tray above his head, using his horns for extra balance. It was everything Octavia had asked for — cookie coating, whipped cream, even the cake slice — along with a lollipop and a cherry for extra garnish. The imp smiled as his yellow eyes met Octavia’s, and he scurried a little faster to her seat. Octavia saw her mother’s beak drop open in shock when the imp heaved and placed the milkshake in front of her.
“All right, Princess. Here ya go,” he said. “One concrete-thick, chocolate syrup, chocolate fudge, peanut, brownie, sprinkles (hope ya like rainbow!), cookie coating, whipped cream, double chocolate cake milkshake. In vanilla, of course. Do ya like it?”
“Does she like it?” Uncle Andrealphus sputtered. He was looking at the drink in shock, his head turning almost fully to right and fully to the left before he craned his neck over the top. “I mean, Sweet Lucifer, how would you even drink this? Where would you even start?”
“What the fuck is that?” Stella asked.
“The best thing that’s happened to me tonight,” Octavia said. She took her first right talon and scraped the side of the giant mason jar. The cookie coating gathered on her talon in a giant sugar clump, and she had to wrap her tongue around it twice to get it all off. It tasted like sugar stabbed directly into her brain.
“Ya like it?” The bartender imp asked.
“I love it!” Octavia said.
“Ya gonna snap that Sinstagram pic ya told me about?”
Octavia laughed and took out her phone. “Oh, you bet!” She decided on a quick snap with her face in the shot, and was surprised when she took a glance at the photo and saw her pupils showed as star-shaped. Octavia posted the shot to Sinstagram immediately.
“Look at this milkshake the bartender at King Paimon’s gala made for me! Livin’ my best life!” Read the caption. Then Octavia added the hashtags: “#yummy #foodporn #foodisbetterthansex #aceslovecakes #especiallyonmilkshakes #noboysinmyyardplease”
Octavia showed the bartender her post and he laughed.
“Well, enjoy,” he said, starting to walk away.
A happy hoot escaped Octavia’s beak as she picked up the spoon on the tray. As expected, a big surge of milkshake and whipped cream spilled out the other side, but Octavia didn’t care. She licked up what was on her spoon and tried to catch the overflow next.
As she did, Octavia heard some snickering behind her. They were talking about her, again. She turned her head fully around, saw Leraje whispering something to Asteria and Asteria laughing in response. When she whipped her head forward again, Octavia could still hear bits and pieces of what they were saying.
“… so strange …”
“… still a child … something a child would do …”
“… saw the way she talked to that imp, non?”
“… his influence, surely …”
Yeah, well, get fucked, thought Octavia. I’m eating this milkshake and I don’t give a shit about what you think. She broke off a piece of the cake with her spoon and brought it to her mouth.
Then Stella stood up from her chair. “Imp, come back here!”
The bartender hadn’t gone very far, was able to trot quickly back to the table at the sound of her voice. “Is there anything I can do for ya, Your Highness?”
Stella waved her black talons at the milkshake. “Take this shit away.”
Octavia couldn’t keep her shocked squawk back. “What? Why?”
“Yes, Stella, why?”
To Octavia’s surprise it was Uncle Andrealphus who said it, and was giving her mother a suspicious glare as he did so.
The bartender imp let out a laugh. “Ya know, Your Highness. I get it. It’s a lot. She’s a kid. She’s a princess. Gotta keep up that good figure.” He reached into the apron pocket he wore around his waist and pulled out a few extra spoons. “Why don’t I just give ya these and she can share the milkshake with the table?”
“Sounds fine to me,” Uncle Andrealphus said. His spindly, white-gloved claws already reached out and pulled a corner off the cake slice.
“Hey!” Octavia protested as he popped the cake in his mouth. She only looked away for a moment.
With a giant swoop, Stella grabbed onto the milkshake and threw it on the floor. The mason jar exploded, cracking down the center. The milkshake bubbled up from the cracks like a pus, leaked out onto the floor.
Her mother picked up a corner of the tablecloth and wiped the cookie crumbs off her hands. “Get that cleaned up, imp! And never talk back to me again!”
Octavia watched the bartender imp as he crouched to the floor and picked up the bigger remnants of the mason jar, his red claws already becoming coated in the white ice cream. The toothy, happy-to-please smile was gone from his face — that was to be expected. But what disturbed Octavia was what was left behind. She thought the bartender would be angry. If something like this had happened to him, Octavia was sure he would be angry. But instead, the bartender’s face took on the same blank, deferential expression of all the imps back home.
“I’ll be back with a mop, Your Highness,” the bartender said as he walked away, his voice flat and even. When he spoke this way, he didn’t sound much like him at all.
Octavia felt a cold blast along her right side. It made her shiver at first, but it seemed like something inside her crackled out, pushed against it.
But Andrealphus was still focused on her mother. “Sticks and carrots, Stella.”
Stella glared back at him. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ugh,” Andrealphus rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to give you some parenting advice, for once.”
“Well, you’re not a parent! So you can shove those sticks and those carrots straight up your ass!”
Andrealphus waved a hand at her mother — ice creeping up the tablecloth as he did so — then sat back in his chair, his arms crossed.
That crackling magic still flared in Octavia’s chest. “That imp worked hard on that,” she said to her mother. “He worked hard on that for me.”
Stella scoffed. “Who cares? He gets paid the same whether or not you get your stupid ice cream.”
“And he made it because you ordered it,” Andrealphus said, his arms still crossed in on himself. “It’s not as if he made it for you out of the goodness of his heart.”
An angry trill vibrated in the back of Octavia’s throat. “You didn’t need to treat him like dirt for it! Why couldn’t you have just let me have it? Wh-Why do you always have to break things?”
“You’re really crying over a milkshake?” Stella sneered. “Stop making a spectacle of yourself. You looked ridiculous with that thing. Why don’t you drink alcohol like a normal person? Do you want people to talk about you?”
Octavia laughed, shaking her head. “Really, Mother?”
“What are you suggesting? Say what you mean or I’ll—”
“Stella! Andrealphus! How long has it been?”
Octavia scowled as the newcomer — a tall crane with a black face, red eyes and red headfeathers slicked back into a pompadour — approached their table, looking too fucking happy for Octavia’s taste. He wore a navy blue suit with red trim, coupled with a matching cape with a high collar that came up around his ears that was held together with a silver chain with a charm in the center in the shape of a three-headed dog.
“Oh. Hi, Naberius,” Andrealphus said without any enthusiasm.
That cheating guy from the other table? Octavia thought as Stella held out her hand to Naberius and giggled as the tip of his long beak kissed it. What’s going on here?
Octavia turned her head fully around to look back at the other table. Oh, they were absolutely paying attention. She could see the way Shax whispered into Iris’ ear as the hummingbird giggled, the smug grins on Leraje and Asteria’s faces as they watched Naberius and her mother.
But then there was Lenore. Octavia could see her better now. While everyone else at the table was looking over at Naberius and her mother as if it were a show, Lenore stared down at the table, looking as if her red eyes were ready to cry at any moment.
