Page 71 of The Demon Prince

But time had not been kind to their resident healer. His once golden hair was now streaked with yellowed grays. His skin had sagged and sallowed, and the bags under his eyes were loose. He looked perpetually tired and even when he wasn’t tired, he just looked angry.

And right now, he was more angry than she’d ever seen him.

Katherine needed to tread carefully. Licking her lips, she moved to the other side of the body and brushed the woman’s hair out of her face. “It is a shame to see so many strangers in our town lately. They seem to not understand how things work around here.”

“Shouldn’t that change?” Alexander looked up at her then, his eyes burning with rage. “They see the problem. They understand our plight. You are quick to deny them when they are the ones offering a solution, Katherine.”

She furrowed her brows in confusion. “I’m not sure what you’re saying, Alexander.”

“Is it true that you’ve been traveling to Gluttony’s castle?”

She could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed. How did she respond to that? So few people knew what she had done, and that was only because she refused to brag. Katherine hadn’t made the deal with Gluttony to be a martyr to her people. She’d done it for... Well, she wasn’t all that certain these days why she’d done it.

But she wasn’t going to lie about it, either.

“Yes,” she replied after a brief hesitation. “I have been going to his castle. I made a deal with him. My blood, and my blood alone, so that he would leave our people to their own devices.”

“And you believed him?”

“I do.”

Alexander pounded the metal surgery table with his fist. “That sounds like you still believe him, Katherine, and I thought you were smarter than that.”

Her jaw dropped open before she could catch herself. “What do you mean? He’s not doing this, Alexander. Look at the wounds! We have spent years treating women who came in after making a deal with him. The wounds don’t look like that.”

“He’s gotten more bold, more hungry. He’s eating our people, Katherine, and he’s killed before.”

One.

He’d killed one person. They’d saved all the others, and Katherine knew because she’d been there. And she couldn’t imagine Gluttony killing anyone, even though she was certain he had done it before.

He didn’t want to murder people. How did no one else see that but her?

“Alexander, I think there are a lot of people saying things that are simply not true. Right now, we have to focus on what we can see and what we can fix. That is our job as healers.” She was botching this, but really, what did the man expect from her? “I do not believe, in this instance, that he has done anything wrong.”

The man who had paid her for a rather significant amount of years lunged for her across the table. Though she flinched, Katherine couldn’t pull away fast enough. Alexander’s fingers pinched her chin and forced her to tilt her head down.

“Look at her,” he snarled. “Look at this woman who could have lived until she was well into her eighties. Look at the life he has taken and tell me again that you believe him innocent.”

Because he was so adamant, and because his fingers hurt, she looked.

This young woman had been beautiful in life, she was certain of it. Her skin was clear of any acne or scars. Her lovely dark hair billowed in pretty curls that framed her elven features. Lovely, likely a woman who many men had tried to win, and none of them had succeeded. Because she was here. Dead.

But those marks around her throat were not made by anyone’s teeth. She’d seen Gluttony’s fangs up close and personal. She knew how wide they were and what damage they might do, and it was not that.

He could not tear holes that large. He could not rip through flesh like it was paper and leave it so mangled that it appeared she had been skinned.

“This was not him,” she replied. “And if you were in your right mind, you would know it was not him. One of the creatures in the swamp, perhaps. Or those strangers who have come into our home and spread these lies.”

He jerked her head to the side, now forcing her to look at him. At all that anger that simmered underneath the surface. “He has warped your mind. Some magic spell has bound you to him.”

“I am sound of mind and purpose.” Katherine placed her hand calmly over his, coaxing him to release her face. “I know you want to point fingers at the villain, Alexander, but I don’t think we know who that villain is yet.”

He watched her like she’d lost her mind. Staring at her with wide eyes and a mouth that opened over and over before he finally said, “I cannot have a woman who sees so little working for this clinic.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are blind to those who harm others, and that makes me question why you are working here at all. Are you stealing blood for him? Draining more of these victims before they can die?”

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