Page 70 of Demonic Cage
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the little boy. His blue eyes don’t respond.
“Dröm sött.”
Sweet dreams.
I feel like I’ve burned my soul.
The boy haunts me. I can’t escape him. I try to hide in the depths of my mind, but he always finds me. I wake up in my bed, exhausted. My skin remains warm. The smell of burned flesh still stings my nose, Nárs’s whimpering echoes in my ears. My throat is dry, the air is bitter. I look at my hands. Did my skin burn them? How? I sit up, my heart pounding. The Demon King stands, leaning against the headboard. His face inscrutable.
“How are you?” he asks. Without thinking, I jump up and lunge at Darya. I punch his jaw, but all I achieve is a crack in my wrist.
“Ouch!” I cry out, but I don’t relent. Though it’s futile, I keep hitting. I grab the book from the bed and throw it at him. I throwmyselfat him with all my strength. I try to scratch his face with my nails, just like he did with the child.
He killed him in cold blood. Slaughtered an innocent little boy!
I just scream, hit, kick, until at some point Darya has had enough. He grabs my wrists, throws me onto the bed, towering over me.
“Let go, you monster!” I snarl, writhing beneath him, but I have no chance of breaking free.
“Calm down, Kindra.”
“That’s not my name, you fucking demon!” I shout at him, spitting in his face, visibly fuelling his anger, but I don’t stop. “My name is Lotte, you fucking monster! There’s no way I’ll ever be yours!”
Darya stares at me with irritation, then at my chest. I’m squirming under him; I know what he’s thinking without words. If he wanted to, he could claim me right now. He could tear me into as many pieces as he wished. I hate him. From the depths of my heart, I despise him. Whatever I felt for him before the ceremony, it burned away along with everything else.
“Fuck you, Darya!” I hiss, and a silver streak flashes in his black eyes.
I hate him, hate him, hate him. Anger clouds my vision.
“Why?” I sob. “He was just a little kid!”
Darya’s eyes narrow.
“He shouldn’t have been there. His teacher didn’t do a good job, he wasn’t ready.”
He says it as if that’s the answer to everything.
“That’s a fucking cowardly excuse!” I snarl at him, and even though his face is just twenty centimeters from mine, I shout, “It was your responsibility to let him live! Here you are, thousands of years old, and you can’t even figure out who’s truly broken and who’s not! And you still call yourself a king!”
Darya’s face is unreadable.
“One thing I’ve learned for sure in all this time, Kindra, is that everything happens for a reason.”
“No!” I yell. My tense muscles tremble with nervousness. “Don’t call me that! My name is Lotte, and I’ll never be your champion!” I hiss through my teeth. “You can burn in your own hell, but I’ll never open the gate for you! I hope you never,eversee your father again, and if you ever wonder why that is, just know that you only have yourself to blame, because you’re a disgusting monster who couldn’t even—”
Darya screams in a tone only a demon or a predator could, gritting his teeth, his fangs growing. He snarls and pushes me further into the bed. I scream as he presses between my legs. His leg on mine, his body on mine, his arms on mine.
I remain silent. His forehead is almost touching mine, his gaze freezing me to ice. Ink pours from his blackened eyes, solidifying into a tattoo.
With his sharp fangs, he approaches my neck, and I whimper. My muscles tense, my throat dries up. If I don’t open the door for him and never change, I’m nothing more than a meal for him. I close my eyes in fear. With a tense body, I await his bite; the scene coming to life in the darkness as I once again see Darya sinking his teeth into the boy’s heart. He’ll feast on mine too.
But nothing comes. Instead, his lips graze the sensitive skin under my chin.
We stay like this for a while. I only hear our heartbeats in the room, along with my sobbing. Darya buries his face in my neck.
“I want to taste you so much,” he says, licking me close to my ear. “You have no idea what I would like to do to you right now.”
The ambiguity of his words makes me tense. He leans his entire weight onto me. Slowly, the last remnants of my strength fade away, and I yield to him. I relax my wrists and I no longer try to break free. I built enough armor around myself from my hatred. He won’t break it down anymore.
