Page 34 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

I frowned. Twilight was the week leading up to the new year.

Had it really been that long? I tried to do quick math, but everything was too fuzzy.

If he were right, though, I’d missed my birthday somewhere in the mess of the previous fortnight.

Which meant I’d missed a temple visit. I looked down at my forearm.

The temple tattoo with Haz’s gloved fist looked bland next to the much fresher Fated tattoo.

What I felt wasn’t exactly guilt, nor concern.

It was just one more snapped tether. The only thing I knew about my father—aside from the fact that he’d thrust me upon an unwilling mother—was that he required that I visit Haz’s temple every year on my birthday to tithe a drop of my blood.

A requirement even she insisted upon, though she patently refused to speak of or acknowledge him in any other way.

Each year, I made the visit alone. I pricked my finger and smeared it on the altar.

A Temple Mother refreshed my tattoo, listened to me recount my year, counseled me, and gave me a gift.

Some years the gift was only a handful of nuts I might have foraged for myself, or a dull knife I had little use for.

Other years, the gift was as grand as the bow on my back or a potion of incredible luck.

(An item I’d promptly wasted on a lark to meet a prince, but I was only thirteen at the time.)

Anyway, I kept my expectations as low as possible. Now, I feared I would have to pay a penance instead of receiving anything at all.

“Is there a proper temple in the camp?” I asked Hammond.

He’d still been talking about the Fated’s festivities, but he didn’t seem to mind the interruption. Many outposts had small shrines or motherless temples. Those wouldn’t do. I looked again at my tattoo, the edges faded like rain soaked into drought-starved clay.

“Sure do,” Hammond said, grinning mischievously.

“Best baker in the realm right next door to that, too. Getcha some gods, and then fuck, I promise you’ve never had glazed buns with candied jam til you’ve had old Sal’s.

Sticky buns, she calls ‘em. Even Lord Austvix carts ‘em in special. You know it’s good when leadership can’t go one council meeting without a taste. ”

Hammond waxed on at great length and in great detail, lionizing his favorite treat. I gleaned from his descriptions—peppered though they were with further talk of baked goods and ales—that the camp was less of a tent city and more of a semi-permanent town.

It brought me back to wondering about Lord Austvix.

The warlords were all after the castle in Queensdale—which only someone with gods’ blood could claim.

But it’d been empty my whole life. There’d never been an overlord—only tales of what it was like hundreds of years ago when the realm bowed to one woman.

Now the warlords all seemed bent on conquering one another before they took the seat, and that fight was slow and brutal.

There were myriad rumors as to why. Curses, superstition, alleged prophecies.

But for most of us, it was just background noise.

Entire lifetimes still passed in the little towns the warlords ignored.

Was Austvix really as good as Brü made him sound? Or had Brü chosen the one story he knew might make me less likely to fear I’d pledged myself to an evil warlord sight unseen?

My curiosity exhausted me. I caught myself humming a tune, even though I’d not meant to. I glanced at Hammond and saw his grin as he swayed to my beat, no longer speaking. So I kept going.

The deadened tendrils stretched, pins and needles prickling at their tips, like a limb coming slowly back to life. The melody quieted my mind, even if it didn’t make things better.

We didn’t stop for food. Hammond passed me a hard roll at one point, which I took only because he had several. I hummed even as I ate—my way of thanking him.

It had to be almost dawn when we finally approached the base camp.

I marveled at its size. It sat atop a mountain with a soft, curved peak.

The tip was fortified with a massive stone wall, but the full encampment spread at least halfway down the mountain, and a second wall stretched out and around, out of sight in both directions, suggesting even more protected area.

Strong-looking workers with the Fated symbol burned into their forearms hauled yet more rocks to the wall, fortifying and thickening it as we passed through a narrow gate.

Most of the soldiers couldn’t get away fast enough when we made it inside. I watched in disbelief as a sizable group welcomed Fl?r with laughter and delight. He didn’t so much as glance at the rest of the party as his friends tugged him away into their throng.

Was my lowest low tonight going to be being jealous of Fl?r?

Young factionites threaded among us, handing out waterskins and collecting the mounts. Most of the stablehands were covered in glitter, dressed for the festivities. We’d clearly interrupted their fun. That explained the terse attitudes. I dismounted quickly, making it as easy as I could.

And then I stood uncertainly, surrounded but alone.

Everyone seemed to know where to go but me.

Every direction I tried, something beat me back.

Soldiers from our party delivered bad news to groups of hopefuls who’d come to greet people who hadn’t made it.

My heart lurched. A throng of paid entertainers offered to help riders out of their clothes and into baths.

I stumbled back. Yet more soldiers embraced loved ones who were relieved to find them safe. I turned again.

A shadow fell over me from behind. I spun. B?k was still mounted. I hadn’t seen him during the ride. He looked exhausted and smelled like a singed version of his usual midnight musk.

