Page 15 of Demonchild

“You really think you’re that good?” she said.

It was only after the words had left her tongue that she realized what she was doing. She was taunting the demon, provoking him.

Heavenly Creator, what was the matter with her?

“Tell me something, Malissa,” the demon said. “How many men have you kissed?”

“More than I can remember,” she lied.

In truth, the number was easy to remember. It was two. The first had been when she was fifteen, during the Feast of the Winter Solstice. The son of a visiting lord had stolen a kiss from her while the grownups were all too drunk on mulled wine to notice or to care.

The second had been her husband, the king.

Wulfgang had kissed her once at their wedding, and never again. Their nocturnal couplings had always been straightforward, workmanlike affairs—cold, kissless, and mercifully brief.

Beliath laughed softly.

“I promise you, woman: my kiss will make you forget all the rest. You willbegme for more.”

Malissa’s heart fired with anger, but she did her best not to let her feelings show. She could see what the demon was trying to do. He was tempting her and provoking her all at the same time. He was trying to make her step into the circle to prove him wrong—and to prove him right. Either way, it was a trick, and Malissa knew it.

And yet…

Shewantedto step inside the circle with him.

She wasn’t sure exactly why. She knew it was a terrible risk and foolish beyond belief, but she couldn’t deny the little voice inside her, urging her to step over the line and enter the demon’s domain. She knew she would be surrendering her power as soon as she did so, but that only excited her more.

She’d always been that way.

Once, when she was just a little girl, her father had hosted a band of traveling entertainers at his castle. There had been bards and dancers, clowns and conjurers—and most interesting of all, an animal tamer with a trained bear. The creature was smaller than Malissa had expected a bear to be, and it hadn’t seemed very savage. Mostly it had just seemed sad. Still, it had worn a leather muzzle over its snout, so Malissa had guessed it still had some wildness in it which the animal tamer had not been able to train out.

When no one was looking, she had tried to unfasten the bear’s muzzle.

The tamer had stopped her at the last moment, and her father had scolded her fiercely in front of everybody.Why would you do such a thing, he’d asked her.Why?

Little Malissa hadn’t really had a good answer for that. Maybe she’d felt sorry for the bear, who looked so sad and scruffy. Maybe she’d thought he was just a silly, lumbering pet who wouldn’t do anybody any harm.

Or maybe, just maybe, she’d wanted to see what would happen when the muzzle came off.

It wasn’t the only time her curiosity had gotten her in trouble, but it was the one that jumped into her mind now as she stood trembling at the edge of the darkstone ring.

“If I step inside with you,” she said, “and you hurt me—even a little—I will never set you free.”

“I won’t hurt you,” Beliath said. “Ipromise.”

A demon’s promise. How much was that worth?

At least as much as the promise of a man.

Malissa took a breath to try and steady her nerves, but it didn’t help. Her heart was knocking inside her like a fist beating frantically against a wooden door. Her legs felt weak and weightless under her. She was starting to sweat.

She took a step forward. Then another. Her foot was on the soft grass between two of the standing stones, neither within the ring nor without.

She took a final step.

She was inside.

The air around her was deathly quiet. Nothing stirred. Even Malissa’s own breathing sounded distant and dull, as if she had entered a dead space cut off from the rest of the physical world. The five candles flickered around her. Shadows danced.

---