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NOT MUCH LIGHTER BUT A BIT, UNLESS YOU COUNT HOW DARK IT STILL IS

Severath

“ W e’re bringing them back with us.” Severath loathed that he had no other choice, but the words came out anyway.

Severath loathed quite a lot of things, though, so it was no great sacrifice to add such a fraught decision to the list.

Garion had asked what they were meant to do with the women, and what the blazes else could he say?

Even if they were in perfect health, abandoning them in the Dreadmoor would be their undoing, but that was cold comfort.

Humans had not entered their city in his lifetime, but that lustrous history would be tarnished under Severath’s watch all because repugnant slavers took a wrong turn .

He snarled down at the body in his arms, her will to fight gone if not yet her life, but then bit back his anger.

It was a trial in itself to be taught what humans were willing to do to one another.

At least these ones would not end up chained to some auctioneer’s post and sold to the highest bidder.

There were six of them, not a single one left conscious enough to report a damn thing, but they were all still alive, which was more than could be said for their captors.

The bodies of four human men were already rotting in pools of their own blood.

Their belongings suggested the party was from Ankerick and once larger, but the Dreadmoor wasn’t kind to those who traveled off the carved ways.

Not that slavers deserved a grain of kindness.

Ozirax put the pieces together first. His actions were often reckless, but he was as sharp as his serrated sickle when it really counted, and he called for the slaver’s heads the moment he realized they were attempting to reach Cyrinth with a cartload of unconscious women.

His squadron dealt out proper justice, but it was brash too, and Severath would have appreciated even a few words of information first.

He would have also appreciated not being attacked with some human sorcerer’s vile potion, but the entire evening was already fucking him from horn to tail, so he simply added it to the list of loathed circumstances.

In contrast to being abducted and potentially enslaved, irritation of a much more mild variety was what a romantic male lead usually had to contend with, which wasn’t exactly fair, but he would make up for it in the end.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Rand sprinted over the severed torso of a man.

Severath grunted—he only felt the pain bursting behind his right eye if he thought about it, so obviously he didn’t want to discuss it either—and gestured instead with the burden he held.

Rand ignored the human, taking Severath by a horn and yanking his head closer. He was their triage healer, and though he was significantly better at wielding a short sword, he was wearing the horrified yet intrigued expression saved for the most extreme of injuries.

“Let me go and deal with this.” Pulling out of the demon’s grip, he thrust the woman forward, the closest he would come to pleading to have her taken off him.

Severath was a warrior, a squadron leader, the top ranked marksman in the guard—his arms were meant for pulling bowstrings, not carrying women around.

Admittedly, it was no great burden because she was as light as a drayk, but it had been a blazes of a hindrance getting her.

She might have disappeared if Severath hadn’t spied her stumbling blindly into the line of someone else’s fire.

Half naked and bloodied, she was as sure footed as a fawn on a frozen lake, and he had to throw himself atop her when that sorcerer attacked.

Severath was fast, but the fiery pain told him he hadn’t escaped unscathed, and the blood blinding his right eye was no help.

With the click of his tongue, Rand pulled his troubled gaze away from Severath’s injury and finally tended to the woman instead. He lifted one of her limp arms to inspect a bleeding wound and pulled bandages out of his bag.

Severath grunted again, motioning once more with the body.

“Yes, all right, I’m doing it,” Rand grumbled as he began to wrap her arm.

Resigned, Severath turned his vision up through the branches of a caligo alder to the misty sky.

Perhaps he should have just let her wobble off into the Dreadmoor and…

and what? Eat a vitchberry and shit herself to death?

Stumble into a zcoria pit and be set aflame by acid?

Wake an otsoran and be swallowed whole? No, she did not deserve to rot alongside the other intruders to his lands.

And, really, the otsoran didn’t deserve to eat her—from the way she smelled, it would probably be the one shitting itself to death in the end anyway.

From his arms, the woman made a small, pained sound, and Rand mumbled an apology as he tied off the bandage.

Severath held his breath, and while she didn’t come to, a deep crease formed between her black brows, and her lips curled downward.

How strange humans were with their earthy-colored skins and their rounded features.

Monster echoed into his mind in his father’s voice, but nothing about her evoked danger, and yet she still silently fought even in her sleep.

When Rand announced he was finished, Severath brought her to the righted cart because he supposed he was now in the business of carrying around unconscious women rather than leading his own squadron.

Ozirax was quick to direct the others in his stead, the bastard, but the pulse of pain in Severath’s head was enough to allow it. For now.

The back of the cart was ripped out, but its wheels still functioned, and the women had been piled inside. Stomach unsettled by their bruises, he knelt and placed his meager burden beside the others, taking quick stock that they all still breathed.

Throat tight, Severath quickly stood and wiped his hands down his front as if replacing the lingering malleability of human skin with the muck of the Dreadmoor was so much better.

The vision of his arrow driving through the neck of a slaver flashed into his mind, and at least that inspired a sidelong grin.

Shit, where’s my bow?

A scan of the battlefield that perhaps took a moment longer than it should have with his limited vision wiped that grin away.

