Page 11 of Of Spindles and Nightfall
The demon to his right slid the contract forward. Zarathos stared at the small script written in blood. He knew what it said. It would bind him to participate in the trials until he either won or died.
Besides Zarathos, other demons couldn’t cause death as a result of breaking a bargain. There just wasn’t enough power in them. Only a single way existed to form a bargain that would cause death if the conditions were broken—the bargain or contract had to be formed at the moment of death of a demon.
Only then could these weaker, pathetic creatures create a contract as binding as evenoneof Zarathos’s bargains.
These particular agreements, as per trial tradition, stemmed from the executed deaths of the previous trial council, each death forging a contract for a new champion. Zarathos, however, was the demon arch king. His contract had been formed eight years ago at his father’s demise.
“You must sign in blood,” Lady Braxia said.
He spread his wings a little wider. “I know how to form a bargain,” he growled softly.
But Lady Braxia and the others on the council merely smiled. Marbas, at the far end of the table, hadn’t spoken. He glared.
Zarathos raised his finger to his mouth and bit into it. As his kalator, Aryana would have to sign her own contract when he returned to her tonight. Any death would work to form a death bargain with a kalator, so some poor soul had already lost their life at the behest of the trial council so that Aryana’s contract would be binding in a deadly way as well.
Ignoring the minor spike of pain, crimson welled on Zarathos’s finger, and he pressed it to the page, signing his name in his own blood.
“I bind myself to this oath until the trials are completed,” he said, speaking the words that would seal him to the agreement, as his finger slid over the page, mixing his crimson life force with the long dried blood of his dead father.
Instead of the atmosphere lightening, the sinister gazes of those present only intensified, and their desire for violence and death heightened now that he’d bound himself.
“And so the end of Zarathos is upon us.” Marbas’s eyes flashed. “It will be a pleasure to see the great demon arch king fall.”
“Hush,” Lady Braxia said, feigning fairness, though her eyes sparked with a bloodthirsty gleam that was just as ravenous as the rest of them. “The trials haven’t even begun. We shall see in time who the demon arch king will be.”
Zarathos looked at all of them and said the expected words. “May the mightiest demon reign supreme.”
The council nodded to him. The creature next to Zarathos took the contract and handed him an unsigned parchment.
“For your kalator. We expect it returned in two days,” Lady Braxia said. “You may leave, Your Majesty.”
He took the parchment, placed it in his pocket, then spun on his heel and strode from the room. His bargains with the few other entrants that he had managed to secure wouldn’t be enough, not with several kingdoms and the vast majority of the council aligned against him. He needed the demon scepter. It was his only chance.
His little vampire princess better not let him down.
Chapter 5
Aryana
Aryana sat in her corner and fumed.
That cursed demon king. His last words after their kiss kept replaying through her mind.
I now claim you under my power.
As if she was his to have.
As if she was his prisoner.
But she was. She was as much his captive as she was King Salen’s captive. Maybe more so, considering her binding to him would last longer than her imprisonment in this tower dungeon. Provided Zarathos could break her out before she was killed.She hadn’t missed the loose language in his bargain. Nor the cruel twist of his wording.
I will expend a reasonable effort to ensure you stay alive…
As if the scepter and her living were of equal value and deserved the same investment.
In truth, the demon arch king probably wanted the scepter more.
Something told her that he’d purposely left it open so that he could leave her for dead if everything didn’t work out. Damn it, she should have thought it through more, should have made him clarify. But she’d been so focused on getting her wording of the agreement right, to make sure he accepted, that she hadn’t taken the time to pick apart his phrasing.