Looking humiliated …
“I just heard the commotion and had to make sure everything was all right,” Naberius said. He had an ugly voice, raspy like one of those sinners who always had a cigarette dangling from their mouth, but somehow he still forced it into the tones of someone looking to woo another person.
Her mother chortled. “Oh, it’s nothing. A little family drama. Sometimes you just have to let your children know how things stand.”
Octavia tried to choke back a hiss. Although she was trying to choke back more than that, really. It was like her feelings were a physical force she was trying to suppress. The world was becoming unfocused again. Static crackled in the space between her headfeathers.
“Well,” Naberius hummed. “I’ve been wanting to check in on you and your family for some time, Stella. I know things must be so hard. The divorce … the trial …”
Her mother laughed. “Oh yes, it’s been devastating. But we’ve all been holding it together as a family without my shitty ex-husband, and that’s what’s important.”
“That’s wonderful.” Naberius leaned down and rested his hand on her mother’s shoulder. “I just want you to know that Lenore and I have the utmost sympathy for both of you. What your ex-husband did to you was horrible …”
“Oooh yes. Very horrible …” Her mother smiled as she said it.
“... but I’m sure time will ease the heartache and the shame.” Naberius turned his head toward Octavia. “And I’m sure you feel the brunt of it, my dear, don’t you? You’re his greatest victim, aren’t you? Nobody should ever have to go through what he put you through. It makes me so upset, the irreparable damage he’s done to you …”
Octavia just glared back at him. She dug her talons into her dress, tried to concentrate on something other than the pounding of her heart and her growing rage …
Somehow she heard Uncle Andrealphus sigh and reach for the bottle of wine on the table. “So, Naberius, have you ever heard the story about the hellhound who went to a hospital in Sloth and ended up laying an egg?”
“People certainly have creative imaginations,” Naberius said, giving Andrealphus a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “But you’ve always been a soft touch for ridiculous stories, Andrealphus.”
Andrealphus’s beak curled up and he poured himself a glass of wine. When he didn’t say anything further, Naberius seemed to get bored and turned back to Stella.
“If you need anything, Stella, anything at all … please let me know. Everyone wants to be there for you in any way we can.”
“Oh, you’re so sweet,” Stella said. “It’s nice to be appreciated for a change.”
Octavia kept her eyes, kept her glare on Naberius as he left the table. He didn’t spare a glance toward Octavia as he walked by, and as her head turned on her shoulders to follow him, she could see the others at the table laughing as he approached.
“Stella, please tell me you’re not going to fuck him,” Andrealphus moaned. “If I have to endure months of looking at that geek’s face in my palace …”
“Ugh!” Stella rolled her eyes. “Since when do you care? And since when was it your palace?”
“Actually, it’s supposed to be my palace.”
Octavia said those words, but they felt thick and cottony in her mouth. When she stood up from her chair, she found it hard to keep her balance, swore it took her an extra try to grip the back of the chair and pull it out.
“And where are you going now?” her mother spat.
Octavia looked at the floor where the milkshake was still seeping into the carpet. The bartender still hadn’t come back. He was at the far end of the ballroom, in what looked like a surprisingly animated conversation with Prince Vassago. Then Octavia looked back at the other table, saw Naberius’ smug little smirk as he sat next to his miserable wife.
“Octavia,” Stella warned. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re thinking but …”
“All I’m thinking,” Octavia said, not looking back at her mother, “is that Dad would have let me have that fucking milkshake.”
Her mother laughed, started saying something like of course he would and that only proved how much he’d spoiled her, but Octavia was already marching toward the other table, was already ignoring how her mother’s complaints were becoming more like panicked, furious shrieks.
It would be nice if this moment felt triumphant, Octavia thought. She wanted it to be empowering, to be a release, but that’s not what it felt like at all. Throughout the night — throughout the entire divorce — Octavia had dealt with the pain through retreat, through burying herself in music, in memories, in food. Even social media had been a retreat, been a way to push away the parts of her life that made her miserable, to offer up glimmers of happiness to the seven rings of Hell and hope that someone out there gave her praise for it, assured her that her existence wasn’t the inevitable waste that she suspected it to be. But all those avenues of retreat had been denied to her, and for any cornered animal there was only one way out …
Shax had been the one to notice Octavia first, reeled back in shock as she approached. His wife Iris saw her next, muttered a surprised, “La princesse?” With that, Leraje and Asteria glared back at her. Lenore shot her a quick glance and then just as quickly looked away, her feathers fluffing up as she tried to tuck her head away into her chest feathers. Meanwhile her husband Naberius gave Octavia that same smug smile he gave Stella.
“Ah, Princess Octavia,” he said, “to what do we owe the—”
“Shut up,” Octavia interrupted. “I’m going to tell you all this now so you’re not surprised when I inherit my father’s legions. Do not talk to my family ever again. Do not approach me ever again. And keep our names out of your mouths.”
Iris’ green feathers puffed up in anger. “Je vous demande pardon! I don’t think I have ever heard such rudeness from a child!”
“Oh? Excusez-moi?” Octavia spat back, knowing she was mispronouncing it. “How’s this then? Please kindly keep our names out your fucking mouths! And that includes my dad, you shitheads!”
Asteria gasped. Leraje leaped from his seat, a crossbow of green magic popping into existence in his webbed hands, but Naberius stood up and held out a hand in his direction, urging him to stop.
“Princess Octavia,” Naberius said, keeping his hand up even as his red eyes were locked on Octavia’s. “I see you are obviously quite distressed. If you perhaps just calmly explain—”
Octavia felt talons dig into her arm, looked beside her to see her mother pulling her away.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Stella yelled at her. “Get back to your seat!”
Octavia just ripped her arm away. “They’ve been talking about me all night,” she said. “I was there in the bathroom. I was there at the bar. Your friends, Lord Naberius, have been saying I should be humiliated because of my father, have been saying I’m a freak, have been saying I never should have been —”
“No, no, no!” Iris insisted. “You are taking this all wrong, princesse. We are just concerned for you. We feel sorry for you.”
“Oh, really?” Octavia’s eyes bounced back between Iris and Asteria. “Well, going on about how horrible it would be to fuck imp cock is a funny way of showing it!”
“Octavia!” Stella screamed. “That’s enough!”
“I would listen to your mother,” Asteria sneered, high-pitched cheeps echoing beneath her words. “You sound too defensive of your father, and I don’t think you realize just how selfish he was.”
“And you all know him so well, do you?” Octavia pointed a talon at Shax. “I heard you fucking lying about him.”
Shax’s white feathers puffed up and he raised his broad beak into the air. “I’ve never lied about anything!”
“You said he and … and his boyfriend would fuck in the same room as me. That isn’t true!”
Shax just shrugged. “Well, it felt like it could be true, so I believe it is true.”
“That still makes it not. Fucking. True!” Octavia felt something burst inside her as she said it, could feel her power crackling out of her skin and feathers.
Stella reeled back soon after it happened. “Andrealphus! Help me with this.”
