Page 60 of Demon Food

A knock sounded at my bedroom door. My smile vanished the same time Feloré gasped as he slammed the book shut, scrambling to hide it.

I squinted at the door. I’d been so enthralled in Feloré that I’d not heard the rustling of movement in the hallway. It wasn’t Lucc; I could tell by the lack of panic. It wasn’t my father. One could feel his presence from a hundred paces away. No, it was calm and nearly reluctant, like whoever it was didn’t necessarily want to be here.

That alone suddenly made it very clear who it was. I wouldn’t want to be here either if I were him.

I folded my arms, glaring at nothing. “Announce yourself.”

After a long moment, he said, “Neopal.”

My head bobbed in nods. Barring my father, it was quite possibly the last vultus I wanted to see, but I wouldn’t be giving him the satisfaction of knowing that.

I steeled myself with a breath, then I opened the door. There he was.

Handsome, healthy, and strong with his hair pulled back and twisted at the nape of his neck in the overly tight style he wore it. His bone structure had changed since I last saw him. It’d gotten sturdier. It was probably because of how much he got to feed in his fancy position as my father’s right hand.

But the look he was giving me was the same one he’d started giving me a year ago, like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. Why I was the way I was.

“Prince Alekus,” he said, bowing before me because custom demanded it of him. He was nothing if not adherent to every formal rule imaginable. Well, except when it came to illegally kidnapping humans, apparently.

“Neopal.”

“How do you do?” he asked, rising to a stand with one hand positioned on his sword and the other behind his back. It was the trained stance of my father’s brigade, and we both knew it well.

“How do you think I’m doing, old friend?” I asked, resting a casual elbow onto the door frame as I shrugged. “I am a prisoner of my own room.”

His gaze flitted past me and into my room. “Well, judging by your appearance, I would imagine the human is still alive. We’ve come to serve him a meal.”

I had to blink hard to notice the three humans standing behind him. The brown birds in a tree. They were different from the ones that accompanied Lucc yesterday. At least, as far as I could tell.

“We have come to serve him a meal?” I asked Neopal, lacing spite into my tone. “As in, you and the servants?”

It was satisfying when his eye twitched.

“Tell me, Commander.” I skated my tongue across my smile. “Are you enjoying your new duties? So many hours spent training for the frontlines, only to find yourself here. In charge of nibbles for a human.”

He bounced on his heels once. “It is an honor to do whatever my king asks of me.”

“Undoubtedly. It seems there’s no limit to what you’ll do. Is it also an honor to chain an unwilling human to my room?”

His gaze darkened. “It is when my king is worried about his son.”

“If he was really worried, he’d set me free. This is a waste of my precious time.”

He glanced back over his shoulder, his voice dropping the formality as he said, “He won’t do that because you look awful, Alek. You don’t seem to care how terrified your father is. Do you realize he’s meeting with the council? Fuck, and the clergy? Everyone is troubled. You need to eat.”

There was the real him. Beneath his model soldier façade was the vultus who’d once been my best friend. It was difficult to look at him without seeing the leather ball we used to toss between us on summer days or the fallen leaves we used to wrestle in. I could still smell the peat moss beneath the waterfall where we’d hide from my schoolmasters.

But it was also difficult to look at him because of how much we’d changed and how much we’d lost. What I saw now was not a friend. It was the death of hope.

I swallowed, forcing a calm into my voice that I didn’t feel as I shrugged. “I would love to eat. But like I told him, this is not the one.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You cannot honestly still be trying to convince everyone of that nonsense.”

See, the thing about Neopal? He knew better. He knew I was full of shit, because unlike my father, he knew me.

“Are you accusing me of being dishonest?” I grinned. “Easy, Neopal. He won’t be your king forever. Someday, that role will belong to me. Where does that leave you?”

He looked like he wanted to scream, but he swallowed it down like a good boy. Then he asked, as proper as ever, “May we enter?”