Page 99 of Demon Food

I adjusted my cuffs in the mirror, vamping at my reflection, stalling for time as he likely sprinted down the hallway, slipped out the service door, and hopefully ran to the knights’ cottages across the orchard. After a moment, I cleared my throat and asked, “Which one of you is in charge?”

One of them stepped forward, his voice strong and militant as he said, “That would be me, Your Grace.”

“Did I or did I not say I was called to prayer?”

He looked a bit confused. “Yes, Your Grace. You did.”

“Then why are you still standing there?” I flung a hand toward the door. “Lead the fucking way.”

28

FELORÉ

My head was spinning as I descended down a spiral set of stairs, encased in huge rectangular bricks of sparkling stone. Secured to the wall every few paces were torches, which illuminated the deep charcoal stones that glittered so heavily, it was like they’d been crafted from thousands of tiny mirrors.

Leading me down a long, dark helix was the king.

Nausea prickled my stomach. I couldn’t tell if it was the fact that I was following him, or the look I’d left on Alek’s face. Like he was more than worried. Like he was heartbroken.

“Have you enjoyed your stay at the palace?” the king asked without looking back. “Well, at least what you’ve seen of it.”

I glared at the back of his perfect hair, ringed in his spiked crown.

My fingertips twitched at the idea of shoving him from behind with a lifetime of hoarded rage. Sending him toppling stair after stair, like a clot of hair down a drain. But he wasn’t like Alek. He fed so well that whatever minimal damage I caused would heal in seconds.

Not to mention, there would be no recovering from such an offense. I’d witnessed his powers. He could snap my bones without lifting a finger.

“Dare I say, the food must be better than what you’re accustomed to,” he continued, pausing once he stepped onto the landing, white light bleeding onto his face. “More flavor, I presume? Better balanced, no?”

A sour taste budded in my mouth at the smile he dared to show me. Or the hand he held out for me to take.

It wasn’t like I had a choice but to follow him—I’d been without choices for a very long time. But I would be dammed if I took his fucking hand.

Which didn’t matter, because when I met him on the landing, he circled an arm around my waist and pulled me closer to whisper into my ear, “It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Palace Ser Novithia.”

My breath caught in my chest when he guided me into the light.

I’d been asleep when they brought me here, so I hadn’t seen it. But this. This was…huge.

It was huge. And grand. And extraordinary. A long, cathedral hallway with a hundred windows lining one side and ceilings so high they had to have kissed the clouds.

It was so different from Alek’s room. None of the ebony wood or heavy furniture. It was bright, painted in glimmering silvers and dusky blues. And gods, it was so fucking busy.

It’d been me and Alek alone in his room. I would’ve never imagined that just below us, there would be dozens of bustling servants with their folded white hats upon their heads, zipping down the hallway, and somehow avoiding collisions like a coordinated dance.

They each stilled as we approached, bowing all the way to the floor, their aprons pooling around them until we passed. Then they were up again, carrying loads of linens or baskets of green lettuces in their arms. One was holding a baby goat.

Everything glittered. Even the stone tile of the floor we walked upon had shimmering quartz speckled throughout. I’d heard about the palace’s extravagance, and the extent was beyond anything I could’ve imagined, but the lavishness wasn’t the most jarring part.

That would be the artwork.

Huge, salacious paintings clung to the wall opposite the windows, each one featuring a vultus and a human captured candidly during the throes of passion, as if the painter had the most intimate perspective.

One painting we passed featured a vultus bending a human man over a table set with food, fucking him in the ass while soup spilled down the tablecloth. Another was from the perspective of an onlooker, with just the back of a woman’s head, her legs hooked over a vultus’s shoulders. Yet another was a picnic scene with a female vultus sitting on a man’s face as he lay atop squished bunches of purple grapes.

In each one, the vultae were dominant and controlled. The humans were mid-rapture. I’d never seen such artwork in all my years. I was far from priggish, and I could feel my ears heat at the detail of each one.

“Do you like them, my sweet?” the king asked.