Andrealphus looked up from the wine he was drinking, turned his head back over his shoulder without getting up from his chair. “Oh, I’m sorry? I thought I wasn’t giving any parenting advice anymore …”
Stella let out an angry squawk and started stamping back toward her brother. “You pompous, arrogant piece of shit …”
“Princess Octavia,” Naberius said as Octavia’s mother and uncle got caught up in their own fighting. He walked closer to Octavia, laid a hand on her shoulder. “We see you’re upset, and we’re obviously all sorry that you feel that way …”
Octavia pushed his hand away, watched the purple spark that trailed from her talons as she did so. “That’s not an apology!”
“Well, I’m not sorry,” Leraje honked. “Your father was a revolting, perverted shame on the Goetia family, and I have every right to say so!”
“Oh you have a right, do you?” Octavia screeched. “You know, just because you have a dick doesn’t mean you have to be one!”
Leraje hissed back at her, his mouth so wide open Octavia could see the serrated edges of his bill and his tongue. “I will wrench your fucking neck off your shoulders, you little bi—”
Asteria stood up, pressed a long-clawed hand against Leraje’s green tunic. “Oh, she’s not worth it, dear. She’s just a neglected, spoiled child who doesn’t know any better. If she had a real parent who sacrificed everything for her the way we do for our children, who acted in the way a real parent should —”
A metallic ring interrupted Asteria’s speech. She lifted a cell phone that had been resting on the table and groaned. “It’s the fucking imp nanny.” Asteria raised the phone to her ear. “Hello? What do you mean the baby is still awake? I told you to give him the Belphegor’s fever reducer and put him back in the crib! Do you know how hard it’s been for Leraje and I to have some time out for a change?”
Asteria walked away from the table, still on the phone. Octavia shook her head.
“Looks like there’s more than one hypocrite at this table …”
Lenore seemed to realize what Octavia was really saying, and an angry caw issued from her throat. “How dare you …”
Leraje honked again. “You insolent brat! Naberius, stand aside!”
“No, no …” the crane insisted, his gravelly voice slightly more tense than before. “Princess Octavia, if I may, I think if we lower the temperature and don’t fall back on these base insults a compromise can still be reached.”
“You’re the ones who started with the ‘base insults,’” Octavia said, curling the first two talons on each of her hands like quotation marks. “I’m not interested in a compromise. I’m interested in all of you fucking off.”
“Princesse, you were the one who eavesdropped on us,” Iris said, shrugging her shoulders. “If what we said upsets you, it upsets you, but we’re entitled to our opinions of your father’s behavior and, franchement, its effects on you as well.”
Octavia laughed, although her laughter sounded strange to her — like it was deeper or something. “Oh, your opinions? I see. Nice to know my life is some cute little intellectual enterprise for you. Just a nice little debate, huh? Would you care for my opinions on everything you’ve all done? Do you want my hot takes on your poaching and your stealing and your cheating?”
Naberius was angry now, his red eyes starting to glow and his beak finally dropping its insipid smile. When he spoke again, his ugly voice was now supplemented by high-pitched squawks and another sound that sounded like a hellhound’s growl. “Princess, I’d ask you not to say such things in front of my wife …”
“Why? You had no qualms about flirting with my mother in front of me!”
“You misunderstand my intent—”
“You’re judging my father and you’re no fucking better than him!”
“I’ve hurt my wife — I’ve hurt my wife many times but I apologized! We all make mistakes, Princess, but despite them and unlike your father, I’ve made the commitment to stay loyal to my marriage, to my family …”
Octavia just kept laughing, couldn’t really stop it even though she knew it was pissing Naberius off. The world was becoming fuzzy again, harder to focus. Her laughter seemed to be taking on a strange echo. “You’re so fucking full of shit … At least Dad loved the guy he was fucking.”
Lenore let out more angry caws, but didn’t say anything further. Naberius looked back at his wife, but she pointedly looked away from him, her shoulders shaking like she was trying to keep back sobs.
“I really am sorry for you, Octavia,” Iris tweeted. “You may be princesse but you won’t get very far sympathizing with traitors and imps.”
“And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” The echo in Octavia’s laughter had spread to her voice now. She wondered for a moment if anyone else could hear it, but then the noise of her mother and uncle fighting in the background had suddenly stopped, so she supposed they could. “You pretend what you’re saying is sympathy, is concern, but it’s not. It’s all rules. It’s all prejudices. It’s all pushing down whoever steps out of line and doesn’t know their place so long as you wring your hands and say it’s such a shame. It’s such a shame that we have to remind Princess Octavia of what her father did. It’s such a shame she was ever born.”
There was a coldness in Naberius’ red eyes. He stepped forward, plastered that simpering smile back on his beak. “Well, Princess? Don’t you think that’s true? Everyone knows you were only born because of those so-called rules, those so-called prejudices. Don’t you owe your very existence to them? Shouldn’t you be grateful for those rules? Don’t you think your parents would have been happier if they didn’t need to give birth to you?”
Something inside Octavia’s chest trembled. She’d been so focused on the fight but now she realized how quiet the ballroom had become, how many people were staring at all of them. Octavia looked back at where Stella stood with Andrealphus, searched her mother’s face for some sort of assurance, for some sort of … some sort of …
Stella just glared back at her. Octavia couldn’t quite hear her mother, but she watched her beak move, her mouth forming Octavia’s name. Another entreaty to stop, another warning.
The trembling feeling in Octavia’s chest snapped. She turned back to the table, felt herself floating into the air as black brimstone smoke wafted from her body. Purple magic flowed through her — she was vaguely aware of her headfeathers coming undone and her star barrette clattering to the floor. When she spoke, Octavia’s voice echoed through the ballroom.
“You all say I never should have been born?”
The transformation Octavia had unknowingly been holding back for the last hour or so ripped free in a burst of black feathers. Her floating body grew back toward the ground and she stood on all fours — a giant bird of black and purple magic. Octavia reared back onto her legs, spread out her new wings, and screamed loud enough to shatter every window in the ballroom:
“Then I’ll make you wish I never WERE!”
Lenore was the first one to scream and run as Octavia landed forward on her hands and lunged at the table, shattering it into splinters. Naberius jumped in front of his wife, lifted his hand and shot a blast of red magic in her direction. Octavia screeched and flapped her wings, blowing the magic up to the ceiling — creating a shower of plaster that made more Goetia in the hall start running away. Then Octavia dipped her beak below Naberius’ stomach, flipping him away.
A rainbow of light barrelled into Octavia’s chest. Octavia looked in front of her to see Iris floating in the air, translucent green and brown wings of magic beating so fast behind her that they looked like a solid object. Iris yelled again and thrust her wrists together in two fists, spreading them out and shooting another rainbow blast toward Octavia.
“Recule, espèce de bête immonde!” yelled the hummingbird.
Octavia screeched as the second blast hit her, sliding her back a few feet. Fuck you for having powers that look like that, Octavia thought as she opened her beak, shot her own blast shield toward Iris and knocked her into the floor.
Iris landed a few feet from her husband Shax, who was picking up whatever unbroken glassware or silverware he could find as he tried to run away from the fray.
