The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (54 page)

It was Alice.

She saw Tristan first, and smiled. She had one of those faces, all dimples. Even meeting a virtual stranger for a midnight assignation, even with the knowing glint in her eye, she managed to look pure and virginal. “Just when I thought you’d never come,” she purred, her tone heavy with meaning. She brushed her fingertips down the length of his arm.

Isla let out an involuntary gasp. Alice turned, and their eyes met. “My Lady,” she stammered, “I had no idea…that you…I mean….”

The guilt, and embarrassment, in her eyes said more than any amount of words—or touches. Alice was meeting Tristan in the woods, and possibly not for the first time, and she’d been found out. By the woman that he was betrothed to marry.

Isla felt her stomach twist with sudden nausea. Was this what she’d been brought here to see? The man she loved, with another woman? Somehow, as upset as she was, she couldn’t quite credit
that
idea. That Tristan was no virgin could hardly constitute news, and Isla knew Morvish society viewed fidelity as a malleable concept—but still!

Alice glanced up at Tristan and, seeing no answering shock in his own eyes, back at Isla. Isla, in turn, could see the maid’s mind working. Were Tristan’s tastes…perverse? Had he brought Isla here, expecting some group communion?

Isla stood still, waiting. She, too, had no idea what was going on.

Alice must have realized that, because she turned back to Tristan. “Your Grace,” she ventured, “would it please you that the lady and I…?”

“It would please me,” Tristan replied coldly, “that you die.”

A
lice screamed and tried to run.

Tristan’s arm shot out and he pulled her to him. He moved so quickly that he didn’t appear to move at all. Alice twisted back and forth like a cat caught in a trap. Tristan remained calm, as though restraining her took no effort at all. And perhaps for him it didn’t; he was very strong.

Isla watched, transfixed. She didn’t believe it possible that she’d heard him right. His eyes met hers. Alice, he ignored entirely.

“You need to understand what I am,” he said again. His face was expressionless and his voice held no emotion but there was something in his eyes. From any other man she would have called it a mute appeal.

“Let me go!” Alice demanded.

But Tristan didn’t. Turning slightly, he ran a single finger down the hollow of Alice’s neck. There was a fascination there that Isla had never seen before. This wasn’t how he touched Isla; this was how Isla touched her breakfast after coming in from a long morning in the dairy, scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees and helping Rose lift the cheese onto the shelves. She came back to the kitchen sweaty and exhausted and ravenous.

Alice swallowed. “What are you going to do to me?” she breathed, trembling.

“I’m going to eat you.” His tone was almost instructive.

Alice started screaming again. “Why?” The word held a raw, hysterical edge. “I never did anything to you! I thought—you said—”

“I said nothing,” Tristan corrected her. He was perfectly calm. His tone held no revulsion, and no relish. Isla had never seen a man address his dinner before, and she was both horrified and sickly fascinated. “I asked you to meet me here, and you agreed.”

“But…I’m a good girl…I have a family…I don’t want to die,” she pleaded. “I’m too young and I…I haven’t done anything yet. I’ve never left this stupid bog, never seen the world.” She choked back a sob. “Please, let me go,” she begged. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I’ll go straight home and never leave my room again only please…I want to live.”

Tristan didn’t respond. His eyes met Isla’s. Isla said nothing.

“Why?” Alice whimpered again, sagging a little. “Why me?”

“Because I have to.” Tristan—or the thing masquerading as Tristan—spoke the words almost gently, as he caressed her cheek. Almost like a lover might. But not quite. “To survive.” His words weren’t an apology, but an explanation. He—it—was enjoying this.

Alice began to sob, and to shake slightly, like a slender young tree in a high wind. Her words had degenerated into a single incoherent plea that she repeated over and over. She turned to Isla, silently begging her for help. Isla stared back, transfixed.

