Page 63 of Demon Bound

She didn’t notice Jai watching over her shoulder until the girl spoke. She had a remarkable talent for sneaking up on people.

“Why do you keep wincing like that?” Jai asked.

Raiya tried to smooth the grimace out of her face. The runes she’d made were thick and jagged and ugly. In two cases, she’d even had to scratch them out and start over. There was no artistry to it, only function. Maybe not even that.

“It’s not my best work,” she said.

Jai looked worried. “You don’t think it’ll work?”

“Hopefully it will work well enough for our purposes.” Finished, she tucked her stylus carefully into its small pocket in her bag. The stylus was specially made for enchanting, magically hardened to be able to carve into almost any material. It would be difficult to replace if she lost it.

There happened to be a mage in camp who had agreed to charge her baton and her new enchantment for a steep fee. The man took everything left in her coin purse, and it would take another hour for him to complete the charging. Raiya had to stifle the urge to complain. She’d been spoiled by the intense levels of raw power Azreth was capable of channeling. He could have charged them in seconds.

She looked up at Jai, wrinkling her brow. The girl’s curious, jade-colored eyes met hers, crinkling as she smiled.

“Are you certain you want to do this, Jai?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It will be dangerous. And you have no need to help us. You owe us nothing.”

Jai pushed her dark eyebrows together. “Maybe we don’t owe you anything, but we have plenty of reason to help.”

“Not long ago, you were planning to kill Azreth.”

“That was before we knew he was your friend. In a way, that makes it even more important to help him, doesn’t it? No one else is going to help a demon. I know what that’s like. Before Madira and I found the Roamers, no one helped us, either. We had to fight our way through half the continent because of it. People were always either frightened of us, or just hated us. It must be the same for him.”

Raiya smiled. Jai trusted easily. It was sweet. Madira was much more wary, but he was easily enticed by the promise of adventure and subterfuge.

“It will go perfectly,” Jai assured her, taking on a self-satisfied tone. “If you’d seen night elves in action before, you wouldn’t be worried. There’s a reason the mere mention of us terrifies you humans.”

They returnedto the temple just after sunset. Jai’s hand was on Raiya’s, the girl’s magic shrouding them, while Madira walked ahead. He was only just visible if you waited for him to walk near a light and knew exactly where to look. Both of them were adept at blending in with shadows, avoiding the circles of light that dotted paths and shone from windows. The townspeople ignored them completely, too busy to notice a stray shadow or two.

“This is easier than I thought it’d be,” Raiya whispered.

“I told you,” said Jai and Madira in unison.

They came to a stop in the mouth of an alley. Across the road was the Temple of Moratha, a dark monolith rising above the rest of Ontag-ul. Raiya was surprised to see a group of steel-clad figures standing in front of it.

Paladins. They were speaking to the cultists standing guard at the front door. Above them, even more guards watched surreptitiously from windows above. Gereg hadn’t been exaggerating the extent of their defenses.

Raiya heard a familiar voice, and her blood ran cold. And then she saw him.

“That’s my husband,” she murmured. There was a pause as the elves got their first look at him.

He was with the Paladins, animatedly arguing with the guard in front of the door. Just the sound of his voice filled her with dread. She hated that he had such an effect on her.

Could he know that they had taken Azreth? Was he trying to buy him? Would the cultists allow that?

Jai gripped her hand tighter.

“That’s him?” Madira said. “What a priss. He looks like he’s never touched a sword in his life.”

“He probably hasn’t. He’ll never need to lift a weapon as long as he can get others to do it for him.”

It seemed that the guard at the door had grown tired of the Paladins, because he raised his voice and waved them off. The Paladins backed down, and Raiya was relieved when Nirlan strode away furiously. His anger meant that he hadn’t gotten whatever he wanted.

The Paladins lingered in the street. Raiya realized there was another civilian among them, a young man with ash blonde hair tucked behind his ears. It was Adamus, the Paladin she and Azreth had encountered on the road.

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