No one had come to greet him either, I realized. Nor did he seem fazed at all by that. Unlike me, spinning uncertainly in the breeze, he was as self-contained as ever.

“Come on,” he said.

He reached a hand down, and I—who owed him a debt that I feared would deeply complicate my ability to deny him anything right now—took it.

I expected to see more of the camp when he nudged his mare forward, but he veered toward the woods that butted up against the stone wall instead. Up close, his shadowy cloak smelled even more strongly of the fire. I choked on the flavor.

It didn’t take long to get lost in the trees.

The moonless night offered no mercy. Nor did B?k, who pushed the tired mount to a canter.

We raced through the dark woods—inside the stone wall, but as far from the people who’d built it as we could possibly be.

By the time we slowed, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d reached the far side of the mountain.

B?k slid from the saddle. I heard a splash and looked down to find stars reflected in a freshly disturbed spring pool next to the horse. B?k surfaced, wiping his dark hair back from his eyes. He’d either removed the shadow cloak, or it’d simply dissolved.

B?k’s beauty really came through in the dark. Away from the need to pretend at bland humanity. The water going to steam on his skin rose in soft silvery puffs.

A sudden urge raged inside me—for the weight of his body to hold me down, when all I felt like doing was dissolving and floating away.

Why? I wish I knew. I ought to have craved what the others had at the gate.

Loved ones who went to pieces at the sight of my safe return.

Yet now, all I wanted was for someone to hold me accountable.

To tell me everything that’d just happened was my fault, that I didn’t have people waiting because I didn’t deserve people.

To make the way things were and had always been finally make sense.

I looked away.

“Get in the water, Ero,” B?k said. No inflection. No warmth. “Clean yourself.”

Even the urge to argue was deadened. Had he been the dark, growling, smirking version of B?k, I might have felt something. But he wasn’t. He was just as indifferent to me as everyone at that camp had been. And frankly, it chafed.

I dismounted, carefully setting my bow and lute on my once-colorful cloak—now so heavy with mud and soot it’d gone gray—and then slipped out of my clothes and into the water.

It was hot. Was that because it was a spring? Or had B?k had some effect on it? Either way, it felt better than anything had in days. It penetrated my chilled skin, lapped at the knots in my muscles. I could have gone under and never come up and been happy to do it.

B?k moved closer. That prickle of not-quite-worry that he might grab and use me sparked deep in my belly. And you would like it, a voice suspiciously like Sade’s taunted in my mind. What had she called me? Demon-fucker . Not terribly imaginatively, but accurate.

When B?k did touch me, it was only to soap my shoulders. The enchantments I’d woven into my hair didn’t lash out at him as he unplaited the braid. Traitors.

I closed my eyes, letting him wash me. Even when his fingers trailed down my spine and over the curve of my ass, he didn’t move closer.

His cock remained out of reach. The distance ached.

The ache teased my already bruised pride.

And although I knew logically that my need for his touch was about me —about my selfish loneliness, my seeing the little band of survivors from our party disperse into a wider group full of people who cared about them while I had only a demon who mostly despised me and occasionally found me alluring—I didn’t care. I still wanted it. I still craved it.

Such a disappointment, Eroithiel .

That dark voice I hadn’t thought about in days played back. It wasn’t really there. Just a memory. But it cut all the same.

B?k’s hands fell away.

I stared straight ahead, picking the brightest star and focusing on it to keep myself from thinking or doing or even wanting too loudly something that would make me utterly pathetic in his eyes.

The water lapped as he climbed out. I waited for him to tell me what came next. Get out? Get dressed? Spread my legs? I didn’t care. I was ready .

But the water lapped again as he returned and waded toward my back. I stiffened with anticipation, my pussy tingling in a way that annoyed me.

Something cold and smooth glided up my arm.

He made his way slowly around me. The cold thing trailed along, over my chest, up my cheek, and rested against my lips. I didn’t look at it. I locked eyes with him instead. He snapped the leather strap, stinging my lips.

“Are you ready?” he asked—nonchalant, neither sinister nor teasing. Just matter-of-fact.

“For what?” I breathed.

“Did you think favors were free, kitten?” His words had a cruel edge.

It didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel like him.

But what did I know? What did I really know about B?k?

I knew the one instance of soft, sensual lovemaking in the woods was just part of his game.

Pushing me to say no when he offered to remove the collar.

Pushing me to willingly give up the last shred of self I couldn’t spare.

I searched his blank eyes, my gray cloud of pain returning twofold. I meant nothing to him. I was a possession, and Aelith was a transaction, and he was going to make me feel every bit of that at my lowest low.

But at least I would feel something.

I nodded, holding his gaze.

His voice dropped lower still. “Use your words. I said are you ready to pay for her life?”

I ignored the tears welling in my eyes. I didn’t even care that they would bring him pleasure. I didn’t care about anything.

“Do your worst,” I whispered.

And, fuck me—I hoped he would.