Page 20 of The Demon Mark

But that was her reality, now wasn’t it? She knew what kind of person he was. They all did. There were rumors about him the moment they entered into his kingdom.

Envy. The demon king who would take whatever he didn’t have. Make sure you don’t talk too loud about magic or power or anything unique. He would take it. He would steal it. He killed people for lesser things.

And now she was at his mercy.

“Screaming gets you nowhere,” a raspy voice interrupted her spiral.

Lilith hiccuped, the sound swallowed up by her shock. She looked around her room to see a sparkle of faint blue light emerging from the back corner. Right through the stones, as though they weren’t even there.

And then a bird stepped through it. The rock warped around her, and a branch of roses stretched out of the stone to give the bird a small perch to sit on.

She blinked at the massive raven, wondering at how it appeared... wrong. There was something off about the creature. Maybe it was the intelligence in its eyes that was more than the already smart ravens that she’d seen before. But this one tilted its head to the side, stared at her through one dark eye, and then started talking again.

“Screaming will only make him angry at you.”

“Angry at me?” she repeated, as though she wasn’t talking to a bird. “He kidnapped me. He stole me away from my home.”

“I saw your home. Shit hole.” The birds’s feathers ruffled, rising around its neck until it looked even larger. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

“You should,” it squawked before readjusting its feet. “You are taken care of, are you not?”

“I have seen zero care for me.” She stood on the bed, gaining the high ground above the creature, now looking at her with suspicion. “What are you?”

“A bird.”

“You are no bird.”

The creature tilted its head again, looking at her through the opposite eye. “I’m a kind of bird.”

“I have seen ravens before. I have seen them in this kingdom and in many others. They do not speak. They do not look at me the way you look at me, and they certainly do not come out of holes in the walls conjured by magic.”

It snapped its beak. “I did not conjure the hole in the wall.”

That’s what the bird latched onto? Of everything she had just said?

“So the rest of it is true then,” she murmured. “You are not a raven at all, are you?”

The creature snapped its sharp beak again, but it said nothing else. This time, it just stared at her like she already knew the answer to that question. And it was silly she was even asking.

Swallowing hard, she reached down near her feet for any kind of weapon she might find there. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. My lord wants something from you.”

“What does he want from me?”

“Don’t know.”

There wasn’t a weapon in sight. The man had been thorough making sure she wouldn’t have any way to hurt herself, but he hadn’t taken away her shoes. Heavy boots could do just as much damage if they were wielded by a strong hand.

Taking off her shoe, she brandished it at the bird. “Tell me why I’m here.”

“You know why.”

“No, I do not. I will throw this boot at you so hard that it takes all the feathers off your body. Tell me what he wants from me. Not that he just wanted to keep me for himself; we both know that’s a lie. So what is it?”

She could see the slight hesitation in the bird. Like it knew her threat was real, but also that it knew the truth.

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