Page 35 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

Lullaby

I rose to the sky beside my body, but I lingered. It felt like the wind carried me, and I alternated between hefts and shivers of movement. I felt warm, timeless, laying on a cloud to die all over again. But when I heard the sounds of night, I was home.

Sleeping in a cot by Mom’s kitchen fire was the best part of being sick.

Mom hummed as she worked. I lay warm and comfortable under my favorite quilt, surrounded by the aroma of her cooking, the gentle touches, and everything that meant love.

The noise of my siblings or the kids my mom would watch played and laughed, drifting in and out of my dreams. Mom would remind everyone to whisper while I slept, or to play outside.

The little jerks would climb all over me, never listening for long. I never minded; they knew that.

There was a tree just outside the window with deep-grooved branches that would wind up to the roof, and Oren was teaching Bella how to climb it.

I kept listening to my mom’s lilting voice between pauses, the high notes at the end of each whisper, the shared lullaby on so many nights when Dad was working late.

Through my closed eyes, I heard her chopping the vegetables into my favorite stew. Gamey rabbit with a hint of spices in the boiling pot. Were they all here? I’d missed them all so much, and if I could open my heavy eyes, I’d be home.

I didn’t recognize the stone ceiling—if you could call it a ceiling.

The stones were jagged, and … glowing? Not the Oria glow, but a creamy, ethereal white permeated the stones of the cavern, giving the misty corners of the room a gentle, otherworldly light where the orange flickers from the fire couldn’t reach.

I fell back, listening to Mom’s humming, listening to the children play.

It took a long time until I had the strength to open my eyes again, but my mom’s lullaby anchored me.

She kept singing when the other voices faded away.

My fingers brushed the wall beside me, finding stone and not the wood of home, cool to my touch.

I felt too weak to sit up just yet and see the fire, but I needed to see her.

My dry mouth rasped out a sound as my chest muscles protested. I tried to say her name. Every part of me throbbed with pain, and I’m not sure she heard me. Why did it hurt so much?

I fell in and out of those waves, my mind rising slowly from the ocean of dreams, cresting the surface again. It was her—her song. I focused on that song to numb the pain, open my eyes.

But it was this strange small cabin again, and the nightmare at the corner of my mind crashed in, overtaking me with a bone-cracking blow. Everyone was dead. Mom, my siblings, the militia, Galen. With a shudder, I saw Galen die, the Red Demon’s strike following through. All dead.

Ash. My eyes were too dry to cry when I thought of him, although I wanted to. Still alive, but just as lost. Mira too. There were all I had left—and I wasn’t sure I did.

Who was singing? It should be possible to twist my head just a little more to see. I could just make her out beside the hearth, thinner than my memories, kneeling over a small iron pot bubbling with a fragrant brew. Whispering the lullaby, she brushed a lock of long red hair behind her back and—

Fuck.

FUCK.

The Red Demon, the fucking Red Demon, moved from the fire to settle on a woven mat.

I watched, dry lips parted, as she drew her legs into a cross and picked up a needle and thread, unfurling a shirt.

My shirt. Her long, fiery hair flowed straight and freshly brushed as she pushed the needle in.

Feline pale green eyes glowed in their mesmerizing strangeness by the fire.

Her deft fingers moved in quick motions through the fabric, her eyes squinting to a crescent in concentration.

Her gaze locked on mine with predatory stillness. The Red Demon looked at and then past me—just as she had before she killed Galen—just as she had so many years ago, so rigid I wasn’t sure she breathed.

I forgot to breathe too.

Her gaze tracked to the door where both her swords leaned against the stone wall. She flitted her eyes back to me with a frown. Rising, she stalked to the table between us, lifting a ceramic pitcher. The Red Demon poured a glass of water, then prowled toward me.

I lifted my head, failed to sit up. My ribs throbbed under wrapped bandages, chest bare above the blanket. With effort, I twisted sideways to prop myself up with a pillow, my body protesting all the while.

The Red Demon knelt beside me, offering the glass of water with a measured hand.

I did not take it. Her yellow-green eyes bore into mine.

“Still want to die?” The Red Demon’s voice was a gentle raspy, sound. Wind through a creaking branch at night.

I paused, my gut sinking with so many dark memories, and the woman in front of me, responsible for it all.

With effort, I sat up straight to face her.

The blanket fell to my lap as I heaved up to lean on the irregular stone wall.

