Page 11 of Hellish Fae
The cunt.
“Yes, I look like a demon,” says the big one. “But I’ve been a fallen for a hundred years, and look at me. Thanks to Corva’s help, the process has slowed.”
A hundred years.
My eyebrows lift slowly and that taunting sexy smirk of his only intensifies.
“You’re almost cute when you shut up for longer than a second, Crow,” he says to me.
My lips suddenly curl at the demon shit.
“Crow?” I snarl.
In two big steps he’s in front of me, stealing all the light behind him with his massive stature. When his lips part with quiet words, his dark tone strums through me like a song that touches me in all the right places.
“Call me demon shit, and you’re bound to get the favor returned. ‘Crow’ is much more affectionate than what Iwantedto say to you, I promise,” he whispers, his big fingers flicking the inky feathers at the tip of my right wing.
The candlelight glints against something on the back of his arm, and I barely catch sight of jagged metal slicing right from his skin. The weapon startles me, but in an instant, he’s slashed it down the front of me.
The slamming sound of my heart fills my ears. But it calms as the tightness around my arms loosens. The metal bindings around my body fall and burn out like embers in the night, fading away to literal ash before my eyes.
Nothing but powerful dark fae magic could have done something like that.
My breathing calms, and my big eyes stare at the odd onyx metal that lines his forearms like fish fins.
“She cursed you,” I whisper. A sinister giggle follows my words. “She cursed you with iron blood.”
“I didn’t curse him. It sounds dirty when you say it that way. It’s just a test,” Corva says innocently.
The massive man in front of me is staring blankly down at me, his lips so thin, I can tell he’s biting back all the things he wants to scream at my sister.
“He’s a demon who’s hated by the fae world. So you gave him the one thing fae can’t stand. The one thing that’s like poison to us: iron. Iron magic, to be exact. He’ll be an outcast among us for the rest of his life. He’ll be more hated than any other demon.”He truly will be a monster. My mouth drops as I finish that thought. “You . . . you wanted to know what they’d do to him, didn’t you?”
“Do to him? Don’t be silly. I gave him a gift. Something to protect himself. Fae can’t even so much as lay a hand on him without feeling the singe of his blood.” She shrugs her small shoulders at me.
And it’s just like all of her whisper wind pleas with my father. All careless recklessness that doesn’t make a single ounce of sense.
I shake my head at her, and I know I should just shut up. It’s not safe to be on her bad side. And I need an ally here, now that I’m back.
I need a friend more than anything in this realm. And Corva is a powerful friend. So powerful, she broke my father’s barrier magic preventing me from returning . . .
“She sent us to capture you,” the iron blood demon confirms, laying it all out there with a contemptuous sort of rage hidden beneath his handsome features.
My head turns slowly until I’m looking at her big black eyes once more. When I was a little girl, her unnaturally large eyes used to scare me. She still secretly scares me, but for more realistic reasons.
“That’s all you wanted from them?”
She wanted me?
Why?
To join her in her misery?
“Because you and I need each other, sweet sister.” Everything she says drips with contained maliciousness.
“I don’t need anyone.” My shoulders square, but I’ll admit they’re sore from being pressed into the bindings she made for me.
“Maybe,” she says in that eerie singsong way of hers. “Imagine if all of the children that father exiled joined together. Imagine if we didn’t do as we were told and lie down to die?”
