Page 8 of Demonchild

Malissa realized she’d been holding her breath in anticipation, and now she let it out in a long, trembling sigh of relief. But then she felt a slow, creeping sensation at the base of her spine.

“What would you ask in return?”

“Free me,” the demon answered.

Malissa’s heart stopped. The blood went cold inside her veins.

“Free you?”

“That’s right. I’ve been trapped inside this darkstone ring for far too long. Now I want out. So, I will give you your child, Queen Malissa of Drachenval, but I will place a curse on you at the same time. If you do not return and set me free before your pregnancy is finished, you will die during childbirth.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me as soon as I set you free?”

“That would be a cruel way to reward my liberator.”

“Youarea demon,” she pointed out.

Beliath gave her one of those deep, rumbling chuckles that made her insides squirm.

“Very true,” he said. “Very true. But that doesn’t mean I have no sense of justice. I suppose you’ll just have to trust me. Maybe I’ll hurt you, maybe not. You won’t know for sure until the time comes… but you know for a certainty what your husband will do to you if you don’t give him an heir.”

The demon had a point.

Of course, even if the demon didn’t kill her, she would still be doing a great evil by setting him loose upon the world.

Malissa decided she could live with that. Beliath was right, shewasselfish.

“My mother’s grimoire has a spell to release a spirit from a darkstone ring, but—”

The demon finished her sentence: “But it will only work at certain times of the year, when the barrier between this world and the next is at its weakest, either on the solstice or the equinox.”

“The summer solstice already passed a fortnight ago.”

“Then you must return at the autumn equinox to set me free. That will be more than enough time for you to know that I have upheld my end of the bargain.”

Malissa hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Very well. I shall return and free you on the equinox.”

“Good. Well then, let’s begin, shall we?”

“Begin? What do you mean?”

Another dark chuckle. “Come now, woman. Surely you know how babies are made. So what are you waiting for? All you have to do is step inside the ring with me, spread those pretty legs, and let my fat prick take care of the rest.”

CHAPTER 6

Beliath instantly knew he had overstepped. He could see it written in the little human’s expression. The way her lovely mouth suddenly gaped at him. The way the blood momentarily drained from her face, then came surging back twice as bright as before. The way her dark eyes flickered between defiance and abject horror.

She was not one of the priestesses of old, he reminded himself. She had never witnessed a ritual offering, so she did not know the things he was capable of doing to a woman. She had never heard their wanton screams of pleasure, or the desperate way they always begged him for more.

Too bad nobody had bothered to writethatdown in her little book.

His words had offended the little woman. Most likely, nobody had ever spoken to her like that before. So be it. Beliath wasn’t about to beg forgiveness for telling the woman what he wanted. He was a demon, after all, and a demon never begs.

He waited for the woman to make the next move.

“I’m not going to come inside that circle with you,” she said at last.

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