Page 7 of Hunting Her
“That’s not going to happen,” I say. “No way are any of you having me serve you in bed.”
Iz laughs. “You got it mixed up, Fire. You don’t serve us, we serve you.”
“What’s the fucking difference?”
He exchanges a look with his twin, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. “I think that’s easier to explain by doing.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Brellan barks.
He’s been mostly quiet, brooding as he stands just behind Damek’s shoulder, but his voice is deep and rough.
“Why not?” Izoran complains. “We all know she’s not going to win any bet. Even she knows that.”
“We have to let her fight for what she wants.” Lorcan places a hand on his twin’s shoulder. “A good queen always fights.”
I hate how they taunt me, but I grit my teeth and bear it. If they think I can’t win, they might make a mistake. “Tell me what the bet is,” I say.
Damek walks over with an ethereal grace to his movements. He takes every step with confidence that the world will bend to his will, but I hope I can shake that confidence. I won’t bend; I won’t break. I’m going to put everything I have into winning whatever little game he has planned for me.
He folds himself down onto the couch beside me. “Iz, get the glass out of her feet and heal the wounds while I explain.”
The twin demon drops to his knees so fast the thump sounds painful. A heated hand grabs my ankle, and he uses elongated claws to remove glass fragments from the broken skin. He wipes dirt and blood from the wounds with the cloth as he goes.
“I propose a game of chase,” Damek says, wearing a cheeky smirk. “Simple, really. You flee. We hunt.”
My heart begins to pound. There are four of them and one of me, and I’m only human.
“How do I win?” I ask. “I can’t run forever.”
“Well, today’s the day you humans call All Hallow’s Eve—our name for it is the Night of Nuvelia’s Reign. One of my favourite nights of the year, because the veil between this realm and the Underworld is thin enough to travel over from anywhere. It’s also the only night we can claim a queen. If we drag you back to the Underworld before dawn tomorrow, we win.”
I’ve got no concept of days in here, not with the lack of windows in the dungeon. At first, I tried to count the weeks I’d been trapped in the basement, but it was more depressing to know. I stopped paying attention. It could have been the middle of summer, for all I knew.
Fitting, that the demon king has come for me on Halloween.
“What does winning entail?” I ask cautiously.
This might be where they catch me. What if the win means nothing? I need to clarify before we start any kind of hunting game.
“Freedom,” Damek says simply.
“Tell me specifics.”
“Whatever deal you made that brought you here will be void, and no new deal will replace it. You’ll rejoin the human world. I can even erase your memories so you don’t remember the existence of the supernatural, if you would like.”
Being ignorant of the second world is what got me in this situation in the first place. “No, I would not like. I’ll keep my memories as a cautionary tale.”
He shrugs. “Your choice.”
Iz removes an especially large piece of glass from my foot, and I wince. Blood is dripping down onto the floor from the open wounds, and I wonder if this is the catch.
How am I supposed to run tonight with my feet like this? I can work through the pain, I’ve done it before, but it’s a disadvantage.
I keep my attention on Izoran while he removes the final pieces from my left foot. He wipes away blood and grime from my calloused sole with the wet cloth, and I think it’s the cleanest I’ve been in ages.
Damek instructed him to heal me, but surely that just means wrapping it in bandages now that the glass is out. Whether they can heal me instantly or not, I don’t know—but I doubt they will.
Except, he doesn’t reach for bandages.