I looked down at my bandaged body, the wrapped cloth tinged pink and green from plantain leaves and congealing blood.

My mother used plantain in my bandages too.

Between that and the smell of meat in Chaeten spices—yeah, it still smelled like my childhood home.

The Red Demon had been nursing me; mothering me.

My legs throbbed, swollen; I peeked under the blanket to find them splinted and wrapped. Voids, I was naked apart from the bandages. Searching for my pants, I found them hanging clean but shredded on a rack by the fireplace. I brought the blanket tighter over myself.

“Just take the glass or let me hold it for you,” she said.

My resolve crumbled, and I reached out, clutching the proffered water. I took a messy, trembling sip, the cool liquid soothing my parched throat under her scrutiny.

“Thank—” I stopped myself from thanking her, my voice hoarse and painful.

She huffed, watching me with rapt attention as I swallowed, refilling my glass.

“Why?”

The Red Demon shrugged, her eyes softening as I drank again. “I’m Faruhar. What’s your name, Chaeten?”

The name echoed in my mind, and I remembered the scrawl of writing on that leather journal. With another sip, I felt life returning to my body. I expected my hatred for her to return in full force as I stared her down. She deserved to die. She still deserved to die.

“How long has it been since I—” I winced at the effort of holding myself to a sitting position. “—challenged you?”

Her face wrinkled at the question, and she stepped away, bending over to pick up a notebook on the table—the leather-bound journal. “Since you tried to kill me?” She flipped a page. “Three days, I think.”

Days. The plantain bandages around my body were fresh.

The long grasses that made up my bed felt dry against my skin, but if I’d been out for days…

Well, I could imagine why I was lying on straw like cattle, and why the straw did not smell like cattle.

I flushed with embarrassment, then chugged the remaining water.

“Another?”

I shook my head, finding that it hurt a little. “Why?”

Faruhar took back the glass, setting it beside the ceramic pitcher with the swirling Asri design. “Why what?”

I slowly gestured with my hand to the room; to me.

She squinted in concentration. “You fought well. Kept breathing. You refused to die.” Faruhar cocked her head at me, assessing until I looked away. “You are very stubborn—and very strange.”

The fireplace crackled in the dimly lit room. I could smell the stew bubbling on the fire. My stomach rumbled.

“Again, why?” I said, but she waited for the rest. “Why do anything for me at all?”

“I respect stubborn. Even if you are too stubborn to tell me your name. I suppose I won’t remember it anyway.”

I looked up, but the Red Demon was not smiling. “Jesse.”

“Have you chosen your second name, Jesse?”

I clenched my jaw. “You killed the man who gave me one. You don’t deserve that name.”

She shook her head. “You named yourself after an Asri family?”

I huffed, looking away.

“Okay Jesse, will you try to kill me the minute I turn my back, or when I sleep?”

At first, it sounded like a straightforward question. It wasn’t. The cold stone rubbed against my back.

“You won. That wouldn’t be … honorable.” I had to use the Asri word. I couldn’t remember a Chaeten word that felt right.

“Honorable.” Faruhar huffed, mirthless. “The honorable ka kill more than anyone. It is no sin to slay a demon, na? ” she said in Asri. “Hasn’t your family told you the same?”

My stomach churned, but I got the words out. “You deserve to die for what you’ve done.”

Faruhar slumped back to the iron pot by the fire, stirring the stew in the uneasy silence. “Aren’t you a demon too?”

I stuttered at the question. I struggled to find words, meaning in any of this.

“Quarter-blood maybe, One-eighth Chaeten-sa in your code? It would explain how you can fight like that.”

“No, I—” I said, but faltered. My hungry, exhausted brain was useless, straining to watch her fluid movements ladle out a bowl of hearty stew and walk back toward me.

Her maze of scars was as detailed as a century robe up close, and I got lost tracing them with my eyes.

I found it difficult to look at this woman with her long unbound hair, beautiful on anyone else.

Yet this woman in her simple linen tunic had gutted Galen like a yearling fawn.

Faruhar frowned as I reached out for the bowl, holding it to her hip. “You still want to kill me. I’m not blind to that.”

“You won. Someone else will have to do that now.” It felt so empty to realize that, to have that taken away.

Her silence felt like that of a multitude.

“Do you have any people who can help you while you recover?”

“You killed them all.” I thought of Asher, Mira, but I wouldn’t give her the names of the last two people she could take away from me. I could stay alive for them, though. With a sigh, I reached for that bowl of soup.