Page 19 of Drawn to the Demon Duke
He doesn’t answer me right away. Large and imposing and smelling of smoke and a spicy musk that calls to me over the lure of the food… Haures stares at me unblinkingly for a moment before he finally admits, “The gods say that we are.”
Okay. Bringing religion into it. Not what I expected from a demon, but okay.
I bite down on the corner of my mouth. I still have the image in my head of me being sprawled out on the table, Haures feasting on me instead of the meal. If that’s what comes along with being a true love… we can work our way up to that bulge, but for now?—
Hang on.
Thegodssay.
“What do you say?”
“There is a flower that grows in the darkest shadows at the edge of Sombra. The ashbalm flower. This is a realm of fire. Of ash. But with that, comes the dark. If one braves the shadows and retrieves the ashbalm, it can snap any bond in the hands of a bondmaster.” He pauses for a moment before dropping the bomb: “I told you I was unlike the other Sombra demons. I have no shadows of my own, but I know we have a bond because Iama bondmaster.”
I blink. Is he saying what Ithinkhe’s saying…
He’s a bondmaster. He can sense our bond, but with this ashbalm flower thing, he can get rid of it, easy as that.
He can erase the fact that we’re true loves with, like, the snap of his fingers.
Claws.
Whatever.
“And you’re going to go get?”
His lips just enough to match the fleeting flash of amusement skittering down this very obvious. Bond.
“No, mortal.Youare.”
If I wanted you eliminated, I’d send you to the shadows…
That’s what he said before. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten. So, either I’m dead, or I lose my true love. Depending on how generous my demon duke is, I could be booted back to Connecticut, my adventure over, or tossed into the dungeon again because, then, I really would be breaking the first law.
It’s a lose-lose for me either way.
Wonderful.
I wish I had a flashlight.
To be honest, I’m wishing a lot of things at the moment, but that one is at the top of my list.
Haures wasn’t whistlin’ dixie when he said that his demon realm was made of fire and ash and shadows. After he sat there, watching me eat enough food under slight protest that he considered his pet human—for now—full, he brought me to the throne room again. As though this was all planned, the purple-eyed demon who put me in chains was waiting by the throne.
His name is Sammael, and I now know that he is Haures’s personal mage. I’d thought that what he did was magic, and I was right. He can cast spells of his own, and that includes something Haures called a travel spell.
In Sombra, demons that can change from their solid red-skinned form to misty shadows can travel quicker than on foot. As a human, it would take days to get from the capital where Haures keeps his palace to the edge of shadows where I’m supposed to find and pluck and bring back this ashbalm flower.
But if you have a mage to open a portal within the realm, taking you from point A to point B in the blink of an eye, the trip is done in no time.
Knowing I had no choice, I followed Sammael through it, coughing when I landed outside.
It’s hot here. Like, middle of August, heatwave in Connecticuthot. The shift in weather was so gnarly, my ponytail almost instantly started to droop. It’s gotta be hotter than ninety out here, with air that stinks of rotten eggs. My lungs burned with every breath I took. The ash under my feet gave way with each step, and I entertained running into the red-tinged night when the alternative was willingly entering a patch of shadows so dark, it was like midnight out in the woods no matter what time of day it was.
Hell, I decided when I noticed bursts of fire in the distance, a pair of moons shining weakly overhead, and more than a few bleached-white skulls buried in the ash outside of the shadows. Haures lives in a crystal palace, but this world?
It’s Hell.
Makes sense. He is a demon, after all. Lord of this realm, and the guy who thought it was a great idea to send me into a dark forest with only the instructions that I would know when I was growing closer to the ashbalm flower when I scent it.
