Page 10 of Stolen By the Demon

This shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t!

His hands moved up and down my back, gently, soothing. For a moment, I had forgotten that he was the man who had imprisoned me, but now that I didn’t seem to be dying, it came back to me. I couldn’t decide what disturbed me more right then, so I decided to attack Devon because my frustration had hit its limits, and dealing with why my heart wasn’t beating, why I didn’t need to breathe, seemed just too much.

“You!” I put my hands between us and pushed.

I didn’t expect anything to happen, but to my utter amazement, he stumbled back.

“You’re stronger than I thought,” he laughed. Laughed! As if he was proud of me.

“You held me prisoner! In a cave!”

That stopped his laughter as quickly as a bucket of ice water emptied over his head would have.

“I’m sorry.” Then his face lit up. “You remember?”

“The cave? Yes! And you. And me chained to the wall.”

“I’m sorry, Blanche, I really am. I should have never done that.”

He wasn’t denying it, which took the wind out of my sails. I felt betrayed and hurt, and that devastated me. He wasn’t my Sir Lancelot.

“You’re not a hero,” I said in a sad voice.

“I never pretended to be. I’ve always been the villain,” he confessed with such a heartbreaking, rueful smile it would have robbed me of my breath had I still been breathing. “I would burn the entire planet down for you.”

His words were eerily familiar. He had said them to me before… a long time ago. They echoed in my head, and I tried desperately to grab at that memory and pull it back, but again, it ran through my fingers.

Of all the things she could have remembered, it had to be this. I cursed. I had begged her forgiveness for it long ago and had reveled in her granting it. It seemed like I needed to beg again. I smiled. That would be easy. I was overjoyed she was here and would do anything to keep her by my side. If I had to beg her on my knees, if I had to crawl over hot coals, I would.

“You don’t remember anything else?” I asked.

“Like what?” she replied with a good amount of suspicion.

I deserve that, I supposed.

“What do you know of me? Why did you hold me prisoner?”

That, at least, I could answer. “My brother was supposed to haggle a deal with your father. They were going to take you to the Brocken—”

“The what?”

“The Brocken, it’s the highest mountain in Northern Germany,” I explained. I gave her a questioning glance, and she waved her hand for me to continue.

“I simply intercepted you,” I finished.

“By intercepting, you mean abduct?” she clarified.

“Yes.”

She widened her eyes in exasperation, “Why?”

“Because my brother and I had a thing going. Jealousy, competition, sibling rivalry, whatever negativity comes to mind between brothers, we felt it for one another. I decided to show my father that I would have been the better choice in taking you to the Brocken.”

A smile washed over my face at the memory of it. Come to think of it, Adramalech had been the far better choice of taking Blanche to the Brocken because I failed. I fell in love with her. Once I did, there was no question of whether she would go to the Brocken or not. She was MINE, and I was ready to die for her. Which I almost did after I failed and thought I had lost her. Nothing had mattered to me then anymore.

“What is so special about the Brocken?” she asked, and I hoped we had stirred away from the more dangerous territory, namely my father and brother.

“Walpurgisnacht is held there every year at the end of April,” I explained.

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