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LANA
Everyone who knows me knows that I am a force to be reckoned with. My time at the tavern painted me as a considerate, civil woman who wasn’t going to take any shit. Especially when it came to the likes of men, who expect women to be robotic sex dolls, agreeable and without personality or opinion.
I thought Sys was going to be different. Maybe it was the spectacular sex that blinded me, the way I had been touch-starved for so many years, making me feral and stupid. Maybe I thought I felt something else in our entanglements that transcended physical rapture; maybe it was something I only wanted desperately to see.
We got back to the tower, and I demanded Systorak take his things and return to his own wing. He is back to his sorrowful, hopeless body language I interpreted when we first met, a lowly demon from whom no one expects anything amazing. I hadn’t at first either, but he had proven triumphant in my mind, my bed, and my heart.
But he is just like the rest of them. Possibly even worse because he isn’t human at all. He is a demon who is obsessed with status, even to the point of seducing an ignorant human female. He brought me into his world, earned my trust, and had me nearly falling at his feet.
The thought makes me grit my teeth, my jaw aching after holding it together the entire walk to the tower. I decide to lock myself in the bathroom while Systorak gets all of his things and leaves, which isn’t my usual style. I am a direct person, but I can’t look at him. I had become too attached, too close to the edge of completely losing myself in another person.
I thought I was an intelligent, capable woman, but here he was, plotting my death while sneaking into my bed.
“Lana,” he whispers, muffled through the door as I sit on the side of the tub. “I meant what I said in there. It has changed for me. It changed for me then, and I regret my decision to make that deal. Gravely.”
I am sitting on the side of the tub with my face in my hands, tears streaming down my cheeks in silence. I can’t let him see me this way. In fact, I never have let any man, or anyone at all, for that matter, see me in such a vulnerable state.
He has done enough damage.
“Just go, Systorak,” I demand, attempting to conceal the tears surging up my throat. “I don’t want to see you again.”
A harsh quiet fills the room, and a part of me realizes that I want him to fight for me. When he steps away without another word, closing the door of the bedroom behind him, I finally let myself burst into loud, weeping tears.
It comes out of me, gritty and rough, layered in sheer anger toward myself, how fooled I had been by my carnal pleasures and the novelty of the adventure. I squeeze my fists together tightly, then gaze down at the catalysts to all of this mayhem in my life … the coin embedded deep into my right palm, a constant sensation of tightness that I had grown accustomed to.
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter to myself.
I rise from the side of the tub and enter the bedroom. I feel the sting of regret as I notice all of Systorak’s clothing is gone. The room felt emptier than it had since we had first jumped into bed together. I scoff, pushing it all away, and lean into the one thing that has yet to let me down: practicality.
Lord Egretz wants my hand in marriage, to make me his mate or something, but only for the sake of my placement in the hierarchy. It would be an empty relationship, void of passion and caring regard, and would likely contribute to the withering of my soul.
So that isn’t an option.
I gaze down at the coin, opening my hand slowly. That was what these fucking demons wanted the most. They want the coin, so they can become the heir, to sit upon a throne of high status. Well, they can have it embedded into their bodies and singeing their skin for all I care.
I could try to pry it out again, but that would certainly risk injury to myself. It possesses magic-like properties, which means it wouldn’t likely give in to the average amount of human effort or devices. The dark elf mage I had met with Sheryl had informed us there wasn’t any other way to get it out beyond taking the rest of my arm with it.
“There must be another way,” I mutter.
Then, I think of Lord Egretz. Despite his eagerness and foul attempt at flirting, I feel I can use him to get exactly what I want, all while he, too, gets exactly what all of this bullshit has been about.
He can have the coin if he helps me remove it from my hand. He can take the position as heir and leave me to my tavern … to my loneliness and broken heart.
My eyes glass over once more, so I decide to put my plan into action. It isn't exactly foolproof, but I need to get this thing out of me. It has only poisoned my generally intelligent and wary brain.
I find the map I had seen a few days before and stuff it into a knapsack. I take a hooded cape to cover my lustrous hair, tuck it inside, and set off to Egretz’s lair.
The night is grim and broody, far more like a nightmare than anywhere on the minotaur’s isle. Trees sit in the field dark and gloomy, bent over as if to sigh, to express their indifference by personification. I try to keep my mind focused on the road instead of wondering about Systorak, what he is doing, or what he is feeling.
He’s the first person, or demon rather, who has ever made me feel this way. I have never been corrupted by emotion over reason, not since the early days of childhood. Being with Systorak made me feel even more powerful rather than the usual confidence that came out as a defense mechanism. I thought what was between us was meaningful, possibly even celestial in nature.
Alas, it is a story to be told and forgotten within the same breath.
I arrive at Egretz’s lair, and he is buzzing with excitement. He welcomes me inside his throne room which is as vast and luxurious as the ballroom Systorak, and I had danced in. Egretz maintains a phony, plastic facial expression as he guides me to a table filled with steaming food. It smells delicious to my growling stomach, but I try not to be distracted.
“I am so glad you decided to join me, dear Lana,” he says as a servant pulls out a chair for me. “I was going to send a demon to contact you, but you must have heard my call.”
I scowl but quickly replace it with that agreeable doll-like grin.
