The gray dirt of the threshold stayed glued to Haviel’s boots for perhaps a second too long. Jevon’s hand stayed extended, broad and faintly calloused, like a formal instruction disguised as a gesture of politeness.
Haviel blinked at it. His brain, still running a bit warm from the whole drool-on-the-royal-thigh debacle, took its sweet time calculating the physics of the situation. Right. Wings. We’re doing this now. He let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-shudder, and let his fingers close around Jevon’s palm. The grip was solid. Reassuringly so, which was probably the only thing keeping his knees from turning into lukewarm jelly.
Jevon didn’t pull him forward immediately. Instead, those eyes did a slow sweep of Haviel’s face, catching the slight twitch in his jaw.
"Are you uncomfortable with heights?" Jevon asked. The tone was level, almost casual, like a physician checking a pulse before prescribing a particularly nasty tonic.
"Not that I’m aware of," Haviel shot back, though the words came out a bit more breathless than he’d intended. He swallowed hard, trying to project the image of someone who frequently traveled via mythical appendages. "I mean, I’ve never exactly tried the... unassisted version before. Usually, there’s an entire fuselage between me and the clouds."
"Then do I have your permission to take us up?"
Haviel blinked. Consent. Well, that was a oddly polite way for a dark lord to phrase an impending kidnapping-by-flight. "Yeah. I mean, yes. Go ahead. Just... don’t drop me."
He didn’t even get to finish the chuckle he was trying to fake.
The transition wasn’t a slow lift, it was a sudden, effortless displacement of gravity. Haviel let out a small, embarrassing yelp as his feet parted ways with the cracked gray earth. Instinct took over before his pride could intervene. His hands slammed against Jevon’s shoulders, his fingers bunching into the heavy wool of the cloak, while his other arm swung up to catch the side of the demon’s neck just to keep his center of balance from tanking. Jevon adjusted his hold without a word, one massive arm locking securely around Haviel’s lower back, the other cradling his thighs with the kind of casual indifference usually reserved for carrying a sack of imported grain.
Around them, the silence of the borderlands shattered.
It wasn’t a loud noise, but a deep, rhythmic thwack-thwack that vibrated through the marrow of Haviel’s bones. He risked a glance sideways. Jaeric and Sevrin had moved. Behind them, the remaining vanguard soldiers were unfolding their own wings, a sudden, magnificent formation of dark, ribbed leather and heavy feathers cutting through the gray mist. It looked like a living wall of ink expanding against the sky.
Haviel’s breath hitched. Seeing one demon with wings was an isolated crisis; seeing an entire legion spread their plumage in perfect, militaristic synchronization was something else entirely. It hit him then, with the force of a ledger slamming shut, that the stories back in the human capital hadn’t even come close to the scale of this reality.
"This... this has got to be incredibly inefficient," Haviel muttered into the collar of Jevon’s cloak, his voice competing with the rushing air as they began to clear the ridge. "Carrying me, I mean. Dead weight. Surely it’s going to wear you out before we hit the actual territory."
A low, rumbling vibration started deep in Jevon’s chest, a genuine, dry chuckle that Haviel felt more than he heard.
"I believe I clarified this previously," Jevon murmured, his eyes fixed on the horizon ahead. "Our structural density is not comparable to yours. You are remarkably light. It requires little effort."
To prove the point, Jevon glanced slightly to his left. Haviel followed the line of his chin, looking back through the slipstream. His jaw dropped.
The vanguard wasn’t just flying, they were moving cargo. Two of the armored soldiers were casually cruising at three thousand feet while hauling Haviel’s massive traveling trunks between them, using heavy leather straps hooked over their forearms. They weren’t even sweating. One of them was actually adjusting his gauntlet with his free hand while keeping pace with the royal ascent. Weight, it appeared, was merely a suggestion to these people. It was completely absurd.
The ground was disappearing now. Really disappearing.
The cracked gray boulders of the neutral zone were shrinking into an intricate, broken mosaic of slate and charcoal lines, interspersed with deep, ragged gashes of ancient forest. The wind had turned sharp, maliciously cold, actually, biting through Haviel’s coat until his fingers stiffened against Jevon’s shoulder. He couldn’t help it, his entire frame went rigid as a fresh draft caught them, tilting the entire world about fifteen degrees to the right.
"Are you afraid?" the demon asked softly.
"No," Haviel lied immediately. It was a terrible lie.
