I had no idea how to respond. He sounded so forlorn about not being able to strip the flesh from others. He continued to creep me out, but the others didn’t mind that he would have skinned them.
“If we’d been demons, they would have waited for us to regenerate the flesh before asking us another riddle,” Hawk said. “But as humans, we would have died.”
“That’s, ah…”Gross, horrific, cruel!I couldn’t utter any of those words as I liked my flesh exactly where it was. “Terrifying.”
“It was,” Erin admitted.
“Now we play for fun,” Lix said. “Are you ready?” he asked Erin.
“I am,” Erin said.
“With pointed fangs, it sits in wait. With piercing force it doles out fate. Over bloodless victims proclaiming its might, eternally joining in a single bite. What is it?”
I pondered this as Erin sat back and crossed her legs at her ankles. Hawk gestured at my coffee mug; when I nodded, he picked it up, rose, and went to fill it. Watching the graceful movements of his body as he poured me another cup, I realized I could enjoy having him in my life.
I smiled when he returned and set the mug in front of me. “Thank you.”
I almost jumped out of my chair when he kissed the top of my head before settling beside me; there was something so natural and right in the gesture. My skin prickled as my body reacted to his nearness. Even if we ended up discovering we were opposites who barely tolerated each other, we could never deny the attraction between us. It amazed me the others couldn’t feel or sense it as my skin prickled and goose bumps broke out on my arms.
My attention was drawn back to Erin as she murmured the words to the riddle. Recalling the question, I tried to sort through the words, but a knock on the front door distracted me. Before anyone could rise to answer it, the door opened, and a voice shouted inside.
“Five minutes!”
A click sounded when the door closed again. “Corson,” Hawk said at my confused look.
I leapt to my feet. “I’ve got to get dressed.”
There was no way I could go to a meeting with the king and queen while dressed in Hawk’s clothes. I’d stopped caring about what others thought about my sex life a while ago, but I couldnotgo before my leaders dressed in Hawk’s clothes.
“It was good talking to you and thank you for breakfast,” I said to Vargas and Erin. “Let me know the answer to that riddle when you get the chance.”
“It’s a stapler,” Erin said.
“So it is,” Lix said with a laugh.
Chapter Seventeen
Aisling
Hawk and I slipped into the hall and nearly walked into a wall of bodies. I’d changed as fast as I could, but we were still a few minutes late. Demons and humans packed the hall as the king stood on the dais at the far end. The queen held her son in her arms while she surveyed the crowd with a look that promised death to anyone who came near her child.
At her feet, her youngest brother sat with a book in his hand. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and chubby little body, Bailey looked about three and a half or four years old. Her other brother, Gage, stood by her side. His lips were clamped into a firm line, his sandy blond hair was brushed back, and his brown eyes surveyed the crowd. No older than fifteen, he looked more serious than men twice his age.
Colonel Ulrich MacIntyre also stood on the dais and to the right of the queen. The colonel oversaw the humans at this section of the wall. His graying brown hair was trimmed short, and the lines on his face appeared deeper than the last time I saw him as he stood with his shoulders back.
“I’ve called for more troops to join us here, and they should arrive tonight or tomorrow, but we can’t wait that long to go after the horsemen,” the king said.
My gaze ran over the walls and the intricate symbols etched into them. In the grand scheme of things, I was relatively new to this demon world, but the power thrumming through this building radiated through every fiber of my being and made my skin tingle.
I didn’t know if that power was supposed to be mine for the taking or if it would smash me to pieces, but I was tempted to see what my flame would be like in here. With the tension emanating from the bodies around me, someone might take my small fire as a threat and lop off my head.
“We’ll be sending troops after the horsemen tonight,” the king continued.
Hawk shifted beside me, and I stifled a small bolt of panic. He would go back into the Wilds after thosethings. I was supposed to go too, but after yesterday, the plan would change. They couldn’t afford to send a bunch of troops to hunt the horsemen; even with new ones arriving, they needed as many people and demons here as they could get. They were vulnerable, and if the horsemen returned with more craetons, they might not be able to fend them off again.
Would they still send me into the Wilds?
Excitement pulsed through my veins at the possibility. I didn’t have a death wish, but I was determined to help bring down the monsters who ruthlessly slaughtered so many yesterday.
