Page 6

Five

S late was still gone when Ruby climbed out of the bathtub.

Ruby wound a thick, fluffy towel around her body and waited. But she was getting cold again, and the demon was nowhere to be seen.

She bit her lip, considering. Nothing in this realm had hurt her yet. And Slate hadn’t told her to stay put. What harm could come from trying to find him?

She stepped into the cool hallway and stifled a shriek.

The dog spirit was waiting for her, tail wagging furiously.

“You scared the skin off of me,” Ruby gasped. She adjusted her towel and bent down to pet the dog, her hand almost pressing through its translucent fur. “Are you allowed in here, boy? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

The dog spirit licked her hand, unbothered.

Ruby kept stroking, lost in thought. “Is he kind to you? He seems…”

She trailed off uncertainly. It wasn’t like she trusted him.

But for all his monstrous traits—horns and fangs and tail and huge black eyes, his dripping tongue, and his hungry gaze like he was constantly holding himself back from eating her—he hadn’t done anything monstrous.

He had her completely at his mercy. He could do anything to her. And he had decided to…

…run her a bath and find her some new clothes.

Ruby had meant for him to find the clothes she’d left in the anointment room, but he had said he would find something more suitable. Whatever that meant.

She looked down the hallway. It was long and narrow, the stone cold and plain under her feet. It had a surprising lack of decoration, not like the bedroom she had been shown earlier.

Ruby turned back to the dog spirit. “You don’t happen to know where that bedroom is, do you?”

The dog spirit barked. Its ghostly teeth closed around her sleeve, tugging her down the hall.

“Oh,” said Ruby. “Alright.”

The dog spirit led her through crumbling hallway after crumbling hallway. Ruby tried to keep track this time, but she was never good at puzzles.

“If you’re leading me to your food bowl,” she began jokingly, stepping around a persistent drip that had carved a hole into the floor over the centuries.

The dog spirit made a muffled noise around her sleeve and stopped in front of a huge, dusty, ornate door.

Ruby eyed it. “You’re sure?”

The dog spirit barked happily.

Ruby pushed the door. It took all her strength before it started to creak open, and Ruby sighed in relief at the bedroom he’d shown her earlier: the same giant, dusty bed, the same decrepit walls. The fireplace was still crackling as if no time had passed.

“For a spirit who’s so good at finding things,” she said as she crouched in front of the fire, fanning out her long dark hair to dry. “You’d think you’d be able to find your way to where you’re meant to be.”

The dog spirit sat down next to her. Spirits didn’t feel the temperature in the mortal realm, but Ruby didn’t know if that was the case here. The dog seemed content enough to lie down in front of the fire with its paws stretched out to catch the warm air.

She scratched behind its ears. “You’re not meant to be here, you know. Someone’s probably missing you.”

The dog looked up at her, happy and uncomprehending.

“They are,” she said. “They’re waiting out there, somewhere. This realm isn’t somewhere you stay. It’s a place you wander before you figure out where you’re meant to be. At least, that’s what the Bygone… that’s what Slate says.”

She stared around the bedroom. Before Slate, she had never seen ceilings this tall. Never felt a water pump running hot. She had never seen trees dripping shadows or felt an inhumanly long tongue moving inside her.

It would all be over soon. Once he… prepared her properly, a thought that made Ruby’s cheeks flush and her stomach fill with heat.

Then, they would be able to complete the ritual, and Ruby would return to Sweetsguard.

Go back to her cluttered cottage on the corner of town where nobody visited unless they wanted a boil lanced or a pregnancy gone or a love potion she politely refused to make.

The dog spirit nipped her hand good-naturedly and jumped up, sprinting to the other side of the room.

“If you want me to follow, I’m quite comfy here,” she called.

The dog spirit whined and pawed at an obscenely tall wooden dresser.

“Is that where the Bygone keeps his treats?” Ruby grinned.

The dog spirit whined louder. Its paws kept scraping, and Ruby realized it was pawing pointedly at one specific drawer.

“ Is that where he keeps his treats?” Ruby wondered and stood. She kept her towel secure around her chest as she crossed the room and bent down in front of the dresser, the dog spirit’s whining turning excited as she reached for it.

“If you’re luring me into a trap, I’ll be very upset,” Ruby warned him.

She opened the drawer. It took two hands to close around the handle.

