Leah
Rancor. Vyle. Baine. Malice.
Ominous names for horrifying places. Demon lands no human should ever see. But they’re whispered about back in Strata, and none more so than the domain tied to the harvesting of our souls, run by a lord no one ever sees in the human realm.
Except, apparently, when he decided to make an exception to possess little old me. It’s certainly one way to make a girl feel special.
“You’re the Lord of Malice,” I say stupidly when my feet are on solid ground again. He’s brought us to a courtyard of the castle, landing with no more effort than a slight bracing of knees as his wings concertina behind him, folding inward before disappearing out of sight altogether. In their place, shadows shift around his shoulders. You might not even notice them if you didn’t already know what he was.
Or who he was.
The Lord of Malice. I don’t know if I fully believe it yet—I haven’t quite grasped the scale of my bad luck to be bound to him of all demons. The moment he releases me, his hands dropping from my waist, I take several steps back, studying him in the fresh light of this information.
He seems far less interested in examining me—his gaze is directed over my head, toward an archway on the opposite side of the courtyard. “My name is Syrus,” he says.
I clamp down on a hysterical laugh at the normality of this introduction.Oh, we’re meant to be on a first-name basis now, are we? What should I call the Lord of Baine? Bob?
His mouth flattens into a thin line, and his eyes flick down at me for just a second. Long enough for me to feel the brush of his consciousness against mine.
“Call me whatever you want, human. It’s no concern of mine.”
Shit. I need to remember that anything I think too loudly—too directly—he can hear. I have to keep my guard up if I’m not going to seriously piss him off or spill all my secrets. And now I know who he is—Syrus, or Lord Syrus, or whatever—that’s more important than ever.
He’s moved on, nodding to the pair of demons coming through the archway.
“Don’t tell me Vizmodeus has you wringing your hands about the wards too, Quill?” Syrus says to one of them disapprovingly.
The demon who answers is huge, several inches taller than Syrus, with mottled gray skin and a bald head. He twitches his leonine nose, smelling the air, and his eyes—the irises as black as his pupils—fall on me.
“The chamberlain warned me about her, my lord.”
I swallow, wondering exactly what I’ve done to piss off this demon so soon. There’s another archway behind us. It would be massively risky to take a run at an archway leading who-knows-where, but if I absolutely have to get out of here, it’s an option. I size it up as discreetly as I can, making sure to keep my thoughts quiet so Syrus doesn’t hear my plans.
But his attention is fixed on the other demon now. He’s shorter and leaner than Quill, with silver hair and bone-white skin. In fact, his whole face looks startlingly like a skull, with eyes sunken into deep black sockets and a mouth that stretches wide, revealing too many teeth when he talks.
“It’s like I theorized: she doesn’t trigger the wards, either at the castle walls or—” he pauses, seeming to remember I’m present. He speaks in Cyraxinstead, the guttural words meaning nothing to me, before he finishes in the common tongue: “Not as long as she’s bound to you.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she’s not a threat then,” Syrus says. The Lord of Malice sounds bored again, his fingers drumming on his thigh like he wishes to be done with this conversation.
“Forgive me, but I doubt she’s harmless, sir,” Quill says, gesturing one of his hefty arms in my direction. “I can smell the blood on her from here.”
A sharp wave of nausea hits me as I look back down at the stains on my clothes and hands. My nose must have gone blind to the smell. I’m stunned there was even a brief moment I forgot that I’m covered in the gore of other people.
The demon lord’s head turns sharply toward me, then he looks away again, unfastening the catch of his cloak at his neck as he approaches the archway behind us.
“Yes, do something about that please, Viz, and put her in one of the northern apartments until I need her.”
He sweeps out of the courtyard, the shadows dancing behind him as he goes. Even though I’m left in the courtyard with a pair of demons who are plenty intimidating in their own right, I exhale in relief. There’s something oppressive about being around the Lord of Malice, like his power makes it hard to breathe. Or maybe it’s the fear of him jumping inside my head and taking over my body at any moment. My head already feels clearer with him gone.
The skull-faced demon, Vizmodeus, clenches his many teeth as he looks at me. I can see the bulge of his jawbone moving beneath his thin skin and sense he’s not happy with this task.
He says something to Quill in Cyrax, then jerks his head in my direction.
“Come with me.”
I follow after him. I don’t think I have a choice, not with the hulking Quill standing there, arms folded across his chest. Besides, Syrus said something about fixing the me-covered-in-blood situation. In a place where so much is wildly out of my control, I focus on that one small thing. I don’t know how long it will take before I stop hearing the screams of the sorcerers asthey died. As I killed them. But maybe it would help if I could wash up and change clothes and feel the tiniest bit clean again.
We step out into a network of crisscrossing corridors, and I try to orient myself. It’s obvious this building is very old, with stone rather than brick walls and imposing pillars which sweep up into vaulted ceilings. I stare up at the sharp ridges of the arches, layered one after another all the way down the hall like ribs, like I’m stuck in the belly of a huge beast.
