Demon Slave (13 page)

“
My queen, slow down. Watch
your step on the stairs,” he warned.

Wren was always trying to get her to be more
responsible, but she would be queen soon—the ultimate
responsibility. And Nadua had told her this was her time to be
reckless, and irresponsible. So she would be.

A stuffy voice halted her step as Ava
entered the great hall. Wren had to stop abruptly to keep from
running into her.

“
Avaline, why are you
running, child?”

Ava huffed in a breath. “Aunt Idesse, the
troops are back.”

“
That is no reason for you
to act like a commoner. The House of Dion is an ancient and
respected family line. Take care to do us honor. You are lucky my
sister, Odette, is not here to see.” Idesse was dressed, elegant as
always, in purple flowing gown. The royal tailors probably spent
months preparing every little detail to her specifications. Her
long white hair shone like silver spun with ice. “Come.” She
wrapped her arm with Ava’s. “Let us greet them
together.”

Inwardly, Ava groaned, knowing she would
have to walk at Idesse’s regal pace. She could practically hear
Wren grinning behind her.

“
How is your education
progressing, darling?”

“
Very well, Aunt
Idesse.”

“
And your gown for Sir
Baret’s ball?”

“
Uh...I don’t know. You
would have to ask Terina.”

“
You must keep on top of
these things. How dreadful would it be if the wrong thread were
used, or a button out of place. How embarrassing. I pity Nalphia,
for one, poor girl has no taste at all. She is forever walking
around in the most hideous garments. I asked her once who her
tailor was, just so I would know who never to
commission.”

As if doing her a great service, Idesse
divulged the name of the offending tailor, and warned her to keep
clear. Ava nodded, as she always did with Idesse, and tried to tamp
down her eagerness to see Nadua.

Finally, they reached the palace entrance.
The troops were coming up the long walkway. Ava smiled and waved at
the men in greeting, but dropped her arm once they came closer, and
their solemn faces came into view.

Her smile faded completely when Tamir came
forward and dismounted his edisdon to kneel before her. “Princess,
I regret to inform you...”

Ava couldn’t recall his next words. Her
world had split in two and the sound of it was deafening. She
backed away, not wanting to hear any more. A warm hand clasped her
shoulder—Wren—but her eyes were too blurred to see him clearly.

A moment later, she found herself racing
through the halls of the castle, not quite sure where she planned
to go. Anywhere to get away. Anywhere where she could see Nadua
again.

* * *

Marik trudged through the darkening forest
with growing frustration.

He’d been so close to taking her. Her soft
lips had been so welcoming, and surprisingly eager, making him
imagine what else her lips might be eager for.

Marik groaned, his shaft hardening once
again, even though he had just brought himself to come, twice—the
whole while watching her from a distance, as she explored the
shallow cave.

And still he couldn’t keep his thoughts from
Nadua. Even now, his instincts were clamoring for him to race back
to her and bury himself inside her. A hint of her arousal still
swirled in his head.

And she
had
been aroused, almost desperately.
At least at first. Her eyes had gone stark when Marik was ready to
strip her of that damn cloak, and she’d nearly begged him to stop.
Snapped from the Edge, he’d gone from thinking he would die without
feeling her flesh against his, to releasing her and drawing
away.

The astonishing thing about it was that
Marik hadn’t blacked out. He’d been almost coherent, which, for
being as deeply on the Edge as he was, was unusual. Perhaps she had
some sort of power over him. Maybe that was her gift...Some kind of
inherent control over those around her. It would explain her rise
to power over those archaic people.

Or maybe it was that he was finally learning
self-control.

He could only hope for the latter, because
the next time the Edge claimed him, he feared nothing would stop
him from satiating his lust on Nadua’s firm little body. Not even
her lingering fear of him.

Clearing his head, Marik continued his hunt.
He was searching for not only tonight’s meal, but that mysterious
clawed creature who had robbed him of his prey. If it had been a
wild beast defending its territory, it should have stuck around to
attack Marik too.

What was even more unsettling, all three
bodies were gone when Marik went to check the markings again. No
traces of footprints gave any evidence of who, or what, had taken
them.

Marik hurried so he could get back to
Nadua.

* * *

The demon came back to the cave just before
darkness fell, panting like he just run the length of the valley
and back. He had with him a small catch of yellowbacks—small furry
creatures, about the size of Nadua’s hand. They were mostly white,
but for the line of yellow that ran along their backs. Hence the
name.

When she was still learning this planet,
Nadua had thought them cute, until one of the nasty things had
speared her with its teeth. They were razor sharp and excreted a
mild venom. Her hand had been swollen for the rest of the day.

With twilight dwindling, Nadua and Marik
built a small fire for cooking. Nadua cozied up to it as best she
could. The cave wasn’t very deep, and gusts of wind periodically
swept the heat away. Marik sat across from her. Eye contact between
them was minimal.

The meat was cooked to perfection, tender
and juicy, with a hint of something Nadua couldn’t describe. While
Marik was cooking, Nadua had watched with curiosity as he crushed
up a mix of hard roots and sprinkled them across the sizzling meat.
He said he’d pulled them from the ground. It added a delightful
sweetness.

“
You have quite a talent,”
she said, recalling him mentioning something about being a skilled
cook. At the time she assumed he’d been feeding her
nonsense.

Marik shrugged in response.

His mood had been somewhat sour since his
return. Every so often, he would glance through the cave hole, into
the dark forest. She wondered if their earlier discussion still
affected him. Or what had gone unfinished. She considered broaching
the subject but decided against it.

They enjoyed the rest of their meal in
silence. Nadua figured he would go the rest of the night without
saying more than a few words to her, so when he spoke next, it
surprised her.