“Where’s your purse?” the stork asked, holding the crap he had picked up out to her.
“Imbécile!” yelled Iris. Despite her much shorter stature, Shax allowed himself to be pulled away from the fray by his wife, although he still swiped a cell phone as they passed an adjacent, now-emptied table.
Octavia took a moment to look for her mother. Stella and Andrealphus were huddled together near the back of the room, surrounded by a fort of ice. Stella was curled beneath Andrealphus’ right arm, hiding her face, but Andrealphus had his left arm out. He glared at Octavia before lifting up a scutum shield of ice emblazoned with his sigil.
They’re just hiding from me? Octavia thought.
Then she took an arrow to the knee.
More green and blue arrows shot into her back, her shoulders, her arms. Octavia screeched but also braced herself, tried to move despite the pain. Then she felt a pull on the arrow on her back, reared back as Leraje used his arrow to leap up her back and wrap his arms around her neck.
Leraje hissed in her ear. “I’ve taken down bigger game than you, girl.”
Octavia tried to scratch at his arms, but the pain in her shoulder was making it hard to move, hard to focus. Asteria stepped in front of her, nocked another magic blue arrow on a magic bow in her hands and aimed it at Octavia’s head. Octavia thrashed about, trying to throw off Leraje and make herself a more difficult target to hit.
The gander only gripped onto her neck harder. “I wish you were a human,” Leraje taunted, his laughter interspersed with honks. “I’d love to see my wounds erupt into pustules and gangrene all over your body … to make you look as rotten and disgusting on the outside as you are inside. Maybe I should try it on your father next? Or his hideous imp? Would you like that, you nasty little cunt?”
A blue arrow sailed an inch over Octavia’s head. Octavia threw herself back on the floor, crushing Leraje beneath her. Asteria leaped onto Octavia’s chest, brandishing her bow over her head like a club. Octavia gritted her beak through the pain, caught Asteria in mid-air and hurled her like a screeching, angry baseball through one of the broken windows.
Leraje was still beneath her, though. Octavia flipped onto her hands and feet and took the gander in her beak. She then shook Leraje as hard as she could, whipping him back and forth like a dog with a chew toy, feeling satisfied when he screamed. She found the nearest intact table and slammed him through it again and again. Leraje let out a scared honk when he hit the wood the first time, but it petered out as the gander lost consciousness.
Octavia backed away when she finished her attack, tried not to panic even as the arrows inside her continued to sting and burn. Then something huge and black slammed into her side, knocked her to the floor.
The thing that hit her was a giant hellhound doberman pinscher with three heads. Naberius’ transformation wasn’t like hers — where she was mostly magic he was flesh and bone, the only thing betraying his Goetic heritage being his sheer size and the red fog of magic around his form. Naberius lunged at her, pinned her by her still-stinging shoulders with his giant paws. Octavia reached between his front legs, tried to push back on his giant neck as the three heads lunged at her, baring their white teeth.
“Can’t you see what a mess you made, Octavia?” asked the middle head. Naberius still sounded like himself, albeit with the dog’s growl in his voice far more prominent.
“How dare you make accusations toward me!” the right head growled. “How dare you humiliate my wife!”
“You’re such a pathetic joke!” the left head barked. “Just a whiny emo teen who thinks her problems are so fucking important …”
Octavia screeched from the strain. She tried to kick up her feet, slash the underside of Naberius’ belly, but her talons kept slicing through the air.
“This could all stop if you admit your fault,” the middle head insisted. “Just apologize and we’ll forget this ever happened …”
“Your father is a pervert!” the right head said. “I could spill my seed in every bitch in Hell and I’d still be more of a man than him!”
“I’ve already accepted that I’m a mistake!” the left head said, his jaws coming down close to Octavia’s beak in an extra snap. “What makes you so fucking special?”
For a moment the middle head seemed shocked — like he realized he’d revealed too much — but when the moment ended all three of the heads roared at Octavia with giant open mouths, their tongues coming so close she could feel spittle hitting her face.
“¡Basta!”
A volley of star-shaped magic pelted Naberius’ three heads. The left head turned to the side, looking for the source, and found Vassago riding on his star next to them.
“Naberius, you should be ashamed of yourself! You should all be ashamed of yourselves!”
“Fuck off, maricon,” growled the right head, sarcasm dripping from his words like his drool.
The distraction was enough. Octavia hoisted herself up, broke from Naberius’ grip. It gave her enough concentration to shoot out a purple magic blast out of her beak and knock Naberius off of her.
Vassago was already marching toward Naberius as he shrunk back into his crane form. Octavia stood on her feet and stretched out her wings, screamed as her wounds weeped anew.
Then, just when the agony felt like too much, a surge of power coursed through her. Octavia’s body grew, pushing the arrows out and closing up the wounds. The growth came fast, so fast the top of her head hit the ballroom’s chandelier, which exploded into a storm of crystals.
Several Goetia had already fled the ballroom since Octavia’s attack, but the second round of growth and the destruction of the chandelier made even more of them panic. A few of them ran by her feet, startling Octavia so much she tried to take to the air, Naberius and Vassago now forgotten. She flew to the other side of the ballroom near the exit and immediately crashed into the wall, falling to the floor on her back.
It was Octavia’s turn to panic now. What if I’m stuck like this? she thought. What if I can’t change back? She struggled to right herself, felt her tail flip over another table as she got back on all fours. Then she barrelled her head into the hallway, trying to force herself through it, but ended up getting stuck and impotently kicking back her feet behind her.
Octavia let out an angry cry, rattling the walls of the hallway around her head and neck. And yet despite her fear a quiet, sardonic voice in her head still thought, Ugh, I must look pretty stupid right now.
Then it happened all at once. Octavia’s body suddenly contracted, imploding in another flurry of feathers until she was back to her normal height and size. She tumbled head over talons through the detransformation, landing on her back and then scrambling wildly to move, unsure of the length of her limbs anymore. When she tried to get back on her feet, she tripped over her dress, then belly-crawled down the hallway in a desperate attempt to flee.
Adrenaline had been coursing through her, propelling her through the panic, but after a few minutes the fear began to burn away and the enormity of everything that happened knocked the wind out of her. Octavia curled up on the hallway floor, her knees pulled against her chest and her tail wrapped around the front of her, like she was trying to scrunch herself back into her egg. She started gasping for breath, couldn’t get enough air.
Two pairs of footsteps — one made up of long strides and the other of short clacking trots — came racing toward her. Octavia looked up, her vision blurry, to see the figures of a tall Goetia and a short imp looming over her. Another breath caught in her throat until the figures knelt down to her. Vassago took her face in his hands while the bartender imp crouched by her side, his long claws stroking her headfeathers.
“¿Octavia, que paso?” Vassago asked. “Are you okay, chiquita?”
Octavia just let out a pained whimper. She let Vassago pull her to a seated position, let the imp push a bottle of water into her hands.
“Lo siento, I was watching most of that. I should have intervened a lot earlier, but I didn’t want to undercut you. I spoke to —” Vassago looked at the imp. “Disculpa, what did you say your name was again?”
