Page 9 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: Taking Action for the Faction

I slept alone for two blissful nights. We sang around campfires and retold the story of the battle until it grew into the legend every hard-won victory deserves to be.

I put the words to song and enchanted the civilian tavern-goers.

On the third night, we used their tips to buy barrels of mead. Everyone relaxed into the revelry.

Well, almost everyone. Brü stood apart from the others, brooding against the inn wall. I frowned. Approaching him would risk puncturing my own rare bubble of joy, but I couldn’t unsee him. And I couldn’t shake the whisper of dread his countenance conjured.

Sighing, I approached.

Brü watched me, his gaze openly curious. He didn’t mask his melancholy—so I wasn’t subtle with my prodding.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“B?k,” he answered simply.

The name sent tingles down my spine. While the others were around, all aglow, I could convince myself that my brief flurry of mortal terror upon seeing B?k fight was a temporary blip on my path to this new reality of warmth and belonging with the Fated.

Acknowledgment of B?k’s continued existence put a wrench in that fantasy.

“He should be here by now,” Brü said.

I settled against the wall next to him, watching the others muster around the mead with raucous delight. Clearly, they were unconcerned—and just as clearly, they did not expect to have an early morning tomorrow. I chewed my lip, curiosity getting the better of me. As always.

“What happened to him after the battle? He was…off.”

“He killed civilians.” Brü winced, scrubbing a hand through his mussed hair.

The way he gave me information—directly, without hedging or dancing around it, had the annoying effect of making me like him more.

As if to underscore that winning trait, he went on.

“He was already in a frenzy, and that can be hard to come down from. But it’s a lot harder when he’s breached his contract. ”

I stiffened. His contract? That was interesting.

And then something clicked. In the cavern, before I’d taken the Fated marking, I’d been a civilian. Coloring a fake tattoo on my arm hadn’t changed that. Was that why he hadn’t killed me? Had my garbled pleas been unnecessary ?

I glanced at the darkened trees. “So he’s just out in the woods…burning things?”

“Trying to come to his senses, more like. But if he’d had any success, he would be here by now. We’re opening ourselves to attack by waiting. He wouldn’t do that if he’d regained control.”

“Will we go after him?”

“No,” Brü said firmly. “Colonel Astrada knows that would only risk further delay. I think she would just order us forward, but after the ambush…we don’t know what we’re walking into. B?k has senses the rest of us lack. We rely on them, unfortunately.”

“So…waiting is dangerous and moving forward is dangerous,” I summarized.

He nodded grimly and surprised me by confiding further.

“The real trouble is, B?k regaining his senses enough to turn up doesn’t mean he’ll be ready to perform on the road.

And we need him ready.” He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face in a way that suggested he’d been locked in an exhausting cycle of comparing several equally poor plans.

And he wasn’t even the colonel. “Never mind. You should join the others and enjoy the night while?—”

A brief round of whooping and cheers interrupted Brü, drawing our attention back to the fire. A shape had emerged from the trees.

My heart stuttered.

B?k.

But that wasn’t what the whooping was for.

A sultry line of costumed entertainers had emerged from the tavern at the same moment to join the circle.

They’d made their rounds each night, seducing factionites—dancing, flirting, sneaking off into the shadows to do more.

The party was about to begin in earnest.

“Ero?”

I startled. Brü stared at me. Whatever he’d just said, I hadn’t heard him. He registered my frozen expression with grim understanding.

“He has…other things to worry about,” Brü said, barely a murmur, though his tone stopped far short of trying for reassurance. He knew damned well that even if B?k didn’t opt to…well, act like B?k tonight, I was still back at my captor’s mercy now that he’d returned. We all had our problems.

“Come on,” Brü said.

Together, we moved away from the inn wall into the throng of cheerful people at the fire. Brü and I took seats on the opposite side of the ring from B?k. Even from a distance, I saw alarming changes in him. His pupils glowed scarlet. His cheeks were drawn, his gaze hooded.

Somehow— somehow —the seductresses making their rounds managed not to skip him. They were brave. They flirted. They touched him. He issued terse responses until they moved along, some looking relieved and others disappointed.

“What does he…need?” I breathed to Brü when I caught him watching B?k intently.

“To fuck one of them through a tree and get it over with,” Brü grumbled.

I snorted. I’d thought the answer would have to do with potions or…I don’t know, meditation?

“Knitting works too,” Brü went on, continuing an impressive run of uttering totally unexpected nonsense.

“Though he hates it, so it’s a bit of a two steps forward, one step back deal.

Carving figurines is better, but if he nicks himself with the blade, it might be two steps forward and four steps back. ”

Brü realized he’d lost me. He finally looked away from B?k and met my eyes.

“He needs to ground himself,” he explained. “But his binding is determined to torture him for his breach. To pull out of it, he needs a task that fully occupies his mind.” Brü smiled ruefully. “Sex is by far the best.”

I blinked. Wow. I knew the coital arts were useful for getting the mind off general problems. I’d never pegged them as a salve for magically induced psychosis.

“If that’s what he needs, why isn’t he…?” I trailed off, cocking my head at the latest woman to settle next to B?k.

“Because he can be a bit intimidating in the…uh, act.” Brü pressed his lips together, as though that were a vast understatement.

His amusement faded in favor of a grim frown, though, as B?k shooed away the latest flirt.

“The problem is, if they run, his instinct will push him to give chase. He would catch them, of course, and then…well, depending on how far gone he still is, things could get out of hand. If one died, he’d be back to square one.

Even if they didn’t, he would still have to deal with the weight of whatever harm he’d caused in his rage. ”

My vision dimmed at the edges. I knew too well how B?k’s chases could end.