“
The one that threw the
ice.” He paused. “You called him a kay-something. What does that
mean?”

“
Kaiylemi. It’s a master of
ice. Not all Cyrellians, but a few, I’m not sure how many, can
somehow manipulate ice. Make it do what they want.”

“
Then, it was a Kaiylemi
who tried to imprison you in ice? Was it the same one as
today?”

“
A very powerful Kaiylemi
had made that cage. I don’t believe it was the same person. The one
from today could only manipulate small pieces of ice, probably had
been very young. No doubt those nomads felt very lucky to have had
him in their group. Kaiylemi’s are not as common as they used to
be.”

After another short
silence, Nadua asked, “What is it like on
Marada
?” If she were going to be
taking up residence there, she might as well know about
it.

Her question must have pulled him from a
deep thought because he looked up at her with an almost vacant
gaze. “It’s great. The ship provides everything we need, and then
some. It’s more like a high class cruising ship. You’ll be right at
home there, I bet.”

Nadua forced a smile. For the longest time,
she accepted that her home was with Ava, even though she’d always
known her time here was temporary.

Marik continued. “There’s entertainment, a
large room for exercise, an entire deck called the Sanctuary, where
plants grow to the ceiling—”

“
Plants?” She leaned
forward. “You have live plants on board?”

He nodded, adding, “And a heated pool.”

A heated pool!

There was nothing like that on Undewla. The
Cyrellian’s had no need for such a thing.

“
Well, we must find
this
Marada
at
once!” That pulled a large grin from him and she felt gratified by
the small achievement. That is, until her next inquiry. “Do you
have family there?”

The happiness seeped out of him. Pain
flashed in his eyes before he schooled his features. Nadua got the
sense that she’d asked the worst possible question.

“
No family.” is all he
said, and then he began arranging the pallet. One pallet, she
noticed, even though she had her furs and the fire had finally
risen the temperature around them to a comfortable
degree.

But when he motioned for her to join him,
the protest on the back of her throat died away when she grudgingly
admitted to herself that was where she wanted to be. The
realization had her questioning her own sanity—amending that it was
only because she hadn’t been with a man in over four hundred years
that she yearned for the possessive way he held her during the
night.

Once she was in place, Marik lazily fingered
the material of her pelt.

“
I hate this,” he declared.
“I don’t like the way it covers your scent. Once we’re on
Marada
, I’m burning it.”
Then his arm came around her, pulling her close.

Nadua was of a similar opinion. At times her
cloak felt like a cage she couldn’t escape, though she hadn’t known
about the scent thing. However, she was grateful for the protection
it provided.

“
If I feel I won’t ever
need it again, I might just let you.” It was unlikely that she
would ever come back to visit Ava. “Marik?”

“
Hmm.” He sounded half
asleep already.

“
Promise me I will be able
to say goodbye to Ava before we leave.”

There was a heavy silence. “I don’t know if
I can make that promise.”

Her body tensed. “I won’t leave without
seeing her.”

At length he replied, “Perhaps we can come
back, sometime in the future.”

We?

“
Not good enough. Promise
me.” When he made no sound Nadua added, “She’s like a sister to me.
Please.”

He sighed. “Alright, Nadua. I’ll do what I
can.”

* * *

Nadua looked up at a raging crowd. She was
standing in some sort of pit while the onlookers screamed and
shouted from their seats. It reminded her of the plays and
tournaments that were performed back at the palace, but there was
something much more sinister going on here. The people’s faces were
twisted in anger, their eyes shining with malevolence.

Movement to her right pulled her attention
to a bleeding, broken mass. The man’s slashed back was facing her,
his body struggling to pull itself off the ground. She realized who
it was before he turned.

Bile rose in her throat.

Two men with whips were striking him again
and again from behind the safety of thick shafts of metal.

With a snarl, Marik launched at them, only
to be thwarted by the bars. The whipping increased with enthusiasm,
pushing Marik back in the middle of the pit. The sounds of agony he
made tore at her heart. She tried to look away, but couldn’t.

The crowd cheered with Marik’s vicious
roars, making her hate every one of them. Nadua could see in his
vacant red eyes that he was lost to madness, filled with such
hollowness that she couldn’t picture this demon as the same Marik
she knew. He wasn’t the man who held her with surprising
gentleness.

He was a beast, nothing more.

I don’t want to see
anymore
.

Unfortunately, Nadua had never been able to
control her visions. She couldn’t make them start, and she couldn’t
make them stop. She had to keep watching.

To her horror, at the height of Marik’s
torture, a woman dressed in poor clothing was dropped into the pit.
She scrambled away, screaming and clutching the walls. Her foreign
pleas echoed in the arena. The crowd went mad with excitement. A
sick feeling nearly forced Nadua to double over.

Marik’s gaze settled on the woman. The girl
cried out to those who were standing above her, looking over the
edge and laughing.

Nadua begged her mind to make it stop.

When the booing began, Nadua looked at
Marik, who had moved as far from the woman as he could get. His
face was twisted in rage, his fists were opening and closing with
the anticipation of violence, but he remained frozen.

Then he charged. It wasn’t the woman he went
after, it was the walls around him, the ground under him. The
cement splintered as he cracked his fist into it over and over,
bloodying his knuckles. He went on like that until he collapsed
from exhaustion. The crowd was riotous, denied the brutality they
craved.

Four massive bodies entered the pit. Nadua
kept an intense focused on the two that held Marik still, while
keeping her back to the other two, who were working on placating
the deranged mob.

After it was all over, the people threw
rocks into the pit as they left. Marik took each hit huddled with
his back to the broken body left behind.

Her vision blurred and Nadua hovered in that
mysterious space between sleep and awake, every detail of the dream
burned into her mind. Was it only a nightmare?