“It’s Fritzl,” the imp said. “I go by Fritz for short.”
Octavia let out a loud groan. What the fuck? She thought. Are the stars just fucking with me now?
“Sí, Fritz. Fritz told me about what Leraje and Shax said. And what happened with the milkshake. Was that your first transformation?”
Octavia nodded.
“Todo va bien,” Vassago said, putting a hand on her right shoulder. “It can be very disorienting the first time, especially if it happens when you’re emotional. Just try to calm down. Bebe tu agua. Breathe. Sabes?”
Octavia nodded again. With shaky hands she tried to open the bottle of water, felt her grip slip off the cap. Fritz took back the water bottle and opened it, giving it back to her. When she started to drink from the bottle, Fritz started stroking the feathers along her shoulder. Without thinking Octavia opened her free hand to Fritz instead, let the imp put his hand in it.
“A-Am I …” Octavia coughed. “I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I?”
The sides of Vassago’s beak curled up in a smile and he shrugged. “Tal vez. That’s up to King Paimon, I guess. You’re not the first Goetia to trash a ballroom after a party. That may have been me, yo creo.”
Octavia choked out a laugh, felt tears streaming down the feathers on her cheeks. Fritz squeezed her hand and smiled at her. She started to feel relaxed, to feel calm, for the first time all night …
Then she heard two voices coming down the hall.
“Well, it’s a good thing we held the line on that fucking milkshake!”
“Shut the fuck up, Andrealphus!”
Octavia’s mother and uncle turned the corner of the hallway, were still arguing too much to notice any of them. Octavia noticed Stella had Octavia’s purse on her arm.
“That was the Rubicron, wasn’t it, Stella? The whole of Hell would have come apart but thank Satan you put your foot down on that fucking milkshake!”
“I said shut the fuck up!” Stella stamped her foot at Andrealphus, then turned around and noticed Octavia. “You!”
Stella gripped her hand around Octavia’s upper arm and yanked hard enough to hurt, pulling her to her feet and out of Fritz’s grasp.
“How could you fucking embarrass me like that?” Her face was an inch from Octavia’s when she yelled. “Do you realize what you’ve done to your reputation? To our reputation? If King Paimon asks me to pay for your mess, I’m taking it out of your money. Until then you’re going to stay in your fucking room for a month and if I ever hear you complain —“
“¿Qué carajo, Stella?” Vassago was on his feet, his red eyes blazing beneath his yellow visor. “You’re blaming her for all this?”
Stella’s headfeathers puffed up as she glared back at Vassago. “Excuse me?”
“You let six people attack your daughter, one of whom threatened her life multiple times. And you expect her to what? To apologize?”
The white puff of Andrealphus’ fur collar rose and fell as he shrugged. “Well, it was more like five people. Lenore didn’t really say anything.”
“Lelo,” Vassago said with a roll of his eyes, then turned back to Stella. “Tell me you would have just sat there and smiled if anyone talked about you like that …”
Stella sputtered. “S-So I should be fine with my daughter turning into a monster?”
Octavia flinched. She noticed Fritz caught it, surreptitiously pet her back even though his face had taken on that obedient, thousand-yard stare in Stella’s presence.
“Otra vez, Leraje threatened to wrench her neck off her shoulders,” Vassago said. “And then he and Asteria actually shot her. Naberius might have also taken a bite out of her if I didn’t intervene.”
Stella blinked a few times, her long lashes fluttering. Her beak dropped open. “What? No! That didn’t happen.”
“It did,” Octavia said, a tremble in her voice as she remembered the feeling of the arrows piercing through her. “You and Uncle Andrealphus were hiding at the time.”
“N-No! That can’t —” Stella glared at Octavia, then Vassago, then back to Octavia again, her head whipping back and forth. “Well, you started it!”
“She really didn’t,” Vassago insisted. “Fritz here heard a lot of the conversation that Leraje and Shax had where they were spreading rumors, and another imp confirmed that Asteria and Iris had been talking about Octavia in the bathroom …”
“I-I. W-Well …” Stella squared up her shoulders and crossed her arms. When she spoke again she stamped her foot. “No!”
Everyone stared at her.
“¿Neta?” Vassago asked. “You’re just saying ‘No?’”
“Maybe try that one again,” Andrealphus suggested.
“Ni lo intentes. It doesn’t matter at this point.” Vassago took another step toward Stella, pointed a finger at her as he spoke. “Stella, I know you’re angry at Stolas but you can’t let the rest of Goetian society step all over Octavia because you’re mad at him. Octavia también es su hija. ¡Debería defenderla!”
“I don’t understand what the fuck you’re saying and I don’t have to listen to it, anyway.” Stella yanked on Octavia’s hand and pulled her to her side, then threw Octavia’s purse at her chest. “Take your fucking bag and let’s go.”
Octavia didn’t struggle as Stella pulled her down the hall this time, but she did turn back to look at Vassago and Fritz. The imp looked regretful as she left. Vassago, however … he was glaring at her mother’s back, and for some reason that felt like a promise.
That glare in their direction kept up even as Shax and Iris walked by. Vassago didn’t turn to look at either of them, but held out his hand to Shax before he could pass.
“¡Oye!” he said. “My cell phone. ¡Damelo!”
Shax clacked his beak, but reached into Iris’ purse and pulled it out.
~*~*~
The ride back to the palace (Andrealphus’ palace? Her mother’s palace? Her palace?) was quiet. Occasionally Andrealphus or Stella would make a snide remark to each other about what they would do about the ballroom or who they were going to call tomorrow, but for the most part everyone seemed sick of the whole endeavor. Octavia tried to concentrate on everything outside her window — on the trees or the skyline of Imp City in the distance — but the events of the night kept bubbling up to the surface of her mind. More than once she gripped her talons into her knee to try to stop herself from trembling.
They arrived back at the palace. Echo — the Siberian husky hellhound that Andrealphus had recently hired to be their driver — escorted them up to the palace but then quickly drove away for the night. As soon as they were in, Andrealphus headed toward his bedchamber without saying a word. Stella also made her way back to her room. Octavia’s room was in the same direction so she had to follow. She really did try to hold it all in just a little bit longer, to keep it back for those extra fifteen minutes until she could lock the door and plug in her earphones and …
The sobs came suddenly and loudly, strong enough to make her whole body shake. Octavia covered her face with her hands, stumbled and landed on her knees, which only made her cry harder.
She could hear her mother stop and turn back to her, and then a loud sigh.
“What’s wrong now?” Stella asked.
Octavia looked up at Stella, her beak open and barely able to see anything through her tears. “I was shot!” she screamed. And it was a scream — something desperate and panicked and demanding help. Despite the severity of what had happened, Octavia couldn’t help but feel like she was five years old again and upset over having tripped and fallen down.
“Oh … that,” Stella looked Octavia up and down. “Well, you seem physically fine. Do you just need a hug or something?”
