Page 6 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: Invoking His Wrath

Bardic Advice from Eroithiel von Dua to future generations: No one in the realms can humiliate you as thoroughly as you can humiliate yourself.

T he woods glittered with possibility.

I breathed in the musky air, feeling more alive for the way it stung my lungs as I sang.

What was triumph without a little pain, anyway?

My feet fell silent and sure, wringing every ounce of advantage from the fae half of my blood.

Too bad for you, Mother, I taunted, I got this one small boon from you after all.

Oh, how she would hate to know she’d helped me.

The more distance I put between myself and the Fated camp, the more paths unfurled in my mind.

Honestly, I’d been overdue for a change.

Playing the same pubs in that town, seeing the same faces—friendly but never friends .

And who was to say the book I needed wasn’t leagues away, anyhow? Histories traveled .

Or, so I told myself as the other options went to ash behind me.

I sure hoped the book I needed was far away, because it would be a long while before I came back.

B?k knew my real name. Even if it was only “Ero” in place of the supremely more trackable “Eroithiel von Dua,” it would require sprucing wherever I went next.

Perhaps I could be Eve or Tyla or Daphne. Those had a nice ring.

My foot splashed in a shallow stream. I leapt featherlight over a fallen tree and followed a moonbeam into a clearing. For the first time all night, I paused. The crisp air kissed my skin like an old friend. My heart swelled. I felt so good, so right, so safe . I?—

Mist swirled around my ankles, lapping at my legs.

Strange.

I looked down slowly to find that my fingers had stilled on the strings. Stranger still. I hadn’t intended to stop playing. It was just the overwhelming sense that I was already free, that I’d accomplished my objective.

My mind was slow to process. By the time I realized the mist was to blame, it was too late.

The luck evaporated from my veins, leaving a horrid hangover in its wake.

The air turned warm, humid, cloying. Suddenly, rather than frolicking in a pleasant night wood, I was cowering in a dark forest, feeling eyes on me from all sides.

When nothing emerged from the gloom to confront me outright, I stumbled forward—but now my heart was heavy with fear and my fingers struggled to gain purchase on the lute.

It was almost a relief when the netting snapped around me, jerked me into the air, and hung me from the tree. Almost. Because the anticipation was over. But everything else was about to get much, much worse.

The riders didn’t take long to reach me. In other circumstances, I might have fought the ropes, cut myself free, and been away again—but these ropes were imbued with magic that prevented that. Another almost mercy.

When they came, I knew he was among them.

I knew well before they were in my sight.

The air sang with his fiery rage, as furious and radiant as a midsummer sun.

The young initiates in his party were not immune, though not one of them had the courage to voice discomfort.

They’d all sweated through their clothes and looked irritable and exhausted as the party surrounded me.

B?k cut me down himself, and I shook too violently to stand. He was going to give the order, and I knew it. And this time, he wouldn’t spare use of the collar. I would crawl back to the Fated camp and do exactly as he bade as my mind unraveled.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out, even though I’d practiced half a dozen lies while I’d hung there. I’d lost my way. I’d been possessed. I’d misread him and thought he might enjoy the hunt, so really wasn’t it sort of a gift? All of that sounded absurd now.

“You will be,” he allowed.

He dismissed his men with a wave of his hand. They fled, greedy for clean air.

He glowered down at me. “You played.”

I blinked, mistaking him at first. I thought he meant I’d played a game by running. But no—he stared accusingly at the lute. I had played it, of course. I’d just expected the whole fleeing his captivity part of my transgression to be the bigger deal .

He reached out, touching the collar thoughtfully as I fought to control my panic.

“Please,” I choked, even though it was more than obvious that any goodwill or bargaining power I’d accumulated had drained away. “Please don’t.”

“Then how will I keep you in line?” he mused. He sounded mild, but the air didn’t cool a single degree.

I knew better than to trust his bait. His fury was untouched. He towered over me, glaring down with a fierce and terrible beauty that painted my flesh with goosebumps.

