Page 36 of The Demon Prince

“How strange,” she muttered, still staring at the ancient wood as she tried to puzzle this man out. Why was he being so kind to her when she was so clearly a risk? His brothers wouldn’t enjoy knowing she existed. They’d kill her, maybe. She wouldn’t put it past the ruthless lot of them to remove the issue on their own. Maybe they would even send assassins to kill her.

Was that why her mother had run into the moors? Had she realized that someone knew about her existence and known it would be easier to take her own life than wait to see what a demon king chose to do?

The door to her bedroom opened again. Gluttony held a hand over his eyes, as though he’d already expected her to begin undressing in his absence.

“Yes?” she asked, again more confused than she’d ever been in her life.

“Spite,” he said, a command in his tone. “You’re coming with me.”

The little spirit rolled across the floor, grumbling the entire way about evil men and villains who thought they had a right to any maiden in their lives. She watched the entire situation with an amused, soft smile on her face.

But then Gluttony parted his fingers, peering between his middle and pointer. He gave her a soft smile of his own. “Good night, Katherine.”

“Good night.”

It was altogether strange, wasn’t it? He admitted to being the monster everyone thought he was. He didn’t hide away from the fact that he was a terrible person doing terrible things. But then he wanted her to have her privacy, and even made certain that the dark spirit who had certainly gotten her in trouble, was gone.

He’d given her this comfortable room and made certain that she needed nothing else. It was...

She would not think about it.

Katherine was going to go to bed, and then she would wake in the morning with a clear head. That’s all it would take.

Undressing down to her shift—what else would she sleep in?—Katherine stood in front of the windows and looked out over the moors as the sun sank and the moon rose. She’d always thought this time of the night was magic. When the moon turned everything to gilded silver and sharp-edged gleaming.

She slipped into bed, massaging her hip as well as she could on her own, and then drifted off into a dreamless sleep. So comfortable, even her usual nightmares didn’t dare return until she woke in the dead of night, certain something was watching her.

There was a chair in the corner, she realized, with an outline of a man seated in it. He shifted, perhaps realizing she was awake. And he slowly moved the curtain of her window so a slash of moonlight turned his pale skin to a lovely shade of marble grey.

Gluttony sat there, clutching a metal goblet so tightly she could see the dents in the metal. His red eyes weren’t glowing, though, and she considered that to be a good sign.

“Hello,” she whispered, tilting her head on the bed to look at him. “Why are you here?”

“I shouldn’t have put you so close to my own bedroom,” he murmured. “I can smell you.”

“I can bathe if you need me to.” She hadn’t thought to bathe before coming up here, obviously. But she’d rather thought it would work in her favor to smell like the almshouse. It was a terrible scent.

The goblet in his hand creaked. The sound was ominous in the dark room. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oh.” She swallowed hard. Because of course it wasn’t. His eyes were locked on the thundering pulse in her neck, and he clearly couldn’t think straight.

Maybe she had underestimated the situation. He wasn’t acting like a man who wanted what he wanted and would stop at nothing to take it. These were the actions of a man obsessed, of an addiction controlling his body more than it was anything else. He needed, and she had the ability to give it to him.

Nothing had prepared her for this. But she was exhausted and her consciousness was still in that somewhat liminal space between the realm of the waking and the realm of sleep. So she rolled up and then her feet were touching the cold ground. Bare toes already curling, she padded over to him, her limp somehow under control until she paused right before him.

Katherine feared what he could see through her shift. The moonlight glimmered through the thin gray fabric, and she was certain it covered very little. And yet, she still held out her bare wrist for him to take.

He eyed her, gaze wide with some emotion she couldn’t name. But then she nodded toward his goblet. “Take what you need, Gluttony. Then I will go back to sleep.”

She recognized his expression. Disappointment. But he still cleared his throat, nodded, and then lifted a hand that suddenly had long, thin claws. He almost tapped a rather dangerous part of her wrist before she grabbed him. Gently, she shifted that glinting claw to a safer part.

“Here,” she murmured. “Otherwise I’ll bleed out in my sleep.”

She heard an audible click as he swallowed, but then he made a delicate slice and they both watched in silence as her blood slowly dripped into the goblet. There were only a few clinking noises before he stood.

He was so tall compared to her. She had to stare straight up to even look at him, and she could see him swallow before he gave her a hard nod and then fled her room.

“Strange,” she muttered as she turned to find a cloth to bind her wrist with. “Such a strange man.”

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