Jevon’s chest ticked with another faint amusement. He shifted his forearm, tucking Haviel a fraction closer against his torso until the human could feel the heat radiating through the heavy dark fabric of his uniform. "You needn’t be embarrassed."
"Fine," Haviel muttered, staring determinedly at Jevon’s collarbone rather than the terrifying drop below. "If we’re getting technical... humans are born with exactly two phobias. One of them is the fear of falling." He cleared his throat, trying to regain some semblance of dignity. "I just figure me painting the rocks down there wouldn’t make for a very dignified diplomatic report."
"And the second?" Jevon asked.
"Loud noises."
"I wasn’t aware of that," Jevon murmured, his eyes narrowing slightly as if filing the data away into a permanent cabinet. "All humans share this fear?"
"Pretty much from birth," Haviel said, nodding against the broad shoulder.
Then his stomach did a completely different kind of flip. Wait.
His fingers went rigid. What did I just do? He was just there, thousands of feet in the air, suddenly realizing he had just handed the supreme military leader of the rival realm a concise, verified summary of human psychological weaknesses. God forbid this guy ever decides to invade the south. He’ll just bring a bunch of giant drums and push people from high building.
His grip on Jevon’s neck tightened noticeably, his knuckles turning a brilliant shade of white.
Jevon looked down, his brow twitching slightly at the sudden pinch against his throat. "You seem considerably more anxious than a moment ago. Something is troubling you?"
"Nothing," Haviel squeaked.
He forced himself to look away, desperate for a distraction from his own tactical blunder. He stopped looking straight down through the terrifying gap between his boots and started looking out.
The sheer scale of the world took his breath away. They were coasting above the ancient, scarred remains of the borderland, shattered fortresses that looked like broken teeth from up here, remnants of wars that probably predated Haviel’s great-grandfather’s ledger books.
Then came the forests. Vast, undulating oceans of pine so dense and green they looked almost black, untouched by a single human road or chimney. Mountains rose to meet them from the east, huge, jagged spires of granite that seemed to literally cleave the pale morning horizon in two.
It hit him then. Really hit him. This wasn’t a train ride. It wasn’t an airplane where you stared at a tiny plastic screen while smelling stale coffee. He was actually out here. The cold air was real, the wind in his teeth was real, and he was moving through the sky under the power of a creature that shouldn’t even exist according to the books back home.
"Look ahead," Jevon said suddenly, his deep voice cutting through the rush of the wind.
Haviel blinked, turning his head toward the front. "What?"
"Ahead," Jevon repeated.
Haviel looked. And everything inside his head just went completely quiet.
The gray, miserable sky of the human border was fraying, tearing apart like old parchment. Beyond the final ridge of the neutral wasteland, the atmosphere just transformed. The horizon opened up into a staggering expanse of deep, violet-tinted clouds, shot through with veins of brilliant, crystalline amber that seemed to pulse with their own internal light.
The mountains down there weren’t gray granite anymore; they were dark, glistening stone that caught the strange dawn like glass, their peaks rising like spires from a valley that looked so old, so ancient, it felt like time itself hadn’t managed to finish building it. It was vast. Beautiful in a way that felt almost hostile to human comprehension, yet so utterly magnificent that Haviel forgot to hold his breath.
A small, breathless sound escaped his throat. Then, without an ounce of permission from his conscious mind, he laughed.
It was a ridiculous, slightly hysterical sound. It wasn’t because anything was funny, but the sheer absurdity of his life had finally broken through his processing limit. Three weeks ago, his biggest crisis was a corrupted spreadsheet and his manager who stole yogurt from the breakroom fridge. Now? Now he was being carted across an international border in the arms of a literal demon king, staring at a sky that looked like a oil painting.
The laugh made Jevon’s wings miss a beat, just a tiny, fractional adjustment as the king looked down.
Haviel didn’t notice it. He was still looking at the clouds, a genuine, wide smile splitting his face. It wasn’t his standard customer-service grimace. It wasn’t the polite, tight-lipped expression he used during diplomatic dinners. It was just... him. Loose, amazed, and entirely unguarded.
Then, so small it was almost invisible, the hard, straight line of Jevon’s mouth gave way. The corner lifted. Just a millimeter. A faint, fleeting trace of a human expression on a face that usually looked like it belonged on a coin.
Haviel chose that exact, disastrous second to turn his head.
Their eyes met. The smile was still there on Jevon’s lips, caught red-handed in the light.