The Demon Lord (A Demon Outlaws Novella) (Entangled Edge) (4 page)

But she had to want to withstand them. In that regard he would have to trust her, and trust was not something he did easily.

As he rose from the rocks and shifted to demon form, preparing for flight, he pushed worry aside. She was his. She had given him her name, and he had given her no reason to stray. Physically, she had been well satisfied when she left. But he did not like being parted from her.

That had to end.

…

Allia returned to the mountain temple as dawn reddened the sky.

She did not enter at once, but rather found a secluded spot in the sprawling forest where she could sit alone and think. She chose a wooden bench that crouched beneath a canopy of interwoven branches in an abandoned garden. The bench was gray and withered with age, and covered in a thick mantle of pine needles and curled leaves.

This place had once been a favored refuge, but the goddesses had neglected it for so long that the mountain had reclaimed much of it. The change startled her. Immortals were not good at measuring time, and she had not realized so much of it had passed since she’d last been here.

The amulet she had been given was safely tucked in her clothing, near her heart. She did not want the others to see it, but she could not bear to take it off.

She had made her decision. Now she needed to find the courage to implement it.

Familiar footsteps approached, moving with caution through the underbrush, then hesitated, as if the person did not wish to interrupt her privacy but had no choice. She knew who it would be, and she could use her support.

“It’s all right,” Allia called out. “You can join me.”

Desire moved into view, pushing aside the low-hanging, grasping branches of pine and fir that had spread over the old path.

“Forgive me for intruding. You seemed troubled,” she said, the kind concern radiating from her face giving her a loveliness no immortal could ever possibly emulate.

This was yet another bond Allia had not fully realized was so important to her. Once touched by a goddess, a priestess was hers for life. While there had been other handmaids over the years, none were as devoted to her as Desire, who knew instinctively when something was wrong and sought her out to offer comfort.

“I’m leaving,” Allia said to her. “I have no idea what will happen to you when I go.”

Desire did not seem surprised by the announcement. She sat on the bench beside her and took her hand. “I’ll be fine. I knew after the first night you spent with him and said nothing about it to the others, that there was no turning back for you.”

“Why didn’t you say something to them? Or to me?”

Desire squeezed her fingers. “Who am I to offer guidance to any immortal?”

“My most trusted companion. My friend. I value you as much as my sisters.” Allia blinked back tears. “Am I making the wrong choice?”

“You’ll be giving up a lot for him,” Desire said. “What is he giving up for you in return?”

Nothing, as yet. She hoped that would change, and had given it a lot of thought. “I want to take him to the goddess boundary and see if my amulet, the one I wear, will help him cross through it with me. If it does, we can find another place on this world for us to be together.”

Desire chose her response carefully. “Why not leave this world entirely?”

“Because I can’t,” Allia confessed. “I could never bear to be so far from my sisters. I’ve come to love this world and everything in it, including the pleasures it brings me when I’m with him.” Especially those. If they were to leave, the bond between them would remain. So would the love. But the physical pleasures would be lost to them because those pleasures were mortal. “I don’t expect you to understand.” Desire took the wonders of her world for granted. She’d never known anything else, so had nothing to compare it against.

A twig cracked nearby. A squirrel dashed up a tree and chattered at the ground. Otherwise, the woods were silent.

“You think I don’t understand love?” the priestess finally asked. The long scar marring her face became less pronounced beneath the gentle radiance of her wistful smile. “With age comes wisdom, but the goddesses are ageless. You live in the moment without having to give thought to future consequences. Think of them now. I’ve known love of every kind, and it’s never easy to part with. Hold onto it as long as you can.” Desire pressed her fingers again. “I wish you nothing but happiness in your future. It’s no more than you deserve. And as long as you need me, for as long as I live, I’m your servant.”

Desire was right. Allia had never thought of her own future beyond her immediate requirements before. As an immortal, she’d had no need.

A twinge of unease trembled through her, leaving doubt in its wake as she wondered what else she had failed to consider.

Chapter Four

He waited for her in their usual place. She was late, and he was impatient. The passage of time chafed at him.

