Page 127 of The Demon Prince

“I did not change all that much,” he murmured. “There are opposites of who we are. The opposite of gluttony is abstinence, and I am not interested in stopping what I desire. I enjoy food, and drink, and...” He eyed her neck. “You.”

“You know I wouldn’t ask you to stop feeding off me, even if you were someone else.”

“I know that. I do not need it to live. I merely desire it. So apparently I have yet to learn how to change all that much, because I have good reason to suspect that while I am no longer Gluttony, I still wish to enjoy the finer things in life.” He took a deep breath, quite certain she would judge him for what he was about to say. “I believe I am Restraint.”

“Restraint,” she repeated, running the word over her tongue before searing him with a brilliant smile. “I like it. And I think that’s quite a lesson for someone like you to learn. To devour everything without question or end, that consumes everyone and everything in your path. But learning how to have restraint that means you are capable of knowing when to stop. And when to see that you’ve had enough. That is impressive, Gluttony. Or do you wish for me to call you something else?”

Oh, the wave of relief nearly made him limp. Gluttony had been so worried she would judge him or say that it wasn’t enough. He’d been so afraid that he couldn’t be enough for her and to know that she saw the use in what he had learned? It just made him love her even more.

He had never known that love would consume him like this. That he would get eaten up by it and spat out as something new. Although, he supposed he should have guessed this would happen. He’d seen his brothers. He’d seen what happened to them when they finally gave in to the beauty of what their women could give them.

“No, don’t call me anything else,” he murmured, leaning down to drag his tongue down her neck. “It’s a relief, I’ll admit. And here I was, thinking you wouldn’t find the value in a man who hadn’t changed all that much.”

“Oh, but I liked you exactly as you were. Don’t you remember?” Katherine shuddered in his arms, already spreading her legs for him because she knew what he wanted now.

But then she palmed both his cheeks and drew him back up her body. She held onto him with a fierce grip, staring deeply into his eyes. “I loved you before you changed, and I will love you long after. If you change again in a hundred years, I will still love you. There is no storm I will not weather with you, and no form of you that I will not love. You are the other half of my soul, Gluttony, and I don’t ever want you to question that.”

This woman… how he loved her. More and more every day. She was the light, the wonder, the best part of his morning and the peace at night.

Rising over her, he kissed her with every ounce of love in him. Perhaps a little too passionately, a little too hard, but it didn’t matter. She always took the love he had to give, no matter what way, shape, or form he gave it.

And when they both breathed heavily, he drew back with a sharp inhalation. “I need you, Kat. Now and forever.”

She slid her hands down his spine, squeezing the muscles there, and then drew him into her. “And I need you, my love. My life.”

Epilogue

CHAPTER 47

The portal opened beside her husband’s desk, and neither of them even flinched. Katherine had set herself in a comfortable armchair nearby, a book on her lap that described all the magical properties of a kelpie mane. She didn’t believe an ounce of it, otherwise her people would have been using the magical hair to stitch wounds closed for ages now.

Of course, it would have been impossible for them to even brush the water horses without Gluttony’s intervention. So perhaps there was some merit to closing wounds with a kelpie lock and then it staying closed forever. Apparently, it was rather good at healing human skin.

How someone had found that out, she didn’t want to know.

Gluttony was at his desk, where he had set up a small amount of alchemical substrates. Because nothing was flammable or explosive, he’d deemed it acceptable for them to work in his office.

After all, he was trying to figure out a way for them to mine the peat without encroaching on the homes of the natural creatures who still wanted nothing to do with the humans. It was all a work in progress, of course, but Gluttony was fairly confident they could find some kind of trade. And if the humans were able to make a specific kind of food for the creatures that they couldn’t get anywhere else, that was the first start toward healing the wounds that had plagued them all for a very long time.

But the portal opened regardless of their work, because Envy always thought everything was about him. Gluttony’s brother hadn’t come to visit them after the whole fiasco had happened, and Katherine was glad for it.

She wanted nothing to do with the brother who had almost kidnapped her. Nor did she think she was obligated to make amends.

Gluttony had different ideas, of course, but he’d feuded with his brother for centuries. He was used to arguments like this. She, however, was not.

Envy stepped through the portal and adjusted the fine suit he wore. The crushed black velvet was unlike anything she’d seen before, with silver threading traveling in swirling patterns of magic.

“You’re dressed up,” she said, then turned her attention back to her book, lest he think she was paying attention to him.

“I have other situations to deal with rather than just this one.” He clearly wanted her to ask questions about that, but when she didn’t, he sighed and snapped his fingers. “Are you going to give me back my falcon, or not?”

“You haven’t asked a single thing about us.” She snapped her book shut with a slam and glared at him. “The last time you saw the two of us, Gluttony was surely about to be attacked and you dragged me off to be kidnapped and then sent me through the swamp on my own!”

He waved a hand in the air. “My spies have already filled me in on everything. You’re both fine. I’m not worried about you.”

“You should have been! Your brother might have died!”

Even Gluttony gave her a strange look for that. “I can’t die, Kat.”

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