Page 42 of Dark Prince

That surprises me enough to break me out of my sarcastic, panicked internal dialogue. Do hallucinations generally tell you that you’re sane? I feel like that’s a question I should know the answer to, but I don’t.

And as I stare up at the face of a man who looks like Lucas and also not, it hits me in a rush that some part of me has no problem believing that he’s supernatural. Maybe it’s the power he always exudes, or the feeling that he exists in the world but isn’t quite a part of it. Before today, I just chalked it up to the fact that he’s rich and powerful, since money and power makes a lot more sense than trying to accept that he’s an actual goddamn demon.

Did I create the demon image as a way to deal with my conflicting feelings about him?

Clearly, if he’s a demon with magical shapeshifting abilities and superhuman charisma, all of my conflict makes sense and can’t possibly be my fault. So I’ve lost my mind entirely and have tipped over into some sort of delusion where the jet crashes because of a flying demon monster and my boss saves my life.

Yup, that feeds right back into the whole inappropriate obsession thing.

I touch him again, squeezing his arm this time.It’s real.I can feel it just like I can feel the texture of the bark on my back. You can’t feel hallucinations, can you? Well, they can’t lift you out of the air and pin you against a tree. Hallucinations can’t save you from a plummeting airplane, flying you through the air in a controlled dive and setting you on the ground with a gentleness that exceeds the abilities of the average parachute.

Lucas watches me with those eerily glowing eyes while I make attempt after vain attempt to convince myself I’m losing my mind so that I won’t have to face the reality in front of me. But it’s getting me nowhere.

“So the talons, the wings, all of this…” I gesture vaguely toward his tall, muscled body. “It was always there, just… hidden? Like a glamor?”

“Exactly like a glamor,” he replies evenly. His calm, frank attitude is not helping any of this feel more real. If thisisreal, shouldn’t he be hiding from me? Shouldn’t he be trying to knock me out so he can pretend it was all a crazy dream? Why would he reveal himself to me?

I turn to look in the direction of the crash, where fires are slowly spreading through the damp forest. Then I glance back toward the felled dragon. “That thing didn’t use a glamor. Is it a demon, or something else?”

“In a broad sense, it is a demon too, yes. But one of a different caste. It’s complicated.”

“Is that why it attacked us? Some kind of supernatural class war?”

He grimaces, “I wish I knew.”

We stand there for a moment, him bracing me against the tree for no real reason except that he hasn’t stopped yet, me performing Olympic-class mental gymnastics in an attempt to rationally explain what my senses are telling me. He seems to realize, finally, that I’m not fighting him anymore, and his posture relaxes a bit.

As I watch, the Lucas I know slowly replaces the Lucas of my nightmares, one image morphing into another as if by… well, bymagic.

His skin turns back to its golden tan color, and I stare at his horns until they disappear from view in the blink of an eye. Those deep brown eyes with the little amber flecks that have taken up so much of my brain space recently are back, the red glow a mere memory.

Lucas looks human again, but I know what he’s hiding now—or at least, part of it. And knowing what lies under the surface contextualizes his power, amplifying it, making me understand it in a way I never have before.

He glances around the darkening forest. “We can’t stay out here. We need shelter for the night.”

A practical problem. Thank God. My mind can at least focus on that, even if everything else is too fucking much to process.

“I think I ran past a cave back that way,” I say, jerking my chin. “And I think that’s light pollution I’m seeing the other way. So, people or no people?”

He gives me a tiny, cocky smile. “Mypeople,” he says.

I don’t get it at first, then he pulls his phone out of his pocket.How on Earth…?

Okay, that is no longer an appropriate turn of phrase, but I still want to know how he managed to keep his phone in his pocket through everything that just happened. Shit, I’m wondering how he managed to keep hispocketsthrough all of it. Magic, probably.

“Naamah,” he says curtly after pressing a button to make a call. “Do you have our location? We need a place to stay and a route to get there.”

On the other end, she rattles off a lot of words I can’t clearly make out, then asks a question. Lucas glances my way, his eyes tightening a little at the corners. “She’s okay, not even injured,” he says. “The sooner the better, Naamah.”

He ends the call, leaning against the tree with one hand over my shoulder as he looks at his screen. After a few minutes, he smiles slightly and steps away, still looking at the screen. He starts walking, but stops after a few paces and gestures for me to follow him.

Follow the shapeshifting demon creature with the sex appeal of a god into the deepening darkness of strange woods far from home?

Brilliant idea.

Jesus. What state am I in? What continent am I on? Am I even still on Earth? That isn’t a question I would have asked an hour ago, but the truth is, I don’t really know. He didn’t say we weren’t, but he didn’t say we were, either.

So those are my options. Stay and be on my own God knows where, with God knows what wandering around the woods, or follow Lucas and however many alternate personas he’s carrying around with him, heading to wherever Naamah is sending us.

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