The curved piece of wood he had hand carved from a rare Razmath’s yew lay snapped beside a sprawl of attea nettles.

It really shouldn’t have broken, but even the magical properties in the wood hadn’t been a match for that sorcerer’s spell.

He pressed a hand to where pain pulsed behind his ear, wondering how skin might fare under the same enchantment, and his fingers came away sticky with his black blood.

“Sev!” Ozirax stood right behind him, snarling and even less patient than usual but then that look fell away. The demon squared his shoulders, and the deep purple of his skin melded with the misty darkness. “Guess you really couldn’t hear me. Maybe you should sit on the cart with the humans.”

“Fuck off.” Severath pushed past him and called to Rand, who was rummaging through his triage bag. “Finished?” They had little time if they wanted to give the women the best chances—healers had limitations when a wound was left to fester too long.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ozirax answered. “We’re ready.”

Severath clenched a fist, but pain shot up his arm and into his neck. He gritted his teeth against the feeling, stifling a wave of nausea. “Let’s go.”

Ozirax led the humans’ horse they’d managed to salvage from the Dreadmoor as it pulled the cart along the nearest carved way.

They were dumb and nervous beasts, but this one was sturdy enough to do the job and at the very least it wouldn’t pose a threat in the city.

Garion took point, scouting ahead every few moments, and Severath stayed at the back, Rand at his side and worrying the strap of his healer’s bag.

“What?” Severath eventually asked, a murmur below the din of the cart.

“It’s uh…” Rand gestured to his own face, and Severath could feel the pain all over again. “Just go see Balran when we get back, okay?”

Severath wouldn’t need to seek out his healer cousin— she would be sure to find him—but his nod was enough to curb the uneasy squeezes Rand was giving his satchel. The journey back was silent until Ozirax came to switch places with Rand.

“You really look?—”

“I know.” Severath didn’t bother to glance at the other demon.

His eyes—or eye, the other still not working despite that he’d blinked away the blood—tracked the shadows deeper in the Dreadmoor.

White moon flowers dotting the mosses told him they would soon be in the relative safety of the Veilwood, but vigilance was always needed.

Ozirax sighed heavily, as if he had some personal interest in Severath’s well-being. When he didn’t get a response, he clicked his tongue. “This is wild, eh?”

“Wild,” he repeated with none of the other demon’s amusement.

The acrid rage of Ozirax’s announcement that they were dealing with slavers had quelled—he’d looked then like he could have killed the lot while the rest sat back and watched. Probably would have enjoyed that . Severath almost grinned at the fact he’d denied him the glory.

“But… humans .”

Severath’s innards pitched again. He wasn’t accustomed to nausea or anxiety, and to his worst luck, both were roiling around in his guts. “They’re harmless.”

“Harmless?” Ozirax snorted. “Not that one.” He gestured to the tallest of the women, her bronzy plait mussed and laying across her wide chest like a baldric.

Humans weren’t really harmless—it took only a brief glance at any of the women’s bruised faces to know that—but demons were faster, stronger, larger, and most were magically adept.

But humans had not been to the demon’s home city, had not been allowed to see what they had made of the life that had been forced on them, had not dared walk through their protection runes and mar the world they had built from the chains their ancestors had broken.

Severath’s unsteady gaze pinged back to the scrawny one he’d carried.

He had felt a fury echoing through her body when he held her.

If need be, she could be put down easily, of course, but she wouldn’t go without causing harm, somehow Severath knew, not least of all because he might feel a little bad for killing her.

“What are we going to do with them?”

“That’s for the council to decide.” It was Severath’s job to keep threats away from his home, but once they arrived, the humans would be someone else’s problem—someone better trained in largely frivolous things like communication and understanding.

What the council would decide to do with him after all this… that was a thought for another time.

“They’re going to cause problems,” Ozirax said, curiously empty of condemnation.

The exact same concern crept around in Severath’s mind, but at least he had the good sense to shut up about it. “Would you rather we cart them off to Cyrinth and see how much coin we can get?”

Ozirax didn’t even dignify that with a response.

Their ancestors had known what it was to be indentured, but once they had broken free of that torment, they had dedicated themselves to never being captive again.

Blazes, their enslavement was at the heart of the scouting squadrons’ founding—to keep the dangers of the human world at bay.

Severath glowered down at the pile of strangers as the cart rattled over the forest floor.

Harmless , he repeated to himself with the conviction of a demon who was not on the verge of delirium from pain.

They posed no threat and would in fact be at the council’s mercy.

And no human who had entered the demon city had ever left again.

But was that…was that not just the same fate they were already facing?

Not for me to decide , he reminded himself, and while the guilt didn’t subside, it was overshadowed by the pulsing ache in his brain.

A quiet but familiar mumble pulled him out of the unpleasant haze. The human he’d caught was saying something, but her words were indecipherable. He leaned closer to listen, but all sound was blotted out and his heart halted in his chest at what he saw.

A symbol was raised against the sandy color of her neck in silvery scarred skin. Severath was schooled in some of the human ways, and he had seen this mark before. Ankerick, the human city in the south, branded its criminals according to their crimes, and this one? This one was a murderer.