Octavia squeezed her eyes closed, choked back another sob. If Stella had come over and hugged her — like the way she did after Octavia saw her dad kneel on the executioner’s block in Satan’s courtroom — then Octavia probably would have accepted it even now, but …
“Mother …” Octavia stood on her feet, wiped the tears out of her eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Stella just looked back at Octavia, her beak twisted in a scowl.
Octavia tried again. “Why do you care more about their opinions than you care about me?”
Stella huffed. “Octavia, what would you have wanted me to say?”
Octavia felt her beak tremble. There was a part of her that just wanted to end this conversation, to tell her mother to forget it and climb back into bed, but …
“I wanted you to tell them it isn’t true,” Octavia said, her voice quiet and tremulous. “I wanted you to tell them I was worth it. I wanted …”
The tears were coming again, were choking her words in her throat and making her feel like she needed to force them out.
“... I wanted you to tell them I’m not a mistake!”
For a moment, it seemed like something had reached her mother. Stella turned her head to the side, placed her hand over her beak. Octavia had never seen her mother’s eyes like this — so wide, yet so … scared? She squeezed her eyes closed, looked ready to cry …
… and then the moment was over. When Stella opened her eyes again, they were glowing with anger.
“Octavia,” Stella said, her voice low and even, “grow up.”
It was a bit like being shot again. Octavia was so stunned she couldn’t even cry, just let her mouth open in a small gasp.
“A word of motherly advice,” Stella flipped her headfeathers back with her hand, “nobody in the real world coddles you. Nobody holds your hand. You do what you need to just like me, just like Andrealphus, just like every one of those miserable fucks you’re crying over for some stupid reason. We all do what we need to because at the end of the day, your stupid little feelings don’t matter and the sooner you learn that, the fucking better.
“Now go to your room, I already told you that you’re grounded …”
The conversation was over. Octavia watched her mother turn away and walk down the hall. It occurred to Octavia for a moment that she could have tried to rebel, could have tried to run back out of the palace or to sit down in the hallway and refuse to move, but … she didn’t have that fight in her anymore. She didn’t necessarily think everything her mother said was true, wanted to point to how much Andrealphus had done for her even now … but Octavia knew that on some level Stella believed it was true, and that it still hurt her.
Octavia made her way back to her room. It all felt so unfair, so fucked up. Throughout her dad’s affair, Octavia had always felt sympathy for her mother. It was the right thing to do — Stella was the one who was cheated on, Stella was the one who was wronged. This knowledge kept Octavia going through Stella’s rages and rants about her dad. And maybe on some level Octavia felt like she deserved to hear all those shitty things. After all, she’d always been closer to her dad, and maybe in Stella’s eyes that still made her an accomplice …
Octavia loved her mother. She really did. She probably always would, in the same way she could never quite shake her love for her dad despite her anger at him. And Octavia hoped Stella loved her, hoped there was something real in that last hug, hoped that there was still some affection beneath the rage.
But even if there were, Octavia knew with a cold certainty that her mother would never, ever help her. No matter how understanding Octavia tried to be, no matter how good or bad she was, her mother would never put her first, would never extend that sympathy back to her.
She was truly on her own, and this point probably always would be.
~*~*~
First, Octavia tried to let herself cry again. She curled up on the top of her blanket — still wearing her dress for the evening — and sobbed into her folded arms. But most of the tears had come in the hallway, in the conversation with her mother, and after a few minutes all she could really feel was her exhaustion and the dry itchiness in her eyes.
So then Octavia climbed out of bed and fished her long-missed headphones out of the desk drawer. At first she tried to listen to her loudest music, something that could somehow drown out all her thoughts and scream the emotions out of her. (“Just a whiny emo teen who thinks her problems are so fucking important …” said the voice in her head.) Unfortunately, no matter how much she tried her brain kept returning to the anger and betrayal of the night, couldn’t concentrate on the music no matter how high she turned up the volume. Octavia tried her quiet music next, hoping that one of her favorite band’s ballads could soothe her to sleep, but whenever she felt her mind quiet it startled awake with dreams of arrows piercing her flesh, of teeth trying to snap at her, of growing too large and being unable to escape …
With a groan, she closed the music app on her phone. She probably could have opened VoxTube and watched videos of that elderly baphomet who taxidermized rare hellbeasts, but she was exhausted and stupid so she opened Sinstagram.
Octavia sighed. Of course the first thing she would see when she opened it would be her own stupid milkshake post. She hated that milkshake, she hated her starry-eyed smiling face, she hated scrolling down and seeing …
“Three million likes?” Octavia’s beak dropped open. She’d had the occasional post go viral before, but usually then her numbers were still somewhere in the low thousands. How in Hell had she gotten three million likes?
Octavia opened her notifications and immediately saw why. She clicked on the profile of the person who tagged her in a post — Queen_Bee.Official — and saw a copy of her post in Queen Beelzebub's Story, all blinged out in a honey-toned filter, silver glitter and cartoons of dancing bees.
“Look at all this yumminess I found in the #foodporn tag!!!” read Beelzebub’s Story post. “Hope you don’t mind me accepting this as a tribute @gothck17 lol!!!!”
Octavia sighed. It felt like a dispatch from a parallel universe.
She looked at the likes on Beelzebub’s post. It had even more than her own, somewhere in the realm of 10 million likes, but moonlight_howling_666 was the first name to come up. Then she went back to her own post, saw Loona’s screenname was the first there, too.
Octavia didn’t want to do it. The very idea was like a painful itch in her brain … but it was also one she knew she was going to scratch, no matter how much it bled afterward. Octavia clicked her talon to Loona’s screenname, scrolled down again past all of the selfies and pretty clothes … and found the post with her father.
It was still a selfie, in a way. Loona was in the foreground, her glowing red eyes and smiling snout taking up most of the bottom right of the picture. She was sitting at a table in a café, Stolas and … (oh, just say his fucking name already) … and Blitzø sitting with her in the background, a cup of tea and a mug of coffee in front of them, a cheese board with sides of bread, honey, sriracha, mouse skewers, and a liver pate from a dog food can in the center of the table.
It seemed as if Loona took the picture without alerting either of them first. Octavia tried to read something in her father’s face but he just seemed surprised to be on camera, his red eyes wide and his beak small and tight. Blitzø, on the other hand … looked happy.
Octavia hadn’t spent too much time with Blitzø, and the times that she did hadn’t left a great impression. To be honest, mostly she remembered Blitzø and her dad’s embarrassing, argumentative flirting at Loo Loo Land, although Octavia had to admit every interaction she had with Blitzø after that had been better. He’d actually been mostly nice when she went to the I.M.P. office to find her dad. Still, to see Blitzø with such a content and happy smile, directed right at her dad …
How much time had Octavia spent wandering the halls of the palace these days, looking at the portraits of her family, looking for a similar type of smile on her mother’s face?
Octavia scrolled down a little more, felt her chest go tight when she read Loona’s caption.
“Hangin’ out with the ‘rents at The Paradise Lost Café! Got somethin’ for everyone on the cheese board!”
