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For him to grant me such a beautiful release at his hands.
Chapter 10
Heheldme,helpless,until the darkness fled. My desire to have the creature feast on my body turned to a deepening revulsion. I stared into his pale, smooth face, waiting for the fear and panic to come, triggering the whispers, but it never did. I just felt disgusted. Disgusted and exhausted.
“What the hell did you do to me?” I demanded.
He gave me a cunning grin. “Good to see you are getting your sense of indignation back.”
“Get your claws off of me.”
“As you wish. As soon as you regain the strength to sit up on your own.”
“You just—”
“Granted you a gift.” He brushed a stray hair from my face. “Because I resisted the very potent urge to feast on your helpless, and might I say, rather alluring body, you have received a type of magical immunity from ever being overcome by demon power in a hunter-prey snare again. You are welcome.”
When strength returned, I shoved against his chest and fell back on my butt in a fluff of skirts. The creature chuckled.
I struggled to my feet amid ruffles of taffeta. “Who are you?” I gasped as my heel dug into my hem, and I pitched forward.
He caught me against him. His long fingers brushed over my arms, with the slightest touch from those curved nails. Goosebumps stole over my skin.
“I am either your salvation or your downfall,” he hummed in my ear.
I jerked back, unsteady, and placed a hand against the throne room door as I worked my dress out from under my heels. “Cut the crap. Just give me a name or something.”
He scoffed. “So you can tell the faerie king who accosted you while he was away? I think not.”
“I already know you’re a demon and serve on the council of the High Nine.”
His head tilted. “True enough.” He grabbed my palm and bowed low over it. “The name is Ornan. The demons and creatures of the dark, for which I oversee, welcome you to the Otherworld. In honor of your return, I wished to grant you a gift.”
I snapped out of his grasp with a snarl.
He straightened, a crooked smile on his face. “Not that gift. The hunter-prey snare was… trust me, it was wholly unexpected by both of us.” With a flourish of his hand, three golden tokens appeared in his palm. He held them out to me.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Wishes. Three of them, as you see.”
I eyed the tokens, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”
That crooked smile remained on his face. His clawed finger tapped his chin. “Let me think. How does this work? You desire something, I grant it. That is how wishes go, is it not?”
Wishes for me. A solution. A potential solution to everything. If I dared trust the demon in front of me. “What’s the catch?”
“Ah, so she is not as naïve as she appears.” The smile now turned sly. “These wishes are more like bargains. You make a request of me, and I get to make one of you in return.”
So there were strings attached. Dangerous strings. “And you can grant anything I ask?”
His thin tongue ran over his lips as his eyes raked up and down my body. “Anything within my power.”
My fist balled, but I narrowed my gaze on the tokens. “And you can demand anything in return?”
Those inky black depths sparked with warning. “Anything within my power,” he said again. “But it cannot be gratuitous. What I demand must be within the same order of magnitude, if you will, of what you requested of me.”
I pressed my lips together. If I wasn’t careful, the line to my salvation might become a noose about my neck. And yet… I reached out and scooped up the tokens. They were warm, and I sensed the magic in them, as if they called to me. Claiming me. My wishes.