She spoke no word, and made no move to help. She’d never been so scared in her life, but that wasn’t why. She was no coward, and fear had never prevented her from doing what she thought was right. She’d been terrified the night Hart’s mother died, terrified the night her own mother died, and terrified of Apple when she’d come to live with them. But she’d made her peace with Apple, proving herself to be no threat by never voicing her concerns. And Apple had seen and, in time, the danger had broken up and passed away like storm clouds. She’d been almost too frightened to move the night she’d gone to Tristan, offering herself to him in exchange for her sister’s life.

But this was different. This was the test. He’d brought her here to see this, tonight. And to see what she would do. She realized now that she hadn’t understood; Tristan wasn’t judging her.

He was waiting for her to judge him.

Isla stared into Alice’s eyes, now bright with terror. She swallowed. Despite the other girl’s obvious interest in Tristan, Isla liked Alice. She always had. They weren’t close. Thank the Gods, she thought, that he hadn’t picked Rose. She wasn’t sure that she could’ve stood watching her friend die. As it was, Isla felt ill. What kind of a person was she?

She’d known what he was when she asked him to marry her; knew what he was when she’d accepted his gifts, and returned his advances. Knew what he was when she fell in love with him. But she’d been a coward then, far more than now. Because she could, she’d ignored what she knew about him. She’d wanted to see him as a man, not as a monster. And so she had. She didn’t have to cope with the fact that he ate people, if she stayed home and embroidered while he did it. She’d been lying to herself this whole time, and the realization was a bitter one.

The only question left to her was: how honest was she going to be with herself, in the end?

Was she going to keep pretending, only pretending now that she didn’t love him and was revolted? Or was she going to acknowledge the truth: that she did still love him and always would. That she, in that sense, was as sick as he. However she might like to imagine herself, she was no dainty miss to shy away from his touch. She found his…his
otherness
alluring. She felt safe around him. She’d been
glad
when he killed Father Justin. She’d known he was a killer, and a ruthless one, from the night they’d met and it hadn’t stopped her from falling in love with him. From
wanting
to fall in love with him.

If she denied him, the person she’d really be denying was herself. Isla wasn’t the child her parents had wanted; she wouldn’t ever fit in with the Morvish ideal of what a woman should be. The only person who wanted her—truly, for herself, as she was—was standing right here. And if she wanted to be with him, tonight or ever, if she wanted to have any kind of real connection with him, she had to accept him for what he was. Just as he accepted her. They had to trust each other. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life with this wall between them, purposefully closing her eyes rather than acknowledging his true nature.

She either loved him, or she didn’t.

Moreover, she knew that Alice was going to die regardless. Tristan was a demon; his nature wouldn’t change, simply because Isla denied it. His needs wouldn’t change, if she abandoned him here. He’d marked Alice, and he wouldn’t let her go now. If nothing else, he couldn’t afford to. Regardless of what she said, she
would
tell. And Tristan might be the king’s brother, and people might be willing to overlook a great deal, but they’d only do so as long as Tristan made doing so possible.

Isla didn’t doubt that there were rumors about his true nature, but so far they were just that: rumors. Tristan, as odd as he was, didn’t force their faces into the truth. He let them gossip and speculate and, if they chose to do so, ignore. After all, the rumors about him couldn’t possibly be true. But if a young girl came forth and said that the Duke of Darkling Reach, a man with enemies and no friend of the church, had both identified himself as a demon and tried to eat her….

Isla swallowed again. Alice’s gaze was still fixed on hers. She’d seen the same dumb appeal before, in the slaughter pens. Cows, sheep…women who thought they’d agreed to nothing more than a little loose sex. They were all the same. Isla had helped to slaughter a number of animals and then, later, sat down to eat them at dinner. This, as painful as it was for her to admit, was no different. She turned a blind eye to the suffering of a cow, because a cow was a different species. Just as Alice was a different species, to Tristan.

Men killed each other in battle, and for far less valid reasons. Was it so wrong, to kill for food? As other beasts did? Beasts…and men?

