Page 5 of Drawn to the Demon Duke (Sombra Demons)

THREE DAYS

SUSANNA

H e brought me to his world through a portal, said I was his in English , then tossed me into a dungeon.

How rude.

I did try to call after him, telling him it was a mistake.

I mean, if I can understand him, then he can understand me, right?

I don’t know what happened, if his picking me up and carrying me through that fiery portal made it so that, once I was here…

wherever here is… I could suddenly speak his demon language, but when I told him to wait, I heard English, but the sounds my mouth made were anything but.

Deciding I would deal with that later, I refused to let the big white demon walk away from me.

The purple-eyed mage disappeared once he removed the chains and closed the door behind me, but at the sound of my voice, Haures—because I’ll be darned if I call him Duke —hesitated just enough that I knew I had his attention.

He turned slowly. “Yes?” he grumbled.

So he wasn’t happy. That made two of us.

I moved toward the bars, gripping one in each hand. “Okay. Look. My name is Susanna. I didn’t mean to bother you or anything, and if it’s fine with you, you can just send me back home through that portal thing. That would be rad. I’ll be out of your hair?—”

Haures lifted his hands, running his claws through his long, white hair, before saying pointedly, “You are not in my hair, mortal. You are exactly where I want you to be.”

I squeezed the bars so tightly, my fingers ached. “Can’t I just go home?”

He sniffed. “For now, you are home.”

Only it’s not my home. It’s not any home.

It’s a dingy dungeon, with chilly walls, a narrow cot, a single blanket folded up at the bottom, and—when I finally realized he’s gone away and wasn’t coming back—a friggin’ hole in the corner that has to be a toilet.

It’s weird, though. I put my hand over it, curious, surprised when there’s just enough suction to suggest that it’s like a vacuum.

You do your business, and the hole takes care of it more efficiently than a flush.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t any running water in here. On the other side of my cell, there’s a… I guess the best way I can describe it is a tube. There’s a top to it disappearing into the ceiling, a bottom that eats through the stone floor, but about a one-foot gap in between.

As curious as Alice, I thrust my hand between the gap. Only too late do I think that that might’ve been a stupid thing to do, but I sigh in relief when all that happens is that a steady flowing stream of warm water trickled over my fingers.

With water in one corner and a weirdo toilet in the other, this is clearly a place where someone could be abandoned for a long, long time. Without food, I could starve to death, but before I can even start to think that that’s my fate, another demon appears outside of my cell.

For a second, I think it’s the purple-eyed demon who—on Haures’s order—trapped me in here. That gets dashed to bits when the amorphous, black shadowy shape with hazy horns and broad shoulders stalks down the hall, stopping right in front of my cell.

His eyes aren’t purple. They’re not blue, either.

This guy is green—and that’s not all. As I peer through the bars at him, the weirdest thing happens. In between one blink and the next, he goes from a mass of shadows to a nearly seven-foot-tall demon somewhat similar to Haures.

There are a few notable differences. This demon has deep-red skin, long black hair, and a long nose.

He’s still huge, just not as massive as Haures, and he holds himself more rigidly than the duke.

In my limited experience with both, Haures is all coiled-up tension, a dangerous demon masquerading as a crown-wearing duke. This demon? He screams ‘soldier’ at me.

Oh, and while Haures watched me earlier with a hint of heat and barely concealed interest that I’m pretty sure I’m not making up because I’m delusional, this guy? All I see is wariness and annoyance.

And food.

I take a step away, frowning. He didn’t have a plate of food before when he appeared at the bottom of the stairs before marching down the hall toward me.

Now? He has a crystal plate piled up with something that has to be charred meat.

It looks—and smells—like barbecue, thought that obvious fire scent might actually be coming from the demon instead.

I’m sorry. I should be grateful that they’re not intending for me to starve, but…

“Where did that come from?” In case he doesn’t know what I mean, I point. “The, um, plate.”

The green-eyed demon glances at it. “I held the meat in my shadows to keep it warm.”

In his what ?

“Eat it,” he orders. He crouches down, sliding the plate under a small gap between the bottom cell bar and the floor.

He twists his wrist and, suddenly, he’s holding a crystalline fork-type thing.

He tosses it on the plate, and it must be made of stronger stuff because it doesn’t shatter.

“His grace will have my horns if he discovers that I was tasked to feed his mortal and you went hungry on my watch.”

Oh, sorry. Don’t want to get you in trouble…

I grab the plate, eyeing the meat closely. “What is it?”

“Ungez,” is his answer, and I guess my newfound built-in translator goes beyond just communicating with the demons because I have a sudden mental image of what he means.

It’s… I don’t know. Made of the same shadows as the green-eyed demon was before he turned solid, with white eyes and the shape of a normal housecat on Earth, it has pointed ears, a pointed face, and a large, bushy tail that reminds me of an oversized squirrel.

Darn it, it’s cute . Sure, this one is dead and cooked, but I… yeah. I’m no vegetarian, but I’m not hungry enough to gobble that down just yet.

I set it down on the edge of the cot. “I’ll, uh, eat it later.”

He jerks his chin, then turns away from my cell. He turns away, but he doesn’t actually leave.

I take the chance to plead my case. “So… I’m not supposed to be in here. I think this is all one big mistake.”

That demon I summed is supposed to be my true love, not my jailer .

He shifts his bulk, looking over at me.

“There is no mistake. Duke Haures’s first law says that humans are not allowed to learn of Sombra. Our realms are kept separate. Mortals and immortals”— immortals ?—“do not mingle unless the gods will it.” His green eyes darken. “How did a wee creature like you catch the duke’s attention?”

