Page 11 of The Demon Court

This one was hard to shake, though. It didn’t want to leave.

Humming low under its breath, it finally finished its journey and laid across his shoulders like a mink stole. "You’ve returned."

He hated how it felt wrapped around him. Its weight dampened the sensations that usually ran across his skin. As though lust had to be filtered through it before he could feed off the humans’ emotions. And he needed to feed. Constantly. That was why the demon kings, as that woman had so aptly called them, were so powerful.

“Oh,” Affection murmured. “You met someone.”

“I did not,” he grumbled in response. “I had a run in with a local, that’s very different from meeting someone. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say that to anyone else.”

“Hm.” Its voice was higher than most voices in this area, although he thought it sounded rather melodic. Like a flute, sometimes. Other times perhaps the high strain of a violin. “So you think that was just a stranger? But you can’t stop thinking about her. Can you?”

“She basically ordered me not to.”

Amused, he told the spirit the entire story and turned away from the darkness below their feet. While he wouldn’t mind tumbling into oblivion, the spirit attached to his shoulders was young and had much to learn. Perhaps another time he’d investigate the creatures below.

He brought the spirit back to the castle while finishing up the story and then sat on a bench just outside the northern door.

“So she’s completely stumped you?” Affection asked.

“I’m not sure I would say that. She was a surprising human, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m any more interested in her than any of the others.” He didn’t think, at least.

Why was he so interested? She’d threatened him, proven herself to be a surly little thing, and then decided to flounce off where he couldn’t find her again. He should let her memory fade from his mind like the rest of them.

“Because she was different.”

“She wasn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve seen that color hair a thousand times, and nothing else was even remotely remarkable otherwise. She was just another woman who lives in this kingdom.”

“But she tested you.”

“And others have.” He shrugged, shifting the spirit up and down on his shoulders. “It wouldn’t be the first time a woman tried to gain my attention by pretending to be different from the others. Sometimes women will try to be more pushy, take charge, they think it will get them farther than the women who fall all over themselves.”

“Playing hard to get?” Affection asked.

“Exactly.”

“But that’s not what she was doing. She told you she was the beginning of something new.” The spirit moved along his shoulders, hovering in front of his eyes in a fine white mist that had some substance but was nearly impossible to see. “And you believe her.”

He searched inside himself for an inkling of that emotion. Lust wanted to feel surprised again. He wanted to feel as though someone or something could make him feel something new.

That feeling didn’t exist anymore, though. All he felt was a strange sort of rage that she’d tempted him at all. That she’d tried to make him believe, for even a second, that she could surprise him.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t believe her. I’m just disappointed that she can’t do what she said she would.”

The spirit hummed out a low breath, disappointment making it shake as well. “That’s not fair.”

“Living thousands of years was never the plan, now was it?” Lust lifted a hand and gently pet through the mist. “We were supposed to come here and live a normal, mortal life. We took these forms so that we could lead these people and then everything got all messed up.”

Sort of.

They’d all made a pact, he and his brothers, that they would lead these kingdoms until they felt safe enough to leave. So they could return to the spirit realm where they were born and continue on anew. But then they’d realized what a pleasure it was to be alive. And everything had gotten muddled up after that.

Affection shook in his hands, and then he heard the faintest sound of laughter in his ears.

“Are you laughing at me?” he hissed.

“Well, you’re lying, aren’t you?”

“I am not lying.”

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