Page 33 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: A Touch of Existential Doubt

T he drop came as quickly as the high.

Aelith was alive.

B?k saved her.

For me? For Brü? Did it matter?

I stared down at Brü, cradling her in his arms, knowing I should feel relieved. But a strange hollow uncertainty tugged at me instead.

Questions skewered me rapid-fire like so many arrows.

If I’d never come to the Fated, would these attacks have happened?

Would any of the Fated’s dead—from those who fell during the first ambush to everyone we’d just lost in the fire—still live?

Would Aelith have been in danger at all?

And if not, would a civilian town have burned instead?

Or would it have just been me, collected alone on the road, quietly taken to the Huntress?

The joke of it was, I wasn’t a weapon at all. Whatever the Huntress knew or thought she knew, I was a poor bet. Untrained, undisciplined, unremarkable except by occasional accident. Everyone would have been better off if she’d found that out quickly.

B?k’s attention stilled the edge of darkness threatening to send me into a familiar spiral. He was watching me.

And he’d saved her.

I’d asked him to do it, knowing perfectly well that the two of them would love nothing more than to see each other crumble to dust—and he could have ignored me and gotten that wish. But he hadn’t.

I moved to him without thinking about it. Without giving myself a moment to worry about how he might react. The only uncomplicated emotion I felt in that moment was gratitude.

For one golden beat, it became a warm reunion. I cried on his chest. He brushed my tears away. Brü whispered reassurances to Aelith. Aelith lived. We were all fine.

And then B?k stepped back.

Things moved too fast from there.

B?k said some terse words, and he was gone. Brü lifted Aelith, and they were gone. Everyone scrambled for horses, grabbing at the meager supplies that remained, calling out to whichever living members of the group they naturally gravitated to, forming plans.

I alone stood still.

A dark gray cloud tugged at me. Emptiness where moments before there’d been so much light. Why wasn’t I happy?

My lute called to me as it often did when melancholy threatened—but I was afraid to play for two reasons.

First, half of my tendrils remained blunted and numb.

I didn’t know how the music would react to that.

Second, B?k hated it when I played. It seemed a poor way to repay him for such a huge favor.

But what good was I without music?

My sweeping gaze caught on my bow, forgotten on the log where Brü and I had talked moments before.

I moved to the weapon. Its energy purred for me now—more like my lute and less like the thorny hum it’d greeted me with before.

I slipped the strap over my head and fixed the arrows at my hip.

There were seven. I glanced at the tree, considering whether there was time to collect the ones I’d shot—but they weren’t there.

In fact, the quiver felt fully packed already.

Interesting. Had Brü brought them back? Or was this yet another aspect of the bow I’d never discovered?

The question came with a shame chaser. Brü had been so kind about it, but now his gentle questions chafed. How had I never tried my bow? How did I not know it was attuned to me?

“What are you doing, bard?” Fl?r sneered with his usual inflated bravado as he thundered by on his horse. “The mounts are over there. Are you deaf or slow? We’re moving out.”

I looked where he pointed. There were only a couple of horses left. There were already several soldiers doubled up. I’d ridden with B?k so often that I half expected to hear his irritated voice next, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Unless you’d like to share?” Fl?r smirked. It wasn’t even flirtatious. It was just mean. My dislike for him was certainly mutual by now, if it hadn’t always been.

So I finally forced myself to move—darting for the remaining mares like someone with something to lose. Such as the ability to ride without questionable parts of my body rubbing against fucking Fl?r .

I made it. Fl?r said something that was probably cutting as I mounted up, but I tuned him out.

One side of my saddle was a melted, bloody mess, and the horse had shiny new skin over recently healed wounds.

I didn’t know if the blood belonged to her or whoever her previous rider had been, and I tried not to think about it.

No wonder she’d gone unclaimed. I patted her reassuringly, wishing I had time to bolster the rushed heal.

But I’d barely situated my lute on the hip opposite the arrows when we started to move.

Unfortunately, we fell into pairs—and Fl?r was next to me. Given the option between chattering with him and letting my mind run wild, I chose the latter.

The last few days played on repeat. B?k’s game in the woods. Miri and Sade and the others. Van. Brü’s theory about the Huntress.