What could I say? I certainly wasn’t going to shrug and tell him I supposed he was right and it was time to flay my mind after all. I gritted my teeth against the challenge of inventing my own custom punishment that would both satisfy him and not kill me. A tall, impossible order.

In my frantic search of the surrounding area, my eyes snagged on his horse. Hanging from the saddle was a worn leather strap. The image of that strap wrapped around his hand, of it lashing out to kiss my skin, flashed in my mind. I looked away again quickly—afraid he would follow my gaze.

Naturally, it was too late. His dark pleasure rippled through the air.

Our eyes met. We both knew the answer, but he didn’t move a single muscle. One corner of his lips curled up in a cruel smirk. He was going to make me ask him to punish me. And for all I knew, he would refuse and compel me anyway.

I couldn’t form the words. I stumbled toward the horse instead, my destination blurring with angry tears. I jerked the strap from its hook and brought it to him. My breath hitched when he failed to take it.

“Please,” I whispered .

The blazing air cooled just slightly, mirroring the satisfaction in his eyes.

Yet still he waited. His brow knitted together as though in deep thought. I saw the moment he decided it wasn’t enough. My heart skipped.

“Make me believe this will help you learn your place, kitten,” he purred.

I took a shaky breath. Was he serious?

He crossed his arms.

Yes. He was serious. And if I found it this hard to humiliate myself without compulsion, how hard would I fight if he actually used the collar? I would break myself in minutes. I knew it in my bones. It couldn’t happen, no matter what it cost my pride now.

Prickles of raw humiliation rippled through me as I sank to my knees. I held the strap up and forced myself to look at him.

“Please,” I said. “Teach me what happens when I disobey you.”

I’d meant to make it a performance. To tell myself that I was merely on stage playing a role.

It didn’t work. When I met his eyes, I wondered if the mist was still fucking with my head—because a stab of heated desire roiled in my belly.

I hated myself for imagining his strong arm holding me down, his teeth grazing my skin as he took me hard and fast.

Blood rushed to my cheeks. I couldn’t stand it. I broke eye contact, even as I feared that doing so would mean failing this undefined test.

But to my surprise, the inferno surrounding us receded in a chilly rush.

He plucked the strap from my hands and pulled me to my feet.

His strong fingers cupped the nape of my neck, his thumb digging in with a slight warning pressure.

He guided me to the trunk of a fallen tree.

Then he released me and waited, staring expectantly.

I closed my eyes and bent over the tree, steeling myself for pain.

Nothing happened.

When I looked back, he raised an eyebrow and looped one finger lazily in the waistband of my riding leathers. I fought to swallow as I tugged them down—baring my ass to the gods, devils, and B?k—and resumed the position.

The zip of air before the leather struck was my only warning.

A furious sting erupted in the strap’s wake, and I cried out pitifully.

To my deepest horror, an answering ache resounded between my legs.

I told myself when I trembled under his gaze in that cave that this was not at all what my fantasy had been, not really —but my body said otherwise now.

I was appropriately incredulous. Did the strange, uncivilized thing at my core—the voice that always said to push, always tempted me to reach for trouble— enjoy this?

The strap struck again, lower. The first welt was fire now, the second an angry biting sting.

No. Whatever the hunger inside me was about—whatever my broken mind dreamt of on empty nights, this was agony .

Fuck. Him.

“Was it wise to run?” he gritted out through clenched teeth.

Another strike before I could answer. Two more in quick succession when my breath hitched, and I failed to find words.

“I said ?—”

“No!” I cried. “No. It was— I was?—”

The words turned into a shriek as his next strike seared the back of my thighs .

“—scared,” I hissed.

“Not scared enough, kitten.”

He punctuated the snarl with a thwack .

“I’m sorry!” I sobbed.

I was furious with myself for meaning it.

I didn’t want to be sorry. I wanted to be angry.

But the taste of his rage in the air made me queasy.

I didn’t like that he’d honored my requests—first by not using the collar, and then by letting me take the tattoo in place of the brand—and that I’d taken the very first chance I had to show that no part of that respect was mutual.

