Page 98 of The Demon Prince

Her heart had always been good. Always. No matter what had been thrown in her way and she wanted to argue with them. To say that they were the ones who had been poisoned, not her. Their souls were tainted black with jealousy and rage.

But she couldn’t say anything with blood coating her tongue and her arms over her head, desperately trying to protect her face and neck from the boots that flew from every direction.

A low growl rumbled across the moors. She heard him long before she saw him. Everyone had frozen and Katherine peered through her arms to see a dark shadow surging across the water. Not the boardwalk where there were broken planks and meandering pathways, no.

Gluttony raced to her side in a straight line. Monsters be damned, they all fled from the sight of the enraged demon who sprinted among them. The water didn’t even slow him down, but how could it? Even the moors flinched away from the horned beast that charged through them.

Her demon. Her monster, who hated to see her even get a paper cut, let alone endure a crowd of people attacking her. And she knew, in that moment, she could choose to save them. She could throw herself over the edge of this boardwalk and he would be forced to save her. But...

She didn’t.

She hesitated and in that split second, he attacked. He lunged for whatever flesh he could find. Hauling himself out of the moors and onto the town center with a powerful thrust of his body. His claws came first, slicing through the nearest man, who had been the last to kick her.

Katherine watched the man’s eyes go wide as he pressed his hands to this throat. The blood that spurted out between his fingers was almost comical. Like she was watching a play rather than a man die right in front of her.

Gluttony went for the next in a blur. His teeth sank into the woman’s neck and he ripped at her skin, gristle hanging between his teeth as she staggered away from him. And even in this moment she could see that the marks he left were not the same as the countless people she’d seen in the almshouse. It wasn’t the same. Not even his claw marks were the same.

No one here would see that, though. All they would remember was the monster who stood among them, heaving with ragged breaths as he dripped swamp water onto the planks. He was massive. Far larger than she’d ever seen him with horns so tall they jabbed at the sky. His red eyes glowed and he could barely keep his mouth shut around the rigid fangs that gleamed in the sunlight.

Then came the screams. Countless screams and shouts as the villagers tried to run from him, but he was so fast. She noticed he didn’t attack everyone, only the people whose boots she recognized.

Their blood splattered onto the raised planks until it looked like a river of red flowed through her town. He only slowed when people had run so far from him that he needed to choose who he chased after.

A group of strangers had remained, knives and wickedly curved blades now in their hands. One of the men she recognized from the boardwalk, and he stood tall and strong as he called out, “So the demon is here after all.”

Gluttony grinned, blood dripping down his chin. “You asked for a demon the moment you attacked her. And thus, you have received one.”

One of the men rushed forward, and then two others. But Gluttony didn’t even flinch. Those long claws reached for them, dragging them closer and allowing their blades to pierce through his flesh. He didn’t even react. He just leaned down and ripped out their throats with his teeth before dropping them dead to his feet.

The crowd still watched from a safe distance, and they all seemed to hold their breath as he pointed at her. “She is mine,” he snarled. “Any who touches her again will face my wrath. I will not stop at merely killing you, for that is a mercy. The next person to touch her, I will drain dry. Slowly. In front of all your loved ones, as I make them watch you die in front of them. Do you hear me?”

She could hear the sounds of dragonfly wings as they returned after the tussle. The fluttering sound vibrated next to her ears. The faint burble of the moors behind her, and the chuff of a kelpie who had been drawn by the scent of blood. It was all there, but not a single sound of human life. Not even a moan from the people he’d harmed because he’d killed them so quickly.

She started shaking. Her fingers wouldn’t stop moving, twitching, and then her hands followed like she didn’t know where to put them because that river of blood was coming closer to her. Katherine wanted to move away from it, but that would put her right in the moors. The creatures behind her had already been drawn to the scent of blood.

Blood that she’d spit into the water herself. Blood that her own people had drawn because she had dared to have feelings for this man who had been the only one to step in and save her.

But he’d done so much.

Eyes wide, heart thundering, she lifted her head to see that no one was offering to help her now either. They didn’t care. They just stared at two people they believed to be monsters.

Perhaps she should have hated them for that. Katherine wished she could get angry at someone, but the only person at fault was her.

She had started all this. She’d turned her town’s life upside down, and she’d changed Gluttony, too. And she wouldn’t apologize for any of it. She was sorry they were all hurting, but sometimes it hurt to do the right thing.

“Do you hear me?” Gluttony snarled, his voice pitched low and deep. His gaze sliced through the crowd one last time, so loud he made people flinch away from him.

Even the strangers seemed to back away. But not before Katherine saw the darkness in their eyes.

This wasn’t the end of their attacks against him. She feared it might be just the beginning.

ChapterThirty-Six

He had a hard time coming down from the rage. He wanted to rip into more of them. To feel their soft flesh parting beneath claw and fang. Mortals were so easy to torment, so easy to destroy. All it took was one crook of his claw and they folded underneath the weight of his anger.

But he was not here to hunt. He was here to save someone, and that meant he needed to turn his back on those who wished to murder him.

To murder her.

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