Why would she want me? I still couldn’t make that make sense.

Brü implied it had to do with my magic. Something I’d always wondered about, but had no one to ask.

My mother was a legendary Night Walker. On a clear night, looking at the stars, she could travel half a world in a few steps.

My half-siblings each had their own unique brands of her gift.

The only time she’d ever addressed my lack of their abilities, she’d sneered and told me that half-elves didn’t get elven magic.

Only, I had magic. She didn’t know that. Even as a child, I’d known better than to share the news after her declaration. Partly because I knew it would anger her if I contradicted what she said—and partly because I didn’t know how to use my magic, and that embarrassed me.

But why hadn’t I tried harder? I’d gotten the lute, and my tendrils had liked it—had willingly, on their timeline, allowed me to improve its sound and transform it into an extension of us.

And I’d just gone along telling myself that music was the beauty I could bring to the world—insisting that was enough.

But what if I had an ocean of power at my disposal, and I’d only chosen to use a few drops?

Wasn’t that exactly what the Temple Mothers abhorred?

Squandering ability was as morally corrupt as hoarding resources.

And if I had developed my talents, would I have already found the book I was looking for?

Found my actual family? For all I knew, my tendrils were just as frustrated with me as I was with them.

“Not going to play, Princess?”

The words—particularly the princess —startled me. Fl?r seemed surprised to suddenly have my full attention. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken at me.

“Something wrong?” he pushed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, sweetheart.”

At the new pet name, I breathed again. But the seed of doubt he’d planted with that careless word didn’t dissipate.

I hadn’t kept my mother’s identity from the Fated to fool any of them.

It was the opposite, really. I didn’t want her to know where I was—if she even cared, which was a big if .

I’d never volunteered the connection to anyone since the day I’d left.

“I don’t feel like it,” I said, probably three minutes later than was socially acceptable. But who cared? It was just Fl?r.

“Oh, then by all means,” he said with exaggerated deference. “Be useless.”

The biting responses I prided myself on keeping at the ready were nowhere to be found. His dig settled right in with my own doubts. Why did it have to be him next to me?

Brü’s story about Lord Austvix and the rapists he’d punished came to mind, juxtaposed with Fl?r’s bloodlust- fueled eyes in the cavern the day we’d met. “Mammoth in the room, B?k,” he’d said. “You going to share? I’d settle for the mouth. Promise to give it back in top condition.”

I glanced again at his smug face bouncing along next to me. Alive, when so many had died.

“Does Lord Austvix know you threaten to rape captives?” I asked Fl?r.

Now I had his full attention. He shot quick, covert glances at the pairs of riders ahead of and behind us. Then he fixed me with a dark glare, his anger ?barely concealing the hint of fear that shone bright in those beady eyes.

“That’s not what happened,” he said.

“It’s not?” I looked away, watching the trees pass, tone carefully disinterested. “What exactly did you want to borrow my mouth for?”

“It was a fucking joke, Ero.”

“You’re a fucking joke, Fl?r.”

His horse kicked up leaves and twigs from the path as he shot forward, startling the riders in front of us as he forced his way through them to move up the line. He left a string of curses and grumbles in his wake. Everyone scrambled to adjust.

I expected confronting him to feel good.

It didn’t. But when the dust settled, at least it was Hammond at my side instead of Fl?r.

The tank of a man always had a smile on his orcish face.

Not a kind one, exactly, but one that suggested he’d just amused himself by beheading an enemy. I’d kind of grown fond of it.

“What’dja do to get under his skin?” he asked, already grinning.

“Just held up a mirror,” I said, still too hollow to enjoy the victory .

Hammond’s face scrunched up in a way that told me he might have taken the statement too literally.

We rode for a few more minutes, but it quickly became apparent that Hammond was not a “deep inner thoughts” sort so much as a “shoot the shit” sort.

“You lookin’ forward to the festivities?” he asked. “None of us wanted to get there this way, but it’s nice we won’t miss it.”

“Festivities?”

“Twilight,” he said. “Starts tonight. Bit hard to keep track on the road, but Astrada told everyone. Think she’s tryin’ to keep the mood up.”