Page 40 of The Demon Court

“No,” he said again. “We keep this between the two of us until we understand what has given her this strange power. I need your word on this, Greed.”

But his brother was staring at him with the expression that meant he was about to make trouble, and Lust didn’t have time for that.

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” Lust said, pointing his finger at Greed. “My answer is no.”

“But it has been so long since I’ve visited your kingdom! Too long.” Greed’s grin split into that feral expression again. “I should meet this woman myself. Another pair of eyes might see something you do not.”

“You are not welcome in my kingdom after what you did last time.” Lust didn’t want him here, anyway. Greed collected unique objects, weapons, places, and people. He hoarded them like a miser, like a dragon, and if he saw with his own eyes how different Selene was, then he would try to take her from him. Even if that meant kidnapping her in the middle of the night.

He couldn’t let Greed visit. He wouldn’t.

“No,” he repeated. “You are not coming here, Greed. She’s not another pet for you to view.”

“Oh, but I don’t need your invitation. None of us need one to visit the other, now do we? Besides, you keep far too many pets to yourself.” A flash of that grin was the only warning he had before the spell was severed.

Damn it.

He held his head in his hands, grabbing onto his horns with a punishing grip. Everything was falling to pieces. All of it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Fuck!” he shouted, clearing his desk of all items and listening to them shatter upon the floor. Even that could not satisfy the sudden rage that burned through his chest until he couldn’t even breathe.

He could lose her. So easily. And all before he figured out the answer to the puzzle she’d presented him.

ChapterThirteen

“Affection,” she scolded as she chased the spirit underneath her bed. “You have to go.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know you don’t want to go, but I want to go to bed.” Selene had thought the nightgown would suggest how ready she was for sleep, but apparently the little spirit had no intention of leaving.

It had come into her room for a conversation, or so Affection had led her to believe. In fact, the spirit had stalled for hours on end until it was well past either of their bedtimes and it was still here.

She wouldn’t mind if Affection wanted to stay overnight in her room, but it didn’t stop talking. Ever. It just kept prattling on and on about all the people it had felt affection from, where that affection had come from, how utterly decadent it had felt.

And sure, she’d enjoyed listening to all the stories Affection had to tell. Namely, because it made her wonder just how much of this applied to Lust.

He’d been in a physical form for a thousand years, or so he claimed. Did that mean he wasn’t the same as the rest of the spirits without a body? She could only assume he’d have changed in all the time since he’d taken a body. Being mortal must affect the spirits that took them on. What if he was just like her, and she had missed a very important part of understanding him?

The jumbled mess in her head was almost too frustrating for her to handle.

She had to tame him so the sorceresses would have some claim to power. But the longer she was here, the more she thought maybe the sorceresses were wrong. Then she got homesick because she missed her sisters so much, and the predictability of her life in the Tower. But inevitably her mind drifted back to the afternoon she’d spent on the cliff with Lust and how hard he’d tried to understand her. He’d made her laugh, and he had called her pretty.

Surely that meant something?

“Come... here...” she grunted, waving her arm underneath the bed as she tried to grasp onto Affection’s long, wispy tail.

Frankly, she would prefer to work through these thoughts on her own. It made her nauseous to think she might have softened a bit toward the demon king who wanted to destroy their kingdom. It also made her sick to think her mother and sisters thought so poorly of him when he was trying to do a decent job of things. He was just a damned spirit of lust and nothing about being human made sense to him.

Affection pressed against the wall right in the middle of her headboard, far out of her reach. “I’m not leaving!”

“You can’t stay here.”

“But you’re thinking such delicious thoughts, and what if I told you about them? We could talk tonight about that afternoon in the sun at the edge of the world—”

“We’re not going to do that,” she interrupted, shoving her shoulder against the bed in frustration. “Get over here, Affection!”

The door to her bedroom slammed open and Selene froze where she was crouched. Whoever stood in that doorway was getting a full view of her behind as she wedged herself underneath her bed, and she knew just how sheer this nightgown was. All her clothes kept disappearing from the room every time she left it, and this was the only nightgown left.

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