He had thought of a gift for her, one that would express his love and make her smile for him in return. Flowers bloomed in the basin of the dried pool of goddess rain, and he’d crafted a demonstration for her.

A noise in the cottonwoods caught his attention. He turned, ready to fight.

The only thing that saved the gnarled little woman was her shaved head. He recognized her as the priestess who had been spying on him for quite some time now, and he thought at first she might carry a message for him from Allia.

She kept her head down, with her eyes fixed on the cool, dew-dampened grass beneath her bare, misshapen feet, and waited for him to speak first. He wondered how long she had been watching him before she approached.

He was becoming too careless. Allia consumed his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else, particularly here in a place that was theirs alone, and he did not like this intrusion.

“Why do you spy on me, Priestess?” he demanded. “And what are you doing here, so far from the goddesses’ temple and its protection?”

“My name is Mamna, and I wish only to serve you,” she said. “You have been betrayed.”

The Demon Lord did not want to believe her or the story she told. He was used to women wishing to serve him. They would do or say anything to win his favor, and the priestess’s was not the first head to be turned by false hopes. No mortal could resist the allure of a demon.

Allia would not plot against him. She was his. She loved him.

He loved her.

This was some trick of her sisters.

“Watch and see,” Mamna declared. “She will offer you a pendant, a small mountain stone of no obvious beauty or value, with all of the colors of the rainbow. She’ll tell you it’s a symbol of her love for you. She’ll tell you it offers immunity against the goddesses, just as the amulet you gave her protects her from demons. But it is the same stone the goddesses give to their favored mortal men. It is meant to enslave you. It will bind you to her as surely as it binds them.” Mamna held out her hand, raising her eyes to his. She had a handful of the same colored stones, some set in pendants, others as yet unpolished. “Have you seen these before?”

He had. Allia wore one herself, yet he had not seen it on her the last time they were together. Dread mixed with anger, to swirl like acid in his stomach.

“If you are lying, you’re dead,” he said to her.

She did not recoil from his anger. Beneath her ugly exterior he recognized a solid core of ruthless courage and determination. She reeked of ambition. “I’m telling the truth.”

She lied. Allia would not betray him.

And yet doubt niggled at him.

You forget what we are. You’ve pursued goddesses both inside and outside of time. Across the entire universe. And yet I’m the first to be caught. You shouldn’t forget that either.
Or what happens when prey becomes cornered.

He did not like to think that he had been such a great fool, but now he wondered if there’d been a warning hidden in her words.

When she saw he had nothing more to say, the ugly little priestess left him alone. He listened hard so as to be certain of her departure.

It seemed like forever before Allia arrived. Her golden, long-legged beauty snatched his breath from him. She wore the amulet he had given her. It nestled above her breasts, dull against her glowing skin. The sight of her wearing something of his increased his sense of possession.

“What kept you?” he demanded.

“My sisters.”

She said nothing more than that, and before the priestess’s story, he might have accepted it as enough. Now, with opened eyes, he read the underlying tension in her. Whatever they had wanted from her, it left her uneasy and dimmed much of her inner light.

He was not ready to confront her about the priestess’s claims. His need for her was too great, and it seemed like forever to him since he’d last been with her.

He took her too quickly, with less gentleness and more desperation than he’d intended, yet she did not protest or try to slow him. If anything, her need for him was as great as his for her.

Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, he pressed his cheek to the top of her head. He toyed with a lock of her hair, and the priestess and her false claims were all but forgotten.

He had Allia with him now. He would make his love plain to her so she would not want to leave. There could be no more doubt between them.

She would give up her sisters.

“I have something to show you,” he said.

They lay at the edge of the basin from her pool, which was filled with delicate flowers of red, yellow, and purple. He gestured with his fingers. Flames erupted in the midst of them, and beside him, Allia gasped as the blossoms caught fire. He watched the delight shine from her face when she saw what he’d done.

The burning flowers formed words. The words read,
You are my heart and soul
. As the flames died away, the flowers remained untouched.

Golden tears filled her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks as she took his face in her hands and kissed his lips. She slid from his embrace to rest on her bare knees beside him. Sitting on her heels, she reached for her gown to fumble in its diaphanous folds. The tension he’d sensed in her earlier was gone.

