Page 39 of Demon Bound

He sneered. “Do you truly expect me to trust a woman who betrayed her own husband?”

A string in the harp of her soul, drawn taut, suddenly snapped. “I didn’t betray him!Hebetrayedme!He betrayed me a thousand times. You have no idea what he’s done to me, how he’s tormented me, you could never understand…”

Azreth looked surprised by the outburst, but unsympathetic. “You pledged yourself to him. You were mates.”

“Yes. I was an idiot. So I suppose I deserved it all. I’ll admit that. It was my own fault for loving him. He fooled me into thinking he was someone he wasn’t. And I’ve paid for it with the past year of my life. I’ve been humiliated and belittled and used in every way. Living with him has made me into someone I hardly recognize. I don’t even know who I am anymore, or what the point of all this is.” She clenched a fist in her hair, so angry that she wanted to rip it out.

Azreth stared at her, frowning slightly. “He tricked you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Raiya rubbed a hand over her face. He was never going to understand. Even other mortals didn’t understand, so how could he? “I thought he loved me.” Did demons know what love was?She searched for another way to put it. “I thought he would protect me. That’s what he promised to do. Instead, he treated me like… like he treated you. Like I was a bound thing for him to use as he wished.”

She took a breath to calm herself. “Please tell me what’s happening. If I can’t depend on you because you’re about to keel over, I’d like to know. I deserve to know.”

He didn’t look angry like he had when she’d asked that morning, but he said nothing. Raiya was about to give up and keep walking when he finally spoke.

“I need rest.”

Was that all? “We can stop for a while. That’s fine.”

“No. I need sleep.”

Raiya raised her eyebrows. “You said demons didn’t sleep.”

“I lied.”

She paused, adjusting to this information. “How often do you need to sleep?”

“Once every seven days,” he said, blinking slowly. “It has been twelve.”

He’d been hiding this all along. He’d been afraid to tell her. Because sleeping would make him vulnerable. He couldn’tdestroyher or punish her for betraying him or make good on any of his other threats while he was sleeping.

“Did you think I would hurt you while you slept?” she asked, unnerved.

Azreth said nothing, but his silence was telling.

“I wouldn’t do something like that,” she said. “I would never murder someone in cold blood while they were helpless.”

Azreth leaned against the rocks behind him, staring her down. She didn’t think he believed her.

“You have my word,” she said. She could see him slowly being persuaded—if not because he believed her, then because he was simply too exhausted to go on. “People on the mortalplane sleep every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. Very few of them die from it, I assure you.”

“Mortals care for each other. They do not care for demons.”

She couldn’t argue with that. She didn’t know what more to tell him. Impulsively, she started to reach for his hand, but then she recalled the violently negative reaction he’d had the last time she’d tried to touch him. She settled beside him, hugging her knees to her chest.

Azreth opened his mouth, and it hung silently for a moment before any sound came out, as if he still couldn’t decide whether to speak. “I will sleep very deeply. You will not be able to wake me.”

That meant that he’d be even more vulnerable than she’d thought, and also that she would be on her own if the Paladins—or anything else—happened upon them.

She disliked how defeated he looked. Like he was certain he was signing his own death warrant. “I’ll make sure nothing happens,” she assured him. “You’ll be safe here.”

There was nothing more to be said, it seemed, because Azreth finally stretched out on the ground, long and straight on his back, in the seclusion the little cliff offered above the road. He took off the enchanted bracelet and handed it to her as the glamour faded. He didn’t seem to have trouble with spell fever from enchantment overuse like mortals did, but perhaps it was still too uncomfortable to wear it to sleep.

He closed his eyes.

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