I swallowed the memory and shrugged dismissively. “Like he cares.”

Brü had been leaning in conspiratorially. He sat up straighter then. “He does.” He shot me an assessing look. “If he didn’t, it would make it several hells of a lot easier for us all.”

Why did I feel chastened? I had plenty of reasons to question B?k’s character. He’d been a brute to me without showing a scrap of the internal conflict he apparently had for these women. And he was a demon . That didn’t exactly scream moral code.

“So, all he needs is a willing partner who can’t run and for whom he won’t be punished if he causes accidental harm?” I asked.

Brü snorted. “If we’re wishing on stars, sure.”

He kept talking. Something about more realistic options, each with significant downsides. Lost time. Potential for failure. Weak returns. But I didn’t listen. I stared at B?k.

The firelight framed his rigid muscles in a tantalizing glow.

His hard glare made love to the embers. I couldn’t help but recall the way it’d felt to have those eyes on my exposed ass—the horrible, wonderful anticipation as he’d surveyed his work and traced his thumb across the welts toward my too-telling arousal.

The memory already had me wet. For half a minute, I let myself imagine it.

Dubious though my connection to the Fated might be, wouldn’t it feel good to play the hero?

And to get this grotesque fantasy out of my head once and for all?

And! To kill three birds with one arrow, might it even balance the score with B?k, since I’d technically played him into madness while disobeying him yet again?

I winced, not totally able to convince myself of the last bit. I’d be safer staying out of sight and out of mind, I reasoned.

And then B?k’s gaze snapped to me.

As though he’d heard my thoughts, his eyes arrested mine.

The tendrils in my chest went taut even as the ache between my legs pulsed.

I wanted him the same way that tiny part of me always longed to jump off a cliff when I neared one’s edge.

Deep need reverberated through me, distant thunder before an inevitable storm.

Much like it had when I’d spotted that leather strap, a certainty bloomed in my chest about what would happen next. I’d always had more daring than sense. And didn’t I owe myself this one small thing? A fantasy come to life.

I stood, realizing dimly that Brü was still talking. Poor guy. He deserved to unload to someone. Normally, I would have been a decent choice. I answered his confused look with an apologetic smile, then strode away and skirted the fire to stand before B?k.

B?k glowered up at me. That should have snuffed out my desire. Instead, it stoked it.

“Let me help,” I said. My voice did not shake. I was being a hero, dammit.

For a moment, the world paused. Towering over B?k, I felt…powerful. My insides swelled with the sensation. It was foreign and tempting and wholly without precedent. I hungered in a way that had nothing to do with my aching clit. I sucked in a breath. Maybe I needed to examine this sensation…later.

Something of my power trip must have shown on my face, because B?k caught my wrist and squeezed. Hard.

The smirk died on my lips. B?k twisted my arm and pulled me roughly into his lap so that I faced back toward the fire. Like any prey, my chest trilled when I could no longer see his eyes. His hand settled at the hollow of my throat. His lips grazed my ear.

“Walk away, kitten,” he growled. “Or I’ll take you up on that.”

I tried to twist in his arms, but there was no give, so instead I craned my neck—exposing more of it in the process—to look up at him. Could I really do this? What exactly had Brü meant by “intimidating in the act”? B?k was intimidating out of the act. Could I handle him?

“If I take you into the woods,” he said, speaking to the night without looking at me—but also without loosening his grip, “it’s no game. You will not run.”

I reminded myself to breathe. For some reason, my body stopped handling that function on its own.

“I couldn’t, could I?” I whispered, raising the hand he’d not arrested to touch the collar gingerly. “Aren’t I your safest bet?”

The red swirled in his irises as he searched my eyes with his penetrating glare.

What was his issue? When I ran out of other plausible explanations, I was left with two awful possibilities.

First, he feared he would actually kill me.

Second, he didn’t want to fuck me. The former was terrifying—the latter, somehow, worse.

“No,” he said. “I still have a use for you. Go back to Brü?—”

The rejection pierced my heart and made all the recklessness in my body surge to the forefront.

“I healed myself,” I pushed, too thrilled by the adrenaline coursing through me to listen to something as pesky as my survival instincts. “On Brü’s orders.”

B?k’s jaw clenched.

“And I’ve played at the fire every night. I suppose I could stay and do that some more instead if you?—”

The surrounding air heated, as I’d known it would. My logic, which had retreated to a locked box somewhere far from my pulsing and possibly scorned womanhood, shouted at me to—at the very least—stop taunting the gods-damned demon. But I was incapable. I’d never felt more alive.

I hummed so quietly it was barely a tune. My magic caressed the melody.

B?k’s reaction was immediate. The hand he’d draped across my throat squeezed, instantly taking my air away.

I froze .

“If you’re so determined to taste me,” he growled, “ask nicely.”

His grip eased, though his hand remained in place. Finally, he looked down at me. I stared into the once-onyx depths of his eyes, now bright red like embers. I’d always been drawn to danger. But this? This was…something far beyond.

I inhaled slowly to steady my breathing and said, “Fuck me until you’re sane again, B?k.” I licked my lips and added, barely above a whisper, “Please.”

The words hung in the night air for a pregnant moment. I couldn’t sense his emotions at all. I couldn’t read him. Even the shadows swirling in his eyes stilled.

And then he stood like I wasn’t in his lap, and I fell unceremoniously toward the ground. I braced myself for impact, only for his rough hands to snatch me from free fall. He slung me over his shoulder like a sack of grain and stalked toward the woods.

The last thing I saw before the dark swallowed us whole was Brü’s horrified face across the fire ring.