Octavia touched the word “‘rents” with her thumb, let it highlight in yellow. She tried to tell herself that was a really casual way to say it, wasn’t it? It could almost be a joke, couldn’t it? Fresh tears sprung to her eyes as she tried not to let her mind catastrophize and spiral …
(He’s already replaced me. What if he wants to adopt her, too? What if she already has a special name for him like “Papa”?)
Octavia sniffled and tried to dry her tears. The hand holding her phone flexed open and the phone started to slide into her lap. As she instinctively caught it, something terrible happened.
She accidentally liked the post.
“Shit!” Octavia fumbled the phone, leaped after it on her bed and picked it up again. She could probably just unlike the post before anyone saw it …
“moonlight_howling_666 has sent you a direct message!” read the notification that just popped up on her phone.
Octavia groaned. She suddenly remembered how one of the first things her dad ever told her about Loona was that she was on her phone almost constantly. Octavia supposed she could have left the message unread. Or she could delete it. Or she could block Loona and delete the app and never think about any of this again.
But Octavia also knew that if she did that she’d be wondering what was in that message forever. She tapped on the little envelope icon in the app and started reading.
moonlight_howling_666: Hey, it’s good to see you on my timeline again. How’ve you been?
Octavia sighed. That was a pretty generic and non-confrontational way to open a conversation, wasn’t it? It was probably on purpose, like laying out breadcrumbs for a … well, for a different kind of bird than Octavia was, because owls weren’t the type of bird to peck after breadcrumbs. Owls bided their time, owls swooped in and struck when the time was right. Owls …
Oh, fuck it.
gothchk17: OK, I guess. How about you?
There! Noncommittal, nonconfrontational. It was perfect.
moonlight_howling_666: Ugh. Exhausted. We pulled an all-nighter on our last hit and now we’re all just waiting for the office hours to start again because nobody can sleep.
moonlight_howling_666: Well, except for Millie but she passes out all the time now. Just cuts off a bunch of humans’ heads and then immediately hits the couch.
moonlight_howling_666: It’s kind of funny.
Octavia looked behind her. Light was beginning to stream in through the windows of her room from the pentagram. She hadn’t even realized morning had come …
moonlight_howling_666: How about you? How was that party or whatever?
Octavia laughed bitterly before typing her answer.
gothchk17: Honestly? It was hot garbage.
moonlight_howling_666: Ugh. Well, you looked great, at least.
Octavia smiled. There was a part of her that thought Loona was just flattering her, but …
moonlight_howling_666: How much of that milkshake did you drink before puking?
Octavia sighed. Here we go, she thought. This was where the conversation was going to suck and get uncomfortable. Well, she could always just stop replying and block if it got too real or upsetting.
gothchk17: Barely anything.
gothchk17: I mean … I didn’t puke. I just didn’t get to drink it.
gothchk17: My mum threw it out.
A little “!!” bubble appeared on Octavia’s last message.
moonlight_howling_666: WHAT????
moonlight_howling_666: THE FUCK???
moonlight_howling_666: WHY????
gothchk17: Who fuckin’ knows? She thought it was cringe or something.
moonlight_howling_666: Who THE FUCK throws out ice cream for being cringe?
gothchk17: My mum does, apparently.
moonlight_howling_666: FUUUUCK!!!!! BOOOO!!!!!
The next message from Loona was just a string of furry, hellhound-themed thumbs down emojis. Octavia rewarded it with a little “Ha Ha!” reaction, temporarily forgetting that she was supposed to be suspicious of this whole conversation.
moonlight_howling_666: Girl, you’re a better person than me. I would have destroyed the fucking building!
gothchk17: Well …
gothchk17: I kind of did …
A surprised dog emoji face popped up on Octavia’s message.
moonlight_howling_666: OMFS, FOR REAL?
gothchk17: Yeah. I’m kind of grounded.
gothchk17: I didn’t do it because of the milkshake, though. That probably ranks a seven on the list of top ten shitty things that happened tonight.
gothchk17: I didn’t really destroy the building, either. I just blew out all of the windows and wrecked a bunch of furniture.
gothchk17: And body-slammed a marquis of Hell into a table three times.
Octavia waited a few minutes but Loona didn’t respond. Her messages weren’t marked as “read,” either. Well, maybe Loona got busy. Or fell asleep, if she really was that tired. It was probably best to turn off the app, to wait until Loona had some time to catch up …
… but Octavia sent more messages anyway.
gothchk17: It was probably a dumb thing to do, I guess. But a bunch of assholes were talking about me behind my back all night.
gothchk17: Like it happened multiple times. And then this one guy was trying to hit on my mum even though he was laughing it up with the people talking shit.
gothchk17: So I told them to knock it off and they kept making excuses for why it was totally reasonable for them to talk shit.
gothchk17: I’m saying “talk shit” too much.
gothchk17: And then I kind of unlocked my demon form for the first time and lost it on them …
gothchk17: I got shot by a bunch of arrows, too.
gothchk17: And almost got my face chewed off.
gothchk17: Sorry, maybe I should have led with that.
gothchk17: Also, I’m fine. The arrows didn’t leave any permanent injuries. And the teeth didn’t get me.
gothchk17: Probably should have led with that, too …
The messages were still unread. I think I overdid the trauma dump, Octavia thought. She shut off her phone screen and tried to wrap her bedcovers around her. Well, she felt a little better after letting that all out, she guessed. She closed her eyes, and …
Octavia’s phone suddenly buzzed five times in quick succession. She picked it up and started reading again. Almost all of Octavia’s previous messages now had a mix of surprised dog face emojis, hellhound thumbs downs or “!!” next to them in bubbles
moonlight_howling_666: HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS!!!!!
moonlight_howling_666: GIRL, WHAT THE FUCK???
moonlight_howling_666: What the fuck were they saying?
moonlight_howling_666: Also, I’m so sorry to leave you on read, I had to leave the office.
moonlight_howling_666: When I read that shit about the milkshake I started pacing back and forth in the office and growling and everyone was asking me what was wrong so I’m texting in the coffeeshop now.
Octavia blinked and re-read Loona’s last message a second and third time. Was the hellhound serious? Octavia was shocked that anything she said could have affected Loona that way. They barely knew each other, really. She left a purple heart on the message before responding.
gothchk17: It’s OK, I’m probably oversharing, anyway.
gothchk17: Did you … tell anyone you were talking to me?
moonlight_howling_666: Uh-uh. Moxxie asked if I was upset because that Vox guy did something stupid again and I had to remind him I don’t give two shits about sinner politics.
Octavia sighed. That was a relief, at least.
gothchk17: Will you be in trouble for leaving the office?
moonlight_howling_666: Nah, it’s still before actual opening hours.
moonlight_howling_666: Also, on the last coffee run I forgot Millie has to drink decaf now so I owe her a drink, anyway.
moonlight_howling_666: Anyway, you’re fine. You must have been super-pissed for those guys to set you off like that.
