Page 8 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

B?k: Tormented Indeed

B y the time I felt the breach, it was too late to rein it in. And thanks to the gods-damned bard, I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. Her song jabbed at my psyche, shattering my control and amplifying my instincts until everything that followed was as good as inevitable.

I was a weapon and nothing more.

There were civilians woven in among the factionites in the Huntress party.

I know, because I felt their deaths like bursts of mage fire in my skull.

The last sane thought I had before my contract’s cold, inky magic ripped coherent cognition from my grasp was that the Huntress knew my limits and had intentionally included these people in the raid party—either to protect her factionites, assuming she expected me to hold back in self-preservation, or to put me out of commission.

Neither option meant good things for the Fated. We were being outplayed.

The Huntress’s purpose quickly became irrelevant to me, however. Her party was slain to the last soul—and my ability to perceive anything beyond pain winked out.

Brü once asked what happens when madness takes me. The truth is, I could never recall enough to articulate the experience. This time, however, I was blessed or further cursed to maintain a bare shred of awareness.

The heat came first. Licking from head to toe, sinking its claws deep into my flesh and raking them to the discordant melody pounding around me. It didn’t matter that the bard no longer played. I heard her anyway. My flames danced to her cursed beat.

Now, demons rarely complain about fire. We are from it and of it.

We wield it and bend it to our will. But just then, I lost whatever immunity I had.

Like a bard who woke to find her voice gone.

Every blazing flame burned me as readily as it would have a human—and they were inside me, so that was a bit of a problem.

I threw myself into a body of water. I don’t know where the water came from or how I got there, only that it was there and I experienced the faintest measure of relief as I sank into its icy depths.

My body died in a matter of minutes, the way weak human bodies will when they are deprived of oxygen.

One might think this was better, but one would be wrong.

Untethered from my flesh, the psychological pain became my entire existence.

I would have built my body anew from sheer will had the binding not done it for me.

I reincarnated on the bank, slicked in boiling mud. All I could do was scramble back to the water, grasping again for a tiny shred of relief as the air attacked like so many angry hornets.

This time, I didn’t drown. Piranhas found me first. Their razor-sharp teeth tore my brand-new flesh from my brand-new bones and soon, I was once again a heap of freshly made human in boiling mud.

This went on for some time.

With each reincarnation, I tried to hold my place in the mud—knowing that eventually, the boiling torment would subside.

That I would regain control. But here’s the thing about humans.

When they find relief—a way to stop their torment, even briefly—they will flock to it again and again and again.

No matter how dire the consequences. No matter how counterproductive.

Humans are weak, and because they are weak and I existed in human form, I was similarly weak. Or so I told myself.

The point is, I paid for the lives I took outside the bounds of war. I paid, and I paid, and I paid.

Not that it did anyone any good. Did it bring the dead back? No. Did it help my faction or harm its enemies? Not a bit. But vengeance without gain—isn’t that about as human as it gets?

After an untold stretch of time, knowing that I needed to claw my way out of the torment cycle and back to sanity, I reached for a place to focus my thoughts.

I started with Lord Austvix—the Fated’s warlord, the man who’d bound me. But his face wavered and slipped from my grasp like a freshly caught fish. The bastard’s magic protected him even from my thoughts.

I reached for Brü next, knowing full well that was no use. He was the nearest thing I had to a friend. My mind wouldn’t allow comfort at this stage. Electric shock chased each flash of his endlessly patient face away.

So I moved on to Aelith, Brü’s water witch of a lover.

She hated me more deeply than he knew. The only thing she desired more than Brü’s cock was my death—and I wasn’t even sure she knew that.

But I did. I tasted it in her energy, in the way she tensed when I neared, in the way her teeth clenched and her chest tightened when I spoke.

Her dedication to her gods infuriated me, because I knew she would sacrifice Brü if the heavens demanded it. And he knew it too, and he didn’t care.

The mere thought of Aelith flooded my chest with fury. The heat grew worse—not better. In my rage, I boiled the water around me. Several piranhas died, which I suppose was a small bonus. But so did I, this time cooked alive in my own anger.

I woke again in the same mud, in the same agony.

This time, the bard’s face lit up my mind. I reached greedily for the sight of her tears, but saw instead the challenging set of her jaw as she snapped at me.

I screamed my frustration, water pouring into my mouth and choking me as I wailed. I’d punished her, gloved her hands, made her ride with a reminder of my lesson written across her ass—and when the party needed more than we had, she’d still played despite my orders.

Stupid. Brave. Infuriating bard.

She’d saved Brü and the others even as she’d destroyed me.

I scooped up fistfuls of mud in my brand-new hands, howling with need.

But I didn’t let myself go back to the water this time.

How many times had I died by then? Ten? Twenty?

How much time had passed? A day? Two? The silt squished through my fingers in sickening snakes, sizzling as it fell back to the ground.

My stomach growled. Exhaustion tugged at my eyelids.

I needed to return to the camp. If I left them waiting, they would be in further danger—and if they bore losses because of my absence, my contractual torment would continue in a ceaseless cycle. Not to mention, if the bard died, I’d be that much further from solving the Finchton problem.

It was time to get myself together.

With great effort, I stood.

I wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t better—yet. But I would be. Until then, gods save anyone who had the misfortune of standing in my path.