Page 37 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

B?k: Toward the Inevitable

T o be fair, she’d asked for my worst.

I carried the sobbing bard through the trees, a little too pleased with myself for rising to the challenge. I felt I deserved this moment too, considering what I’d perceived in the wind.

I was going to lose her.

I didn’t know how—but it was coming, and soon.

Of all the flavors of fate I’d tasted with my cock’s irritating distraction conveniently sated for once, the worst was the bitter flash of her collar lying empty on the ground.

No explanation. No fork in the path that might allow me to avoid it. It would happen.

And I fucking cared.

That was the worst part .

I held her to my chest, listening to the soft “I hate you” murmured in her babble of incoherent rage. She meant it. But I knew better than anyone the other side of that coin. She hated me, but she needed me. She hated me, but she wanted me. And that was good enough.

I pressed soft kisses to her temple, fighting the urge to put her down and give her the release I’d withheld before.

There were things to do.

I let the horse go free. We’d already overburdened her enough for one night.

We had a long walk ahead. A gentle rain pattered through the trees, gradually soaking us both.

That was for the best. I wiped at the mess I’d left on Ero—stopping only when she gave a little cry of pain as I neared her burn.

“Heal, kitten,” I ordered softly.

She buried her face in my cloak, hiding from me as well as she could.

But I watched her magic work. The colors pulsed, reaching for the ruined skin.

Given the prevalence of scars among our party, I reasoned it was unlikely she would manage to fully erase my mark—but a strange tension coiled inside me, nonetheless.

The charred skin glowed under the attention of her magic.

Its blackened edges softened, the raw seeping red fading as new skin knitted together.

But no matter how the tendrils lapped at my letters, the scarred B?k remained.

I relaxed infinitesimally. Ero sagged, a sound of defeat huffing from her soft lips.

A stab of her desire singed the air gold. She wanted to know why . Why I’d marked her—but more importantly, why I was so determined to claim her. She ached to know.

But she didn’t ask.

I looked at the rising sun. I needed to get back.

I needed to get to Astrada and pass along everything I’d learned but couldn’t yet make sense of.

I also had a surprise for Ero. By lunchtime, Tavish would be by with the books I’d requested—anything the Fated had that she might use to dig at her own mysteries.

Anything that mentioned Finchton or the lineages of its citizens.

It was that mission that’d brought her to me to begin with.

And it was the only thing she’d demanded of me—even if I had punished her for doing so.

I could have told her about the books. But telling her the things I wanted to give her wouldn’t answer her question. Why did I want her? I didn’t know the answer myself.

I paused at a patch of soft grass, laying her down on her back.

She needed to dress now that the leg wouldn’t be a problem.

She wouldn’t love it if I carried her back into camp this way.

It wouldn’t bother me, aside from the slight irritation of having to liquefy any eyes that lingered on her nakedness for too long. But it would bother her.

Despite my original intention for stopping, I didn’t reach for Ero’s clothes. I stood over her, waiting for her to look at me. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t. So I crouched down, parting her legs to kneel between them once more. She let me, but she also closed her eyes and angled her face away.

“Kitten…”

“I need to go to the temple,” she said.

Her matter-of-fact tone begged questions. She’d never struck me as particularly religious, but it hadn’t escaped my notice that her bow was temple-marked. She also had Haz’s tattoo, though many of the soldiers had his or one of the lesser gods’.

“I’ll take you,” I said.

She didn’t respond. Just waited. Her turmoil swirled. The need to be held, to feel loved. The need to run from me, someone who couldn’t possibly give her that—and the equally powerful need to stay, both warred inside her. A perfect kaleidoscope of torment.

I had a sudden, bizarre urge to give her everything.

I tried to remember the last time I’d wanted to fulfill another’s needs.

Even with Brü, who I regarded as the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend in my several centuries, my desire to do as he wished came and went.

And it mostly came when his desires already aligned with my own.

My very first memory surfaced unbidden. Not childhood—no, that didn’t exist for demons.

It was my first moment of awareness. I’d come into being to fulfill a devil’s need.

It took quite a bit of power and a soul stone to conjure a new demon.

I don’t know which devil did it or why, only that I suddenly existed, and that I was famished.

My specialty crystalized as I feasted on an entire fresh hellchamber of damned souls.

How many had I tormented that long day that’d stretched on for years? The number was so great it was basically irrelevant. They’d all handled it in their own ways—begging, breaking, going stoic, fighting back. And it didn’t matter, because each of them only made me hungrier.

I have no regrets about my origin, what I did for those centuries, or what I continue to do now. My only regret remained the one time I’d shown empathy to the bard who’d fled.

I traced the letters on Ero’s leg with the pad of my finger.

Why her? Her unasked question turned over in my mind.

I used it to torment myself. Why did the image of her collar on the ground turn my stomach?

Why did the thought of searching for a new plaything bore me to my very core?

Why did the thought of going without now that I’d tasted her sound worse than any other fate I could imagine?

Had I been wearing human flesh too long? Was I becoming like them? Growing sentimental? This was deeply Brü-like behavior.

Or did I have it all wrong? Was Ero made to torment me in the same way I’d been made to torment the fallen? Perhaps she had no father. Perhaps she would discover only a devil and a soul stone and a clever trick when she reached the end of her queries.

Ero took in a slow breath, ready to speak, and I knew she was going to say we should go. She needed her god—but I wasn’t ready to hand her over to him yet.

With a snarl, I was on her. Biting the freshly healed skin that bore my name.

Reaching for her face with one hand and her pussy with the other.

It was already wet and ready, as always.

Even through her doubt and uncertainty, this part hadn’t been in question from the first moment she’d trembled on the other side of that wardrobe door.