Octavia gave that message a “Ha Ha!” reaction.
gothchk17: Yeah …
gothchk17: A bunch of people saying I’m this disgusting shame and a huge charity case victim who never should have been born has that effect on me, I guess …
The broken heart emoji appeared on Octavia’s message before she could finish the next one.
gothchk17: That’s what gets me, right? Like, it’s one thing if they were just nasty, but they acted like they were doing me a favor and felt sorry for me.
gothchk17: Well, I guess the guy who shot me just said I was gross. Points for not being a hypocrite before trying to kill me or whatever.
An emoji of a hellhound sticking out its tongue appeared on that one.
moonlight_howling_666: IDK. It all sounds super fucked.
moonlight_howling_666: I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to put up with that.
moonlight_howling_666: You should feel proud for standing up for yourself, tho.
gothchk17: I guess …
moonlight_howling_666: I mean, I think so. Who tells someone they shouldn’t have been born? That’s fucked up. Nobody should be allowed to say that to you.
Octavia swallowed and wrapped the covers more tightly around her. She probably should have just taken the encouragement, just left it at that, but …
gothchk17: And what if they’re right?
A question mark appeared on Octavia’s message.
gothchk17: I mean, they suck, but like …
gothchk17: If things were fairer I probably never would have been born …
gothchk17: And maybe that would have been better …
A message of bubbles popped up in the chat, suddenly disappeared, then reappeared again.
moonlight_howling_666: Are you … OK?
moonlight_howling_666: Are you thinking of hurting yourself?
Octavia let out a sigh. She could feel her beak trembling.
gothchk17: No, it’s not like that …
gothchk17: I even stopped myself from ripping out some feathers earlier tonight.
She got another broken heart emoji for that one.
gothchk17: I just … wonder if I’m supposed to be here.
gothchk17: A lot.
gothchk17: Because I don’t think I am.
Octavia blinked back more tears. It took her a few moments to wipe them out of her eyes, to control them to the point where she was able to read Loona’s next messages.
moonlight_howling_666: Hey … remember when I said nobody has the right to tell you you’re never supposed to have been born?
moonlight_howling_666: Well, that includes yourself, OK?
Octavia took a deep breath. She understood what Loona meant, but ...
gothchk17: How do I get myself to shut up, then?
moonlight_howling_666: Pfft! Fuck if I know. I’ve been trying to get the bitch in my head to shut up for years.
moonlight_howling_666: But sometimes even if you can’t shut the bitch up you can get another voice in there to remind you that she’s wrong.
The message shocked Octavia out of being sad for a few moments. It was hard to imagine someone as brash and tough as Loona ever feeling as worthless and alone as she did. But then again, Loona was adopted, and if Octavia felt the way she did because her parents didn’t love each other, then she could only imagine what …
gothchk17: I’m sorry. I should have been more sensitive.
gothchk17: All I’m doing is going on about my own problems …
moonlight_howling_666: Nah. It’s cool. I don’t mind talking about you.
moonlight_howling_666: Besides, 7 a.m. is just a bit too early in the morning to spill my guts about my tragic origin story.
Octavia laughed a little bit at that. Loona could be really funny … Octavia really liked talking to her.
moonlight_howling_666: For what it’s worth, though …
moonlight_howling_666: I know for a fact that at least some people want you around.
Shit, Octavia thought. Was this point where everything got uncomfortable? Where Loona guilt-tripped her about her dad and said she owed it to him to see him, because …
gothchk17: I really doubt that’s true.
moonlight_howling_666: It is true.
moonlight_howling_666: Because I was really happy when I saw you posting again.
moonlight_howling_666: You made my day better just by existing. Maybe that’s not a lot but … it’s more than nothing, right?
Octavia wiped her eyes again. She wanted to dismiss all this as just Loona being nice, but … Well, Octavia couldn’t help but remember Loona pacing back and forth in that office because of her, getting so upset because something bad happened to her. It still seemed so bizarre but … that had to mean Loona cared about her, right? And cared about her for her own sake, not just because she was Stolas’ daughter and Stolas was Blitzø’s boyfriend and Blitzø was Loona’s dad …
moonlight_howling_666: Also, I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me about tonight.
gothchk17: Trauma dumped on you about tonight, more like …
moonlight_howling_666: Whatever. It’s all good.
moonlight_howling_666: And … just for the record. I can keep a secret or two.
moonlight_howling_666: Or even five if I have to.
moonlight_howling_666: So if you ever need to talk, or even get away whenever this being grounded bullshit is over … nobody else has to know about it.
Octavia’s chest felt tight. Loona was proposing some sort of secret friendship, wasn’t she? It would be nice, having someone to talk to who was closer to her own age, who wasn’t a servant, who wasn’t some authority figure in this world that was making her miserable.
But … this was a terrible idea, wasn’t it? How long would they be able to keep up secret messages and secret meetings? They’d be found out eventually. It was only a matter of time …
… and yet all Octavia wanted to do was say “yes.”
gothchk17: Do you promise you’ll keep that you’re talking to me a secret?
The bubbles popped up on the screen again. When they disappeared, Loona had posted another selfie in the chat.
Loona was sitting in a café — it might have been the one where she’d taken that picture with Stolas and Blitzø — a carrier of four paper coffee cups sitting in front of her. She had a big smile on her snout and the pinky on her right hand pointed to the camera.
moonlight_howling_666: You bet I promise.
Octavia smiled and opened her own picture app. She hadn’t seen her reflection in hours and she looked terrible — headfeathers going in every direction and her makeup smeared around her eyes. She still forced a smile as she extended her own pinky and took a picture.
moonlight_howling_666: Damn, girl. Go take a shower or something. You need to slough that sadness off your face.
Octavia laughed. She probably should have gone for a bath, but her body finally felt relaxed enough to actually sleep, so she gave Loona’s last message another “Ha Ha!” and wrote “I will soon, TTYL!” before turning off the app.
Octavia closed her eyes, thought over the conversation again as she tried to chase sleep. For so long, Octavia had hoped for a return to the way things used to be, for the times when she was young and happy with her dad, for the times she thought he felt the same way. But those times had been a lie and the present — the cold, lonely, and miserable present — had stretched out before her. She never expected her current misery to last forever — one day she would be no longer in grief, one day she would at least be okay. But her messaging with Loona had left a warm hope in her chest, something that seemed like it could bring a real and happy change, something bright that could only grow …
The sound of shattering ceramic woke Octavia up again. She pushed herself up in bed, looked down at their family butler. The imp had always been very tiny, small enough to fit in one of their hands … but today he looked microscopic as he stared up at her, a tray splayed out on the floor at his hooves with a broken tea set and the remnants of what seemed like a breakfast of toast, beans and bacon.
“Um …” Octavia said, realizing how deep and reverberating her voice sounded, “ … what time is it?”
The imp ran away without answering. Octavia shifted again and felt the bed lurch as the frame collapsed beneath her. She then suddenly shrunk down to her regular size, feathers from her body and the bed floating around her as she sat in the crater of what had once been her bed.
Yeah … she needed to make a change. Sooner rather than later. Octavia searched in the wreckage of her bed for her phone. She needed to tell Loona she wasn’t going to take the month to wait …
The End.