This is what I’d always done. This is who I was.

The scoundrel, talking sweet and then fleeing into the night.

Only this time, I’d been caught. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. ”

“Not sorry enough,” he said, though there was less heat behind the words now.

He delivered a fresh blow diagonally across the welts that had already accumulated, and then another crosswise to complete the X.

I sobbed in earnest, praying to gods I knew and others I didn’t, that he was finished.

The strap stilled, but his hand on my lower back held me in place. My insides twisted. I could feel his gaze surveying his work. The air grew thick with the sizzle of his pleasure. I whimpered.

B?k’s thumb traced featherlight across the freshest welt on my ass, from top to bottom.

“Did you enjoy that?” he mused.

My breath shuddered. I wanted to shout something fitting, such as, “ No, obviously not, you soulless rancid hellspawn.” But as his thumb reached my thigh and skated along the contour of my ass toward my pulsing center, a fresh panic washed over me.

He was two seconds from finding out the answer for himself—and my body would not lie.

I stood abruptly, spinning to face him. Pretending I wasn’t caught between a demon and a tree. Pretending my leathers weren’t around my ankles. I lifted my chin with a fury only the threat of utter destruction by way of humiliation could have breathed into my soul.

“Are you satisfied?” I spat.

His smirk returned. Whether at the question, my sudden anger, or the fear that hitched my words, I didn’t know. Perhaps all three.

He was too close. The tendrils in my chest tightened and twisted. My body was entirely out of sorts. My pussy thought we were on an adventure, and my heart thought we were in battle.

He lifted the strap between us. I opened my mouth—to protest? To plead? I don’t know. No sound came out. He flicked the leather, so the tip caught my lips. Just hard enough to sting. Enough that my eyes burned.

I longed, absurdly, for him to press his lips to mine to swallow that sting. To bend me back over the tree and use a different tool to finish this job.

“Are you satisfied?” he mused silkily. “You’re the one who got on your knees and begged me to do that.”

Heat flooded my cheeks. I closed my eyes. Because he was right. I had . If the gods were watching, they would have had mercy and smote me right then. But even they must have turned away from this.

B?k allowed me a moment to drown in my shame. And then he reached a hand around and slapped my searing ass cheek lightly with his palm before stepping back .

“Get dressed,” he commanded. “We’ll be in the saddle from dawn to dusk tomorrow. You need sleep.”

His sudden lack of proximity left a ripple of cool air and emptiness behind.

The world spun as I bent to lift my leathers, trying not to think about how the saddle would feel in my current state.

I wondered how covertly I could heal. It was a struggle to get my pants back up my thighs.

When I forced them over the fresh welts and fixed them on my hips, my world exploded again in agony.

“Get on the horse,” he said. A hot breeze stirred around us to match the fire in his eyes. His almost-playful demeanor vanished. He wasn’t teasing anymore. He was still furious. “And if you heal yourself, the next round will be much worse. Do you understand?”

Did he read my fucking mind? Or was it just that obvious that a healer would make quick work of vanquishing her own pain? I swallowed, the fight gone out of me. “I understand.”

The horse was too tall, the saddle too hard, but I gritted my teeth and climbed.

He leapt into the saddle behind me and compressed our bodies together, reaching around on either side to take the reins.

“Wait,” I whispered hoarsely, spotting my lute on the forest floor.

He stiffened. I turned to look up at him with pleading eyes, uncertain how even to begin to bargain here. I hadn’t forgotten that he’d confronted me about playing my instrument before he’d even mentioned the fact that I’d run.

But to my surprise, B?k flicked his wrist with a grunt. A tendril of shadow drew the lute to my lap.

My murmured “thank you” was lost to the night as his horse leapt into action .

I stroked the polished wood, careful not to disturb a single string.

I focused on the pleasant sensation at my fingertips to distract me from the friction of my terrorized ass grinding against B?k and the saddle.

The fifteen-minute ride back to camp was the most excruciating quarter hour of my life to date.

Not least so, because I knew that tomorrow would be a hundred times worse.