Page 9 of The Demon Mark

“She’s not for sale,” her master said, his voice deep and rusty.

“Everything is for sale. Now. What is your price?”

His voice... She hadn’t expected it to be like that. A man who simmered with violence should sound like he was evil. A villain had a particular kind of voice. Low and unsettling. But this man’s voice was not that.

He had a calm voice. Raspy at the very ends of his sentences, but that only made her even more intrigued to listen to him. She wanted to hear every word he had to say. To sip on his tones like fine wine because he was something she had never encountered before. A villain in the skin of a hero.

Sensations came back with the sound of their voices. She could feel warm hands holding onto her side, one even clutching her head as though supporting her. She couldn’t imagine who was holding her, though. Everyone knew not to touch her when there was still mist steaming off her skin. Their futures were too easy to see. And she had never been good at keeping herself away from those futures because she wanted to touch them. She wanted to leave this life, because it was so much easier to...

Shadows clung to him just as he clung to her. His hand tightened on her waist, almost as though he knew she was waking. And still he talked, that raspy, deep voice saying far too much.

“I don’t think you understand how much I am willing to pay. I could make you a very rich man.”

Her master snorted. “I am already rich, demon king. I have traveled across all the realms. I have many loyal people who live with me. In a way, you could say I am just as renowned as you.”

“You wish you were a king like me, but your kingdom is small and easily shattered.”

Demon king? Surely this wasn’t Envy himself who held onto her like she was a broken doll he needed to get fixed. But there were hints, she would admit. His hand nearly spanned her entire waist, and that darkness was unlike anything she’d encountered. She’d never touched one of his kind before, never thought she would ever get the opportunity.

A growl filled the room, and she knew they weren’t just with her master. At least one of the shapeshifters had followed him in here, and that meant that they were all worried about her safety. Or well, she supposed they were worried about the asset. She brought more money into this circus than anyone else.

The phantom sensation of pain moved through her form. That mist was still pooling out of her body, but she was so far from anyone whose future she could actually read. There was no escaping this demon who held her.

Her mist sluggishly moved across the floor. She could feel the chill of the marble against it, like her magic was an extension of her body. It wanted to see the future of someone else. It needed escape.

“She’s awake,” her master said, before side stepping the mist. “If you want her to be coherent, you need to give her back to me.”

“I think she’ll be just fine on her own.”

And then that hand at the back of her head moved. It slid through her hair, turning her head to look at the man who held her. She was a puppet in his grip, her entire head held in a single palm. Lilith could do nothing other than open her eyes and look at him.

Chiseled features stared down at her. There was a cleft in his chin that made her want to press her thumb to the hollow there. Full lips, but still slashing and masculine. A sharp nose, hawk-like, led up to piercing eyes that stared straight into her soul. Green eyes, the same color as the vibrant green of a new leaf.

“There you are,” he muttered, that raspy voice sending a bolt of electricity straight through her stomach and between her legs. “I was beginning to fear you were really hurt.”

She tried to say something, anything, so she wasn’t just a dolt lying in his arms. But the moment she opened her mouth, she remembered that she’d been cut. Pain made her spasm. She didn’t want to be here. Not with him. Not with them. There was an escape so close outside that door and all she had to do was wiggle out of his arms to find a new future to lose herself in.

“Told you,” her master grumbled. “She’s lost to her powers. Never been able to get her to use them right, you see. Oracles want to find the future and those prophecies rule her.”

“They don’t rule her.” His fingers shifted in her hair, tilting her head to the side so he could look at her cheek. “My poor little diviner, you have been abused this night. Let me ease your pain.”

“Don’t touch her!”

But Envy did not listen. The demon king of this land lifted his other hand and gently pressed it to the wound on her face. Power sparked between those fingers, little shocks of electricity that danced along her skin and cajoled it to knit together. She had been healed before, but never by someone like him.

There was so much power in his whispered words. More than any other healer, which could only convince her that the rumors were true. He had consumed so much power from so many people that all he had to do was whisper to her skin and it would heal itself.

They all seemed to hold their breath as he completed his spell, and when he lifted his head and opened his eyes, all she could see was herself reflected in them. That dark gaze saw straight through her.

“Sweet thing,” he whispered, that raspy voice doing more to her than she had ever expected. “I couldn’t leave a mark on that beautiful skin.”

His thumb came up, gently moving over her cheek as he brushed away the smears of blood there. Some of it had dried, and she could feel it cracking under his touch. But there was still a faint darkness on his thumb that he then lifted to his mouth and licked clean.

Her breath stuttered, shocked and faintly aroused. His eyes rolled back in his head at the taste of her blood and somehow that made her feel... things. Things that she usually only felt in the futures and lives of other people.

“That’s more than enough,” her master snapped, and she was brought back to this moment.

They were staring at her. All of them.

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