“I have something for you, too,” she said. She held up a pretty stone on a gold chain.

His vision blurred so that he could not see clearly. The priestess’s words rang in his head.

Have you seen these before?

…

His eyes turned to ice, black and hard and chillingly hostile as they narrowed on the amulet in her hand, then fastened on her face. “What is that?”

His hostility arrested her action. He had just given her a gift of infinite value and immeasurable beauty. She couldn’t begin to imagine what had caused such a drastic shift in his mood.

Rather than slip the chain over his head, she slowly drew back to clutch it next to her heart and to the amulet he had given her.

“You’ve given me protection against demons,” she said. “You’ve just given me an even more beautiful gift. I want to give you something in return, something of great value to me.” She held it out for him to take from her, so that he could examine it and place it around his neck himself. “It will tell my sisters that you’re mine.”

He ignored the offering but continued to stare at her as if he did not know her, and did not like what he saw. “Why should I care what your sisters think?”

The amulet she wore for protection grew hot against her bare skin. Something was suddenly, and seriously, wrong. He had been fine moments before. Now disaster loomed.

She should have known he would resent any suggestion of dominance over him. “Because I care what they think,” she said. “This stone will tell them I’ve accepted you willingly. I thought you wished for your demons to form bonds of their own. I want to help you.”

“I have no need for help such as this.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. But deep down, she thought that perhaps she did.

“Is the stone meant to trap me? Enslave me, perhaps?” he asked, sounding so dangerous that it chilled her. She had never, not even at their first meeting, feared him.

She refused to be afraid of him now.

They were both on their feet. Before her eyes, so fast she could scarcely believe it, he changed from sensual lover to angry predator.

Somehow, he’d found out what her sisters had planned for him.

Yet even now, when she knew she should, she could not confess her part in it—that she had indeed been meant to lure him into slavery—because it was too late. Even if it were not, she could never betray her sisters either.

“I never tried to enslave you, and I never will,” she said. That much was the truth. She had discarded that plan the first time he touched her.

He stepped toward her, forcing her back. Deep in his eyes, demon fire flared. Nearby, shrubs burst into flame.

“You already have. Is the bond between us not slavery enough for you?” he asked.

She should have told him she loved him. She had no one to blame but herself for this disaster. She had known how much he resented the bond between them, and that he disliked the loss of freedom it represented as much as he enjoyed possessing her.

She reached for the amulet she wore, the one he’d given her to protect her from demons, and that protected her from his anger now. Slowly, she lifted it from around her neck, freeing it from the tangles of her hair, unwilling to part with it because she discovered it was far more precious to her than the other, but knowing she must. He would never believe in her love for him while it kept her safe. If she showed any fear of him, she would lose him.

“How is our bond more slavery for you than me?” she asked. She held his amulet out to him. When he refused to touch it, she took both stones—his and hers—and joined them so that the two pieces fit together as one. Then, she allowed them to trickle from her hand. The twin chains glittered in the dirt at her feet. “I love you. Bond or not, whether you claim me or not, I’m yours. I’ll never belong to another.”

The fire in his eyes died, as did the lingering flames that burned the shrubs around the oasis to ash. He stared at the two joined stones for long moments.

“You are my heart and soul. There will be no more misunderstandings between us. If you love me as you say,” he said, “then stay with me.”

She heard the pleading, the longing, and the need behind his demand. Heart pounding, Allia stepped into his arms. She would promise him anything. She’d almost lost him, and she’d never risk doing so again. Someday, when her sisters found the one meant for each of them, they would understand this decision and forgive her for it.

“Always,” she said.

He cupped her face in his hands, kissing her brow. He stroked a thumb along the curve of her lips before bowing his head. “I promise, you’ll never regret this decision.”

She knew she would not. She would give him no reason to, either. Together, they would repair the damage done to the world. They’d bring it new life.

They would show goddess, demon, and mortal alike what it meant when two souls, destined to be together, finally found each other.

We hope you have enjoyed this prequel novella. Turn the page to find out what happens in the first book of the Demon Outlaws Series,
The Demon’s Daughter
.