“No, I shouldn’t,” Perian agreed. “If you could just get a message to the castle—”
But there was a short, sharp negation of her head. “They won’t let me leave. Can’t risk it. You don’t know—”
She shivered, but the thing was, Periandidknow. Fomadin might be blind, but Perian wasn’t.
“Please,” he whispered. “We can both get away.”
But she shook her head, hurried up with her cleaning, and then slipped out of the room again without another word, closing the door firmly behind her. She was scared, and Perian couldn’t blame her. He’d caught only a glimpse of the rest of the house through the door as they left, but he didn’t think it was very large. How did Perian think they were going to sneak away?
Perian was so tired, feeling it pull at him, a desire to sleep even though his head throbbed and he was cold and terrified. But it was a bone-deep sort of exhaustion, and was it because he hadn’t had sex? Did he need to feed? But it hadn’t beenthatlong since he’d had sex with Brannal, surely.
Maybe he was actually hungry? His stomach seemed to be uncertain about this, whirling a little, and Perian grimaced and decided not to think about food. Now Perianhad made himself thirsty, and he realized just how gross his mouth tasted, still coated with bile. He swallowed, grimacing, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.
He tried to focus on his restraints, but they really were solid and metal and looped through the main cross-piece of the headboard. Perian tugged and tugged, but all this did was rub his wrists raw. The solid wood didn’t move at all. The chain was too short to let him get off the bed.
He was trapped in a tiny bed in a narrow room in a small house with people who wanted to hurt him.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Venoran came into the room alone and firmly closed the door. Perian knew that he was in trouble. When the man smiled his terrible smile and Perian’s heart jumped, that terrible desire grew. When he stalked closer and Perian tried to back away, desire leaped again, making Perian feel sicker and making the other man feel more desire. He squished himself back into the corner, curled up his legs to make the smallest target possible, tugging on his restraints again even though it hadn’t worked before.
Venoran’s awful smile deepened. “You’re going to need a little convincing to tell me what I want to know, aren’t you?”
He reached for Perian, and Perian kicked out as hard as he could, missing the man’s groin dead on but still managing a glancing blow. The man leaned over with a grimace of pain, but without missing a beat, he slapped Perian with a hard, savage blow that made Perian’s face explode with pain, his ears ringing. He tried to shake the foggy vision away, tried to focus, but it was almost impossible.
“You’re going to pay for that,” the man ground out, and then he was reaching for Perian again, grabbing his legs, and the more Perian struggled futilely, the more the other man liked it, fingers digging into Perian’s skin cruelly tight, making him flinch. He was grabbing at Perian’s sleep trousers, yanking them down, getting more excited as he did so, and Perian’s panicking mind had a sudden moment of clarity.
What did carnalions do? They drew energy from people.
Perian could feel all the desire coming off the other man, and it was dark and twisted and one of the most terrible things that Perian had ever felt, but it was stilldesire.
Perian had never knowingly done this before, but it was what hedid, wasn’t it? And so Perian stopped struggling, closed his eyes, focused on that terrible feeling of rotten desire,andpulled.
He’d never tried to draw it into him before, but it had apparently happened without his even trying in the past. He didn’t want this desire, didn’t want to feel any of it, but heneededto, needed to stop this man, needed to stop him from hurting him, from hurting anyone, from going free.
Venoran’s grip loosened a little, his purposeful movements faltering. “What?”
Perian’s eyes popped open to see the man shaking his head, paler than he had been, blinking in confusion.
He refocused on Perian, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“Leave me alone,” Perian told him, panting. “Just… just go!”
Instead, Venoran dove for him, getting his hands around Perian’s neck andsqueezing.
Perian’s vision began to narrow, and he pulled harder at all that desire. He was a demon, apparently, and he was trying to stop a very bad man from hurting people. Perian was pulling and pulling and pulling, was trying to fill himself up with the grossest, most terrible desire that he’d ever felt in his life, but if he could do that, if he could pull it all out, if he could stop it, then he would be safe, then Fomadin’s sister would be safe. Then everyone else this terrible man might encounter wouldn’t need to be afraid.
Light spangled across Perian’s vision, which was going hazy, and just when Perian was sure that he was going to lose consciousness, the grip on his neck suddenly loosened, and the body on top of him went lax.
Perian gagged, managed to wiggle his legs, get them up, push with all his might, and shove the man off of him. He fell to the floor with a crash, which Perian realized belatedly was probably a terrible idea, but he needed the man to beoff him.
The door crashed open a moment later, and Fomadin was there. He stared in horror at the scene.
“What did you do?” he yelled.
Perian was already leaning over the bed, dry-heaving again, because this was the most terrible, most awful thing that had ever happened.
Fomadin came into the room and reached for his friend, checked for a pulse, and then his eyes widened with fear, and he scrambled away from Perian.
“What did youdo?” he shouted, scrambling to his feet.
