Page 86 of A Soul to Guide

“Oh.”

I still don’t understand, though. Who would go with Jabez?

“She quickly drove a wedge between us,” Merikh continued. “I think, in his own way, he loved her. He pampered her as much as he could because she was a gigantic fucking bitch. She knew she could use her ‘unhappiness’ against him. If I wasn’t in my cave or hunting humans on the surface, I was in his castle, watching them interact. She fought with me a lot, called me a beast, an animal, a monstrosity. She often lied to Jabez that I was trying to eat her, steal her from him, rape her, despite me not wanting a thing to do with her.”

“What? Really? Who would make such lies?” She couldn’t imagine anything more horrible.

“Katerina, for some reason,” Merikh answered with a sigh. “After a while, he became paranoid and distant, but he wasn’t sure who to believe, since he’d only known her for a short period of time, and he’d known me for years. I told you I become what I eat, that I gain humanity. My desires had not awakened then, and Jabez knew that.”

The strangest chuckle fell from Merikh. It was so warm and light, and so different to his usual self. She barely believed she’d heard it.

“He explained what a dick was to me, and I had no idea what he was talking about, since I didn’t think I had one. It’s rather funny when you look back on it. He tried to show me what sex was through a demonstration, and I thought he was just brutalising the female Demon at the time, even though she’d been enjoying it.”

Raewyn’s lips curled in weird humour. She couldn’t imagine being taught what sex was by someone literally showing her.

Despite this sad conversation, he was reflecting on his time with Jabez rather fondly. She’d never heard Merikh make a warm sound before this.

The only time he’d chuckled at all had been in the beginning, when she’d just discovered he wasn’t human. The sound that had come from him had been pure evil – like a madman cackling before going on a killing spree.

“It was only when he discovered my relation to Weldir that he turned on me. He thought I was a spy who was alerting my father to his actions, keeping him trapped on Earth. My mother approached me one day to tell me what I was doing was wrong, that Jabez was not my friend and was evil. She’d explained how Weldir was the reason Demons could not go back through the portal, since neither one of us knew that.”

Merikh’s arms tightened around her, and Raewyn winced.

“When I told Jabez what I’d learned, he’d raged at me, and we almost fought to the death. Katerina had twisted his thoughts, so he thought I was using him. Since then, I have avoided him, as he has me – until the death of my Demon companion. I stormed his castle, thinking he’d ordered the Demons to kill her to get back at me. He’d had no idea and only laughed at me, Katerina sitting on his damn lap while he sat on his throne.”

“And you believed him?”

A small gust of wind blew past them, highlighting the quiet as he thought. “I know Jabez. He would have gloated about it if he had done so.”

“Even if she sounds pretty nasty, at least Jabez has someone?”

His body shaking informed her he shook his head. “No. Katerina died about a year and a half ago, as did the woman who killed her. Although they have left me alone, due to lingering feelings from our past, Jabez and Katerina stole one of Orpheus’ newest companions so they could kill him. Instead, the woman killed Katerina, and Jabez threw a dagger into the woman’s back in revenge.”

“So, they both died?”

“As far as I know. Then again, I haven’t been back to the Veil for two years and only learned of this recently through a rather chatty Demon. I doubt a human can survive a dagger in the back, and Orpheus doesn’t know healing magic like I do.”

“That’s really sad. Did Orpheus really deserve that?”

“Katerina believed so, but she was a chronic liar and often twisted the truth to be manipulative. It’s hard to take her side when she often spoke untruths about me to get Jabez to turn on me. Orpheus probably messed up a bunch, his level of humanity very low at the time, but no, I don’t think his actions would have been done with malicious intent.”

Raewyn’s heart broke in so many different ways forallof them. Merikh losing someone he kind of cared for. Orpheus losing someone. Jabez losing Katerina. There was so much death and sadness.

“The problem is,” Merikh continued. “Since Katerina’s death, Jabez has become unhinged. I had considered returning to his side to see if I could rekindle our friendship, but he has truly burned that link with me.”

Raewyn’s chest tightened, not liking his tone, his words, and that they had a terrible implication. “How so?”

“He has ordered his minions to attack all Mavka, including me. It’s why I have stayed away. He is now out to eradicate my entire kind in hatred and revenge, and me along with it. I hate him for what he is doing to my brothers, how he has treated me, and that nothing I do will stop him. Every time a Demon attacks me purposefully, the more my resentment grows. You Elves are to blame for his mental state. You know that, right? You kept him in a cage for years.”

“It wasn’t a cage,” Raewyn muttered defensively. “It was a prison cell, one we had to quickly make. It was his own fault for going crazy in our city. He tried to eat everyone.”

“That’s not what he said,” Merikh rebuffed. “Apparently, you experimented on him while he was a boy because he was half-Elf and half-Demon.”

“We did no such thing!” Raewyn shouted, her face heating with indignation. “Yes, we examined him, but we didn’t experiment on him. That wouldn’t be morally right.”

“How old are you? Were you even born when this was all happening? People often twist the truth of history to appear like their wrongdoings weren’t so terrible.”

Her heart rate spiked in apprehension, her own secret bubbling to the surface, moments from being blurted out. She wanted to tell him the truth. She’d started this conversation to gauge how he would react.

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