Page 61 of Demon's Bane

It hadn’t been enough to change my mind, and the harsh satisfaction on his face the day I’d shown up to move back home for good told me everything I needed to know about how he saw my failure.

I’ve been ignoring it, doing my best to be civil with him as I earn my way back into the esteem of the village. But now? When he turns that hard, accusing stare of his toward Joan?

I don’t care if he’s my own flesh and blood, no part of me will stand by and watch her be treated this way.

“Suspicious timing, is it not?” he asks her. “You arrive here, and only an hour later this catastrophic damage is done to one of our main mining tunnels?”

Joan sucks in an indignant breath, but I reply before she can.

“Watch yourself,” I tell him. “And try for some sense in that thick skull of yours. Joan and I could have both been killed in the cave-in. An accident that nearly cost us both our lives.”

“But you weren’t,” he spits back at me. “And now we’re left with this disaster to clean up. One we strongly suspect was noaccident.”

“You can’t know that,” Joan argues.

“Aye, we can.”

With a glance over his shoulder, another demon steps forward. A big, hulking male named Gorver with more muscle than brain. He’s another of my one-time friends who hangs with Tyvar and the close-knit group I used to be a part of.

He dumps a piece of thick glass tubing onto the table. It’s shattered at one end, with scorch marks running up its side. I look at him, puzzled, and have no idea what to make of it.

But Joan seems to.

“Where did you find that?” she asks in a horrified whisper.

“Near the site where the cave-in originated,” Tyvar says, watching her face with keen, narrowed eyes. “Care to explain how it got there?”

“She doesn’t know,” I tell him. “Neither of us have ever seen it before.”

“I…” Joan says, then stops, trailing off as she continues to stare at the broken thing in front of us.

A growl of disapproval rumbles in Tyvar’s chest, and I’m about to reach out and take him by the throat to shut him up when Joan finds her voice.

“This looks like something David might have made.”

She explains more about the wielder’s fascination with fire and explosives, and his proclivity for making incendiary devices.

“And how do you know so much about this wielder?” Tyvar asks, poisonous accusation threaded through his tone. “Is he a friend of yours, or a—”

“Enough,” I bark, but Joan lays a hand on my arm.

Her eyes are hard, resigned, and though I want to stop her before she feels the need to offer any more of herself to these demons who look at her with such derision, she speaks before I can.

“He’s someone I used to be involved with. Romantically.”

A flash of satisfaction crosses Tyvar’s face and he turns to me. “And you brought her here? Knowing she’s likely conspiring with this wielder? I know you’ve been a disappointment to us, cousin, but you’ve never struck me as such a fool.”

I keep my rage in check, but barely. “Joan has not seen or spoken to this man in years. There is no reason to—”

“And you believe her when she told you that?”

“Of course I believe my mate would be honest with me.”

“Yourhumanmate? If what’s been said about the queen and about all these human witches is true, they don’t even recognize mates. Not the way a demon would. Not in any way that—”

“Enough.”

Again, it’s my mother’s voice of reason that finally shuts him up.