Page 9 of Demon Bound

Eunaios frowned. “It takes time to prepare the spell.”

“You’ve been given time, and what do we have to show for it?”

“The demon is already here. Soon you will have complete control over it. Do try to be patient, my lord.” He spoke with the tone of someone placating a young child.

Nirlan gave him a sharp look, which didn’t appear to ruffle him. Eunaios knew Nirlan needed him. Raiya envied hisself-assuredness. Mages with knowledge about demons were more difficult to come by than pretty women. It would be an inconvenience if Raiya happened to disappear, but not a disaster. She had no family or friends left to miss her. He’d find a new wife, and life would go on.

Nirlan turned to the demon. “Do you hear that?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard through the barrier. He stepped closer, swinging the baton casually at his side. “Soon you’ll be bound to me. Then we can let you out, and you can wreak havoc on the countryside. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Nirlan swung the baton, and arcs of magical lightning burst forth. The demon grimaced and convulsed, defenseless in its cage.

The runes on the baton stopped glowing. It was out of magic. The demon sagged against the back wall of its enclosure as the attacks stopped. Rather than putting the baton back on its hook on the wall, Nirlan handed it to Eunaios. “Recharge this,” he said, then turned to leave. “Come, wife.”

“Waste of magic,” Eunaios commented.

Chapter 4

As they climbed the stairs to their bedchamber, Raiya realized that her dress had been torn in her struggle with the demon. There was a long rip from the hem to her knee, baring her dark tights beneath. She looked at her hands. The demon had licked all the blood clean, leaving broken nails and pink scrapes on the tips of her fingers.

Raiya’s mother had once told her that if a man put his hands on you once, he would undoubtedly do it again, no matter what you did to please him. Nirlan had just thrown her to a demon. Did the same logic apply? Would he punish her that way in the future, risking her life again?

“Do you remember when we used to talk about our dreams, before we were married?” she asked.

Nirlan sighed a little. “What?”

“I said I wanted to recruit a mage to power my enchantments, and you said it was a good idea. I thought I could be a real enchanter and invent things.”

“So much for that idea. I’ve hardly seen you do anything but lounge on the sofa for months.”

“And you told me you wanted to make things better in Frosthaven. You said that after the illness took your father, youwere finally going to have the opportunity to make real changes in the town.” She gave him a sidelong look, which he didn’t bother to notice.

He’d never hired a mage for her, though she’d asked about it many times before he’d implied she was annoying him by bringing it up. Instead, he’d hired Eunaios to help himself with his own goals.

“You probably liked that, didn’t you?” Nirlan said.

She looked up at his back as he climbed the stairs ahead of her, her brow puckering. The candle in his hand cast flickering shadows on the walls of the narrow passage.

He glanced over his shoulder to smirk at her. There was no mirth in his smile. “You seem like the type to enjoy having a monster putting his tongue all over you. You were probably thinking about how big his cock might be.”

“You were the one who threw me to him like a bone to a dog.”

“I didn’t expect you to enjoy it so much. You hardly even fought him.”

“How do you expect me to fight a creature like that? What else could I have done?”

“You and I both know what you were doing.”

After over a year with him, she had thought she was too tired to feel real anger toward him. The anger she’d felt early on had long ago been replaced with emptiness. After a while, she’d given up hope of changing him or her circumstances, and it had been hard to feel anything.

But right now, she was furious. Perhaps some of the demon’s anger had rubbed off on her.

Once, one of the servant girls had quietly asked Raiya why she didn’t leave him.

“I don’t know,” Raiya had said, but in truth, there were many reasons. The primary one was that she was afraid of him, and afraid of what he might do if she tried to leave.

“What if you can’t control the demon?” she asked. “What if it kills you?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

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