Page 110 of Demon's Bane

It should be my first warning.

But I don’t register it, don’t have the capacity to do anything but put one foot in front of the other to find Halla, to help her, to get there before it’s too late, before I lose another person I love.

We turn a corner, and the narrow passage opens up into a small cavern. It’s lit with just a couple of lanterns hanging fromthe ceiling—barely enough to cut through the gloom—and my eyes dart around the space, frantic, until they land on…

Halla sits slumped against the cave wall, a nasty cut on her head spilling blood down the side of her face. I rush to her side and crouch down, feeling for a pulse at her throat with a crashing wave of relief when I find it—steady, for now.

That relief, however, quickly fades.

No one else is trying to help her. Not Gorver, and not the three other demons I finally take notice of as I glance over my shoulder.

The wrongness of it all sours my gut and burns through my veins in deep, sickening suspicion.

This is not a section of the cave where miners have been assigned to dig out from the cave-in.

There are no scattered rocks here, nothing to suggest things happened like Gorver claimed.

And, speaking of, Gorver has gone utterly silent now that we’re here.

It all tugs on that sense of wrongness, twists and sharpens it until a growl climbs the back of my throat and I rise into a half-crouch with my wings shielding Halla behind me.

“What is the meaning of this? Why is no one helping her?” I ask, voice low and edged with the violence I’m more than willing to visit upon whoever hurt her.

Because one thing is very clear—this was no accident.

Behind me, I hear the faint whistle of Halla’s breath, the only thing keeping me from losing it completely.

There’s still time to get her out. There’s still time to get her help.

No matter who I have to cut through to get it.

Gorver ambles over to one of the other demons in the cave, a young male named Balthar who has the good grace to look uneasy as he takes in my fighting stance and hears the threat inmy voice. Gorver leans in and says something into his ear, and the boy gives him a curt nod before turning tail and darting out of the cave.

Gorver walks to another male next, Cerwin, but this one doesn’t leave after whatever Gorver says to him.

Cerwin takes his place near the cave’s exit with his legs braced wide and one had resting on the pickaxe hanging at his waist.

“I asked you a question,” I snarl at Gorver where he’s talking to a third member of his crew. A female named Vira with a nasty scowl on her face and her hair hanging in a long braid over the axe at her back.

“So you did,” Gorver says, and picks up something at the far edge of the cave.

A club. Blunt and inelegant. A crude weapon for a crude male.

“And I’ve got one for you, too. Where’s that delicious little mate of yours right about now?”

Time seems to lose its shape. Each heartbeat might be its own endless hour, each second crystallized, drawn down to a concentrated focus that has all the rest of the realm melting away.

My mate has been threatened. My sister has been hurt.

I rise, unarmed. I have no weapon and nothing other than the knife-sharp certainty that not a single one of these demons will stand in my way.

“Stand down,” I say, letting that focus turn the words into a deadly certainty.

“Or what?” Vira sneers from her place near the entrance of the cave opposite Cerwin.

“Quiet,” Gorver snaps at her. “We’re on orders to keep him here until Tyvar gets back.”

The knowledge that my cousin is involved in all of this barely registers in the face of everything else.