I stopped thinking. I pulled my fingers away from her wet heat and took her with my mouth, lapping up the nectar, exploring every crevice of her sweet cavern with my tongue. She writhed under me, but when her hands found my head, she didn’t push me away. She gripped my hair and held me there.

It was my first day all over again, but I was hungry for something different.

I slowed further, relishing the taste even as her breathy moans turned to impatient whines.

I grinned against her. Her fears weren’t unjustified.

But they weren’t necessary this time. My tongue fell into her favorite rhythm.

I dug my fingers into the marks on her ass that she hadn’t bothered—or perhaps hadn’t wanted—to heal, lifting that ass into the air so I could plunge my tongue deeper.

She came hard and fast, and even though I could have kept going—could have made this another day of consuming her—I let her come down instead .

And then I pulled her into my lap and held her.

We sat in the grass, limbs entwined, still in the silence.

The only sound was the rain falling around us.

Her wants dissolved. Mine grew. They weren’t the kind that could be sated, though.

My cock had nothing to do with them. I longed for something quiet and still—something like we had right in that moment but for much, much longer.

And that was a fucking joke considering the mess we were careening toward.

When the rain stopped, we both knew it was time to go. Ero dressed. She donned her bow and arrows, then her lute, leaving nothing behind in my satchel.

I ignored the strange ache echoing in my chest that told me we were approaching our end.

The camp hummed with a vibrant silver energy. Between the rain, the full moon, and the holiday, the collective mood rode at a fever pitch.

Lucky for me, the temple stood apart from the busiest section of the camp.

It was the first building to be constructed each time the camp moved.

This one was only a few years old, but it had the presence of an ancient building.

Lord Austvix carted the statue of Haz along from camp to camp, and the stones too—consecrated long ago in his birthplace by his first Temple Mother.

I’d always avoided the holy row, as others called it. I could have left Ero at the turn and walked away. But I didn’t. The hollow sense of loss only grew as we neared the place, yet I couldn’t turn back until there was no choice.

The nearest trade tent belonged to a baker. It overflowed with factionites shouldering in for bread to soak up the ale sloshing in their bellies from the night before.

To my astonishment, Ero took my hand as we passed by.

As though she worried I would leave now that the temple was straight ahead.

We hadn’t spoken in hours—hadn’t looked at one another.

I hovered just on the edge of breaking that silence, but we were almost there, and I didn’t want to let her hand go anymore than I wanted to let her go.

We reached the bottom of the stone steps at the temple. An overwhelming sense of finality settled. Why did this feel like an end? Why did I care?

Ero looked at me tentatively. “I’ll probably take a while.”

Her eyes were so soft, her desires so quiet. Why? I wasn’t used to having to wonder.

Several thoughts hovered at the tip of my tongue. Don’t go in. Run. Whatever you think you’re doing in there, you’re not, and it’s going to ruin everything. If you promise to leave, I’ll remove the collar. The last one surprised even me. I sure as fuck would not be doing that. Not until I had to.

Instead of saying any of the nonsensical things going through my mind, I nodded. “Give Haz my worst.”

That earned a flicker of a smile. Which was all it took to have me imagining shoving her back against the stone statue of her god and bruising her lips with mine until she forgot his name.

But she turned, melting away from me, and disappeared into the temple before I could say another word. I had to settle for knowing that even if she convened with the heavens, she would do so bearing my mark.

I turned to retreat to my tent to reflect—but Brü and Nigel stood in my path. Hammond spilled out of the baker’s tent behind them, holding overflowing baskets of food under each arm.

“Happy Twilight,” Brü said. He looked amused, like he already knew my sentiments on the holiday. On any holiday. Humans’ silly excuses for letting loose and doing the things they always craved but denied themselves most of the time.

“Happy Twilight,” I replied drily.

All three of them laughed. I shook my head. It was a marked difference from the way they’d behaved toward me even just a month or so ago, before we’d set off to claim the abandoned caverns.

Given their familiarity, it was probably good that, like as not, Austvix would assign me elsewhere for the next mission.

Whatever Ero found in those letters, I would be the one to chase down the new lead—assuming we got one.

And the others would probably stay here, enjoying the respite they’d earned.

“Eat with us,” Hammond boomed.

My scowl made them laugh again. Haz’s tits.

“I need to see Astrada,” I said. A true and factual statement they couldn’t argue with.

Except they did.

“She’s ridden out to meet Austvix,” Brü said—sobering a bit. “Leadership wanted him to hear our report directly, so she thought it best to meet him on the road rather than waiting. They’re not due back until tomorrow.”

Well, fuck. I could have gone to the other colonels with what I knew of Obsidian’s strange mobilization and the clash brewing between the Watchers and the Sword Alliance—but I didn’t like the other colonels, nor they me, and telling them wouldn’t get the news to Austvix any faster.

It would merely give them the pleasure of being the ones to report it .

Hammond waved a sticky bun in what I suppose he thought was a tempting way. Brü batted him aside.

“Come on, B?k,” he said. “It won’t kill you.”

I sighed. That made one thing.

The temple door at my back danced with an energy I deeply disliked.

Something was brewing. For all the relief I’d felt in the moment the Fates opened up, the ominousness of not understanding how or why the things I’d witnessed connected raised my hackles now.

Eating sweets and enduring ribbing from—would I call them friends?

—seemed a deeply irresponsible way to spend my time.

And yet, what else could I do?

Ero was busy with her god. And soon, she would be busy with her books. I was hungry and needed something to take my mind off the inevitable.

Holiday indeed.

I gestured down the path, silently bidding Brü to lead us. I could eat, perhaps sleep, and then face whatever fresh irritation was headed my way.