Free Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five by Justina Robson

regret in his tone. Another long sigh shrank his ribs and flattened his body to the floor. He
     stared morosely at the cooler. ‘And you, Lila,’ he added. ‘You’re free to go.’
    And just like that there it was, all done. Say married to a demon and you were. Say not and you weren’t. A word was all it
     took.
    For a moment silence rang through the room and made it seem smaller and grubbier than ever before. Lila felt there should
     be more to say and do, some fall in the weather to mark the shattering feeling in her solar plexus. She glanced at Zal and
     saw him look abruptly nothing more than tired, old. Teazle sighed a heavy sigh. His eyes were on Zal, she saw, watching him
     with something like regret.
    Lila’s heart sank. ‘Teaze,’ she said, but was unable to say any more. It was so unlike him to be down about anything, it felt
     completely wrong, as if the world had got a loose screw. She consoled herself with the excuse that probably he was regretting
     his loss of status and command in Demonia, but another part of her knew that wasn’t true. Teazle would have scorned the idea
     that he ever needed more than he already possessed. She and Zal had been a temporary kind of truce that worked to cover a
     bad political moment in history and that was all.
    Anxiety gnawed her and for a second the pain in her stomach made her speechless. Teazle’s arrogance was the rock she’d clung
     to in Zal’s absence, when Malachi chided her, when she’d felt herself falling to bits in the horrible days of their return.
     When the machines had whispered to her so much she felt they intended to drive her insane, Teazle’s body and willing lust
     had been there to anchor her. Since Zal was back that part of their relationship had been put aside but it wasn’t finished,
     merely suspended. She had wondered what it meant to him, but hadn’t asked. She felt it would be weak of her, and the bond
     itself was already one in which her position was inferior so she could not risk giving him more power over her. In a human
     world this would have mattered much less. In a demon one it could lead to nasty things and that was why now, when she wanted
     to go and touch him and affirm something that felt threatened, she stayed in Zal’s lap, immersed in the sensitive shadow of
     Zal’s aetheric body, and watched the demon without speaking.
    ‘Hm, didn’t expect that,’ Malachi said after a while had passed. ‘I wish I thought it was worthwhile but I fear you might
     have bought more trouble, not less now.’
    He stood up and for an instant his body glittered as his moth aspect fluttered its wings and coal dust filled the air around
     him, turning and sparkling as it whirled into the familiar runes that would port him away. ‘To Faery with me. I see you all,
     adieu, anon. Rest well.’ He bowed, smiled and with a flourish of his hand turned to walk away and vanished around an unseen
     corner.
    ‘Goodnight!’ sang out Xavi’s voice from the floor, as sunny in disposition as she was not.
    Zal jumped. ‘I wish she wouldn’t do that.’ He put his half-finished beer back on top of the cooler. He looked at Teazle with
     misgivings.
    The demon looked back and Lila saw some kind of communication passing between them that she couldn’t understand.
    ‘Is that it?’ she asked. ‘We’re through?’
    Teazle’s head swung to her and he nodded. ‘You’re free of me, free of Demonia.’ His expression was inscrutable now though
     she tried hard to see into it. His face was set. ‘You wanted it.’
    And there was nothing she could say to that. She looked down, pushing the force of everything that was bursting her heart
     and which she didn’t understand down onto the sleeping elf. She had wanted it. Wanted things to be more simple. Now she had
     this and her insides were screaming that they didn’t want it at all and it made no sense to her. Tears flooded her eyes so
     that she had to turn her head from them both.
    ‘I should