Wouldn’t he like to know…

At least I understand one thing. If I inadvertently broke one of the laws of this place, that would explain why the demon duke’s first instinct was to put me in the dungeon. Plus, I learned something else, too.

“Sombra,” I echo, purposely ignoring his question. “Is that where I am?”

In retrospect, it’s kind of obvious. Grimoire du Sombra … it would make sense that the spellbook was talking about a place. True, I convinced myself that ‘Sombra’ was, like, a wizard or something and these were his spells, but maybe I wasn’t all that far off…

“It is our realm,” he confirms. “A refuge for demons and demonesses.”

But not humans, I guess.

He turns to leave again, but pauses when I throw one more question at him.

“Hey. What’s your name?”

He hesitates, as though not sure he wants to share it.

The demon just admitted what I suspected: he is a demon. I remember some of the books I read on demons and the occult while I was endlessly researching the spellbook. There are certain mythological and legendary creatures that, if you know their true name, you have power over them.

Hey. It’s worth a shot.

When he finally grates out, “Glaine,” I’m not so sure me having it will do anything since he gave it up at all. Still, I try.

“Let me out of this cell, Glaine. Help me go home.”

Not like I want to. For twelve years, I convinced myself that there has to be more than my mundane life. I finally have proof of it. If I was free to explore, or Haures really was my true love, ready to welcome me to his realm, I’d choose to stick around in a heartbeat.

But since I’m locked in a cell…

Glaine’s eyes flash angrily. He bares his fangs at me and, for the first time since I arrived in Sombra a few hours ago, I’m just a little nervous.

He moves toward the cell, so close the tip of his long nose nearly reaches past the bars. “I am the head of Haures’s guard. The duke has my loyalty. Do not ask again.”

Okay, then.

I don’t. The way he looks down at me so fearsomely, I know better than to test him.

Does that mean I keep my mouth shut?

I’m a younger sister. Of course not.

“How long does the demon duke guy plan on keeping me down here?”

My only answer is the slap of Glaine’s solid feet against the stone hallway before he changes forms again, becoming shadow and vanishing up the stairs.

Darn it.

Glaine might not have had an answer for me, or any of the other guards that come to tend to the human in the dungeon.

Now, that might be because the head of Haures’s tipped them off not to be too chummy with the human because I can’t get a word out of any of them.

I even thought the magic wore off and they couldn’t understand me anymore, but whenever it’s Glaine who comes down to patrol the empty dungeon, he’ll at least talk to me even if it’s just to snap orders at me.

Plus, there was another green-eyed demon who must’ve felt some pity for me, because when I called after him that I’d like to at least have a book to read, he brings me one.

So, no, they didn’t know how long I’d be stuck down here without really knowing when that would change, but on the third day I get my answer when I wake up out of a slight doze, sit up on the cot, and find Haures watching me sleep from the hall.

I don’t know how long he was there. I don’t have any idea what time it is. I lost all track of it, and only wish I’d remember to put my Swatch watch back on after I finished washing dishes the day I was nabbed by the demon duke.

That was only a nap, though, so I still consider it the third ‘day’. I also don’t know what took so long for Haures to check up on his human prisoner, but I’m not too keen on the way my heart jumps giddily to find him standing within arms reach.

Darn it. I’d done everything I could over the last three days to pretend that I imagined that initial pull toward him, then the jolt when he touched my skin after having the purple-eyed demon. I thought it worked—and then our eyes meet and I feel zapped awake.

Like our connection is electric in a world that doesn’t have electricity, though it is magic.

So, it seems to me, is Haures.

There’s something about him. You’d think that, after making me his prisoner, I’d never want to see his face again. If only.

I can’t deny there’s something pulling me toward him. The way he’s staring at me now… I almost want to pinch myself to make sure I am awake.

It wouldn’t be the first time I thought I saw him there in the gloom. Not even when I was conscious, either.

You see, I dream about him. And I know it’s Haures because I don’t change his features at all.

It’s like my subconscious has no problem with his monstrous appearance.

And, really, is he that much of a monster; looks-wise, I mean.

So he has horns. Claws. Tusks. Take them away and he could be any bodybuilder on Venice Beach, just without the golden tan.

Crud. I’m attracted to him. He locked me in a dunger, and as though he’s the villain that the ingenue heroine can’t help but want, I had to fist my hand to keep from reaching through the bars and see if his skin is as warm as something tells me it would be.

I clear my throat. It’s thick with something. Sleep, maybe, or an irrational lust that has me squeezing my thighs together as I stay seated on the cot.

“It’s you,” I say, pretending like I haven’t spent the last three days hoping to see him for a third time. “Are you finally going to send me home again?”

A pang in my chest has me struggling to cover up my wince.

I ignore it.

Over the last three days, I’ve had plenty of pangs like that. There’s this strange, unsettling feeling, deep in my chest, that seems to be connecting me to Haures. I don’t understand it, and thought I don’t not like it, it’s grown annoying when there isn’t a darn thing I can do about it.

I can go. I never got the chance to read the ‘promise’ part of the verus amor spell. I stopped at ‘manifest’, and it’s pretty obvious that part worked. If I promised myself to him, I don’t think I could leave Haures, but since I didn’t …

We can chalk this up to a silly little girl playing around with forces she didn’t understand, despite all the years of research and correspondence she had that made her believe otherwise.

Sound good?

To me, maybe, but not Haures.

At first, he shakes his head. So that’s a no, I’m not going home. But then he crooks his finger, gesturing at his bulk with his claw.

“Come with me, mortal.”