It was empty except for a piece of paper folded in the corner, yellowing with age.

Ruby unfolded it. Two familiar faces stared up at her, sketched in charcoal: one of them was Slate, wearing a helmet on top of his skull mask and smiling so wide she could see all his fangs. And the other…

Ruby’s breath hitched.

She knew that face. She had never seen it—not in its entirety—but she knew it deep in her bones.

“Paimon,” she murmured.

The goat deity had a furry arm flung around Slate’s shoulder, smiling just as hard. He was holding something in front of them. The paper was so faded it took Ruby a moment to realize what it was.

A demon head. Paimon was showing off a decapitated demon head.

Ruby winced. A sketch from after some gory battle.

She had no idea which one; news rarely trickled from the voids into the mortal realms unless it affected humans.

Any news that did come through was muddled with fiction and age.

It could have been a battle that happened before her great-great-great-grandparents were born.

She turned the paper over. There was a line written in neat, swooping cursive: cleaning up the wandering void with the goat.

Ruby frowned. Cleaning up? Were there a lot of demons in Slate’s realm? She’d never heard of that. She thought this realm was only for lost souls and unlucky travelers who wandered somewhere the veil was thin.

The dog spirit’s ears pricked. It turned to the door, barking excitedly.

Ruby shoved the sketch back into the drawer and slammed it shut, her heart hammering.

The door opened. Slate stepped inside, looking utterly unsurprised to find her so far from the bathroom he’d left her in. He was holding a flowing black dress.

“This is for you,” he announced. He laid the dress on the dusty coverlet.

Ruby stood, clutching her towel and trying to calm her thundering heartbeat. She could feel his unrelenting gaze upon her as she walked toward it.

Ruby reached cautiously for her towel. Slate had seen her lying naked over a stone slab. There was no reason for her to be self-conscious. But she couldn’t help the hot shiver that ran through her as she let the towel drop to the floor.

She gathered the dress and let it fall over her head. The sleek fabric against her bare skin made her gasp. She was used to cotton and wool; she had never felt anything so luxurious. Not to mention the dark blue jewels studded down the leg, framing a slit down the side.

“I have a mirror,” Slate offered.

He stepped back to reveal a mirror on the back of the bedroom door, towering over her.

She walked up to it and gaped.

Ruby stared at their reflection, a shaky realization coming over her. Her dress was the same shade as his robe. It could have been made from the same material, except no shadows were sloughing off her dress.

I look like I belong to him , she realized with a hot thrill.

Ruby ran a finger down the plunging neckline and shivered. Standing here below him, she looked like a devoted servant. Maybe a priestess. If her eyes got any darker, she could pass as his pet demon.

Or something even darker than that: she looked like something parents warned their children about. Like she should be dripping shadows right along with him.

Slate came up behind her. “Is it suitable?”

“Suitable,” Ruby echoed faintly. “I… yes. Where did you even find this?”

“I crafted it myself,” Slate replied. “I spun it out of shadows.”

Ruby couldn’t stop staring. Her stomach swooped. It felt like something huge had happened, only she didn’t know what.

“Why this?” she whispered. “What was wrong with my dress?”

Slate huffed and looked away. The shadows around his mask flickered in irritation.

Ruby tensed, waiting to be told to stop talking. Gods knew she was used to it from her town.

“You are bound to a Skullstalker,” Slate said finally, not meeting her eyes. “You should look like it.”

Ruby swallowed. She still couldn’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from her reflection.

“And you are bound to me ,” she said slowly, hardly believing her nerve even as she said it. “What should you look like?”

Her heart pounded, waiting for his response.

But Slate didn’t growl. His tail didn’t even sway in irritation. All of him stilled, even his shadows. Then he laughed, a clicking chirp that made her jump before she realized what it was.

“I am not in the mood to look small and weak,” he said.

I don’t look so small and weak now, Ruby thought, dazed.

“You said I was powerful,” she said quietly. “When I lit the fire.”

“Your magic is powerful. As it should be, away from that pale mortal realm.” He hesitated, his claw grazing her sleeve. For a moment, it looked like he would say something else. Then he turned from her, his loincloth flowing over her dress.

“You must be getting hungry,” he said dubiously.

Ruby laughed. He sounded so puzzled when he talked about human needs.

