Page 24 of The Demon Prince

By the gods, he was so pretty.

Even with his brows furrowed in concentration, he looked like a marble statue come to life. Surely only the hands of an artist could paint a man who looked like that. He was so handsome it hurt to look at him, and she’d never experienced that in her life before.

The kind of handsome that made her want to run her fingers through that perfect hair and see if she could convince even one of the strands to curl. So she wouldn’t be the only person with frizzy hair in the room and dirty shoes that tracked mud through his castle. She didn’t want to be the dusty little peasant who had crawled out of the muck to make a deal with the demon king.

And yet, here she was.

Ready to make a deal with him. Because no one else could.

He finished lighting all ten of the candles and then looked up at her. His red gaze was always startling. She expected him to have deep brown eyes. Emotional, soulful eyes of an artist who had seen too much in the world and was consumed by his need to purge all the dark thoughts in his mind. But those red eyes perhaps reflected his emotion even better than the darkness she’d expected. He looked at her with his soul in his gaze, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen another person’s soul so easily.

He seemed to freeze as well. Gluttony, a demon king, stunned as he stared back at her with wide eyes.

Katherine licked her lips, watching him track the movement and she couldn’t help but ask, “What do you see when you look at me?”

He shook himself at the question. “What do you mean?”

“The rumors claim you only look at a person like myself and see food. Sustenance. Someone to feed upon and that’s it. But... You don’t always look at me like a predator.”

And maybe that was why she was here. He looked at her like a man looked at a woman, not like a monster looked at the newest thing it desired to eat. And she knew the difference. She’d been in this kingdom her entire life, and she’d been around enough dangerous creatures.

Kelpies and all the other monsters of the swamp were part of daily life. She knew what it looked like and felt like to be hunted.

That was not at all how she felt around him.

He swallowed hard, and this time she tracked his movement. Curious of the reasoning behind him feeling so uncomfortable because there was no reason for him to be.

He had all the power here. Didn’t he?

Watching his movements, how uncomfortable he suddenly was, and how he turned away from her, she wondered if maybe she did have all the power after all.

He started walking away into the darkness, but then he said, “I see a very brave woman, pet. Very brave indeed.”

Oh.

Oh.

He saw something in her that so few people did. No one had ever called her brave in her life, if she thought back upon it. Perhaps her father, but that had always come tacked along with a “You’re foolish, girl” or something like that. She’d always taken risks for the betterment of her family or people. And yet no one had seen it.

Or if they had, they’d never told her. Never had the kindness in their hearts to realize maybe she needed to hear someone say it.

Sometimes it was all just... really hard.

A knot created itself deep in her belly and she had the sudden, insane urge to hug him. Because he cared enough to tell her how he felt, and she wanted him to know that she appreciated his words.

But he was already moving away from her. Walking with a strange stiffness to his spine that belayed how uncomfortable he was with this conversation.

So she stayed silent. Katherine followed him through the badly neglected castle. She could see it had been a very long time since anyone had even attempted to clean the place. And it was massive. If he’d really let go of all his staff, then this was too much for a single person to care for. He needed people to clean the floors, at the very least.

She couldn’t even tell what color anything was. It was all ghostly with a fine layer of dust, but there was an air of beauty to it all. Neglected beauty, yes, but it was hidden in there still. Just enough for her to see past the strangeness of a home so thoroughly mistreated.

Warm wood, she thought. The floors were probably oak, stained to look like a dark brown that would be so pretty, with countless candles lighting it up. Or even the bulbs that lit the town. Why didn’t he have electricity? Surely he did. Everyone in the kingdom had use of it, but he didn’t have any lightbulbs.

“Why don’t you have light?” she asked before she could grab the words back.

He glanced over his shoulder and took a right down yet another dark hallway. At least this one still had portraits hanging on the walls, but he was moving so quickly she couldn’t get a good look at them. “That was Lust’s idea for all the kingdoms. It works, but it would take a lot to install it throughout the castle.”

“So you do have some lights, then?”

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