All this flashed through her mind in seconds. She felt like she’d been standing in this clearing for years but in truth, she hadn’t been there for more than a minute or so. It had all happened so quickly, the earth rocking beneath her feet and her worldview being turned upside down. She held Alice’s gaze and, with the barest of movements, shook her head.

Alice moaned. She sagged further, her weight now mostly supported by Tristan. She’d stopped fighting, the way animals sometimes did when cornered. Isla didn’t doubt that if he loosened his grip for a minute, she’d run. Sometimes, out of instinct, animals played dead; predators only wanted live prey.

Isla thought she might be sick.

A heavy sense of unreality had come over her, as though she were watching herself from someplace far overhead. As though this were a dream. Her hands, clutching each other, didn’t feel like her own. Her limbs felt heavy, like she’d been encased in cement. Even the smallest movement took effort, and she felt nothing so much as an overwhelming compulsion to close her eyes and crumple into a heap on the ground. She felt light-headed, and like her skull was filling with bees. Loudly, endlessly buzzing….

She’d brought this on herself. Isla spoke the words in her mind over and over, as if the acknowledgment of her own penance might give her strength. The strength she needed, to see this through. She’d brought this on herself. She had to face the truth; she had to. She was as complicit in Alice’s death as if she’d stabbed the girl between the ribs with a knife.

Tristan moved with a strange grace as he fastened his jaws on Alice’s throat. He bent her over backwards, almost as if they were dancing. Her arms shot up, clawing at nothing as her cries were cut off. He’d very briskly, and very efficiently, bitten through her wind pipe. There was a horrible, hollow whistling sound as she struggled for breath. He held her against him, keeping his mouth fastened on her throat.

The moment stretched. Alice’s feet drummed against the ground, kicking up piles of leaves. She kept moving with real effort for far too long. Isla didn’t understand how she could still be alive.

Slowly, her efforts at escape gave way to spasmodic jerks as her mind ceased to command her movements. Her whole body shuddered and shook, like she’d been struck by lightening. Her eyes, the whole time, were fixed on Isla’s. Isla watched, nauseated, as the light that had shown there slowly went out and Alice’s eyeballs, empty now, began to glaze.

Tristan didn’t release her for another long minute, not until he was sure she was dead. And then, exhibiting the same grace, he lowered her to the ground and began to eat her. He stripped her garments from her effectively, rending her gown and kirtle down the front and exposing the soft roundness of Alice’s belly. It shone alabaster in the moonlight, unlike her sun-browned face, and it parted easily under claws that Isla now understood served a definite purpose. He used his forefinger like a knife, splitting Alice open like an overripe fruit and peeling her just as effectively. Isla fought back her rising gorge. Alice’s intestines glistened blackly. Her blood, no longer pumping through her veins, pooled sluggishly in the hollow cavity as Tristan began to remove the rope-like organ.

Isla sank down onto a fallen log that she hadn’t even realized was behind her and was barely aware of even as it took her weight. She didn’t think her legs were capable of holding her even if she’d wanted them to. She stared, unable to wrench her eyes from the spectacle before her. Tristan’s movements weren’t furtive like a criminal’s but beautiful like a mountain lion’s. He bent over her, his muscles bunching and rippling under his clothes. Isla squeezed her eyes shut but she couldn’t block out the awful
wet
sound that was like ripping cloth.

She didn’t know how long the nightmare lasted. Hours? Years? Minutes? The noises, the relentless
eating
seemed to go on forever.

She didn’t know, in retrospect, if she’d even been fully conscious for most of it. She was brought around some time later by Tristan kneeling before her and touching her on the cheek. She’d laid down on the log and her other cheek was pressed against the bark. The scent of decay was in her nostrils and some kind of weevil was tickling her as it squirmed to get free. She started, brushing it away as she sat up. She had no memory of moving, and was temporarily disoriented.