“Not yet,” she said. “But soon, yes. I can find more eggs if you guide me back to the forest.”

Slate snorted, rolling his shoulder in a way that reminded Ruby of wild animals crouching for a hunt.

“Don’t bother. I will find you food.” Slate turned toward the door, and Ruby’s heart jerked in her chest as his reflection vanished from the mirror.

For a moment, she’d almost felt… like she was something, which was ridiculous.

She was the witch of Sweetsguard, protecting them from the edge of town.

She was one of Paimon’s worshippers, drawing her magic from his patronage.

This was something different. For a moment, she felt like she had tapped into something bigger, deeper, darker . A half-baked fantasy she didn’t even know she had until he draped her in shadows and stood beside her.

She swallowed nervously. “Are… you getting hungry?”

Slate stopped at the bedroom doorway, the dog spirit on his heels.

“If you are asking whether I will eat you, I cannot. And the hunger is…” He paused, frowning.

“It is not a true hunger. I do not feel genuine hunger often. It is an opportunistic hunger, only conjured when I come across a mortal in the flesh.”

“In the flesh,” Ruby repeated. “As opposed to…”

“The mortals whom I encounter in this realm are usually dead,” he replied. He cocked his head. “What do mortals eat?”

“Oh,” Ruby said, suddenly forgetting everything she had ever eaten. It took her a moment to come up with: “Well, we eat meat. Eggs. Grains. Dairy. Dried fruit. Fresh fruit, when it’s in season.”

She paused, wondering whether to push her luck. But he’d made her a dress. Why not this?

“Chocolate,” she said cautiously. “If you have it.”

“I will find these items.” His head inclined as if he was going to bow. Then it jerked back up in a strange almost-nod, and he headed into the hall.

The door thudded shut behind him. The dog spirit darted out after him, jumping through the closed door with a playful bark.

Ruby threw herself onto the bed, mind reeling.

There was a part of her that kept expecting something horrible to happen: for those shadows trailing off his cloak to swarm up and swallow her, for his jaw to unhinge and expose a great red maw.

An opportunistic hunger, he had admitted, only conjured when I come across a mortal in the flesh.

It wouldn’t even be to fill his stomach. He would eat her out of pure want.

Ruby shivered. Even if he fed her and made her a dress, he was still dangerous.

His fangs and his obvious interest in eating her proved that—not to mention the sketch of that bloody demon head proved that.

She wished she still had her dagger, which was waiting for her with her old dress.

Maybe she could find her way back to the anointing room somehow. The castle couldn’t be that big.

Not that a dagger would do me much good , she thought as she remembered his massive stature and his huge fangs. But it would be better than nothing.

Even if she was starting to convince herself that she didn’t have to worry about him.

She pushed the thought aside and blew out a shaky breath, shifting against the bed. The dress felt glorious against her bare skin.

She raised her leg through the slit. The dress puddled around it, revealing her leg up to her plump thigh. She touched the spot where the fabric parted and imagined Slate watching her, those dark eyes filled with a focus nobody had given her before.

She… enjoyed how he looked at her—even if it was mostly hunger. She liked it the same way she liked the dress: with a strange, murky excitement she didn’t fully understand, even as it made heat pool in her stomach.

She slid a hand up the slit in her skirt until she was touching her core. It was swollen and sore at the entrance. Her clit was so sensitive she let out a hiss when she grazed it.

She closed her eyes and pictured Slate leaning over her, holding her legs open. But not for his tongue—for his cock .

She slid a finger inside. Slate’s tongue had stretched her so wide that soon she could fit a second finger and then a third. Wet noises filled the room, so lewd her cheeks burned.

Ruby rubbed that sweet spot he had found so easily with his tongue, her fingers moving faster as she imagined him filling her up.

I have prepared you well, said imaginary Slate, his voice full of scraping rocks. Look how easily you take my cock, little witch.

“Yes,” Ruby sighed. She reached down to rub at her sensitive clit, both hands faltering as she imagined Slate swelling inside her, his cock jerking as he filled her up.

Take it, said imaginary Slate, forcing his knot inside. And come for me.

Ruby tensed and came, her dress rucked up around her hips. Wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her, even as her clit stung with overstimulation.

After, she slid her fingers out and stared at them.

Three small human fingers and nothing more.

They had a lot of preparation to do.