Page 118 of The Demon Crown

A god of the desert had saved her life, and she didn’t even know how to thank it.

Gluttony sighed, his cheek resting on top of her head for a brief moment before he pulled back to stare down at her. “You have to tell him.”

“You’re not supposed to be nice.” She wiped her cheeks with her hands, annoyed at the raw feeling beneath them. She was probably red-faced and snotty. This was not the way she wanted to face Greed. “You’re a demon king. All of you are supposed to be terrible people.”

“Ah.” He nodded, then flashed her his fangs. “Would it make you feel better if I bit you?”

A choked laugh rumbled out of her mouth. “No, not really.”

Another voice interrupted them, one which made all the muscles in her body go slack. “If you’d said anything else, treasure, I’d have to kill my own brother.”

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Greed had found them. Of course, it only took a few moments for him to get to this section of the desert when he should have been half a day’s ride away from them all. He would have come right away as soon as he heard there was even an inkling of the Horde.

And now he’d caught her in his brother’s arms, teary-eyed and joking.

Just great.

Gluttony’s arms tightened for a mere moment and he hissed in her ear, “Tell him everything, Varya, or I will.”

She saw the tension that rode on Greed’s shoulders. He hated that his brother was touching her at all, let alone holding her so intimately. And she knew she had to tell him. But here? Right now? She couldn’t.

But the demon king who had his arms around her had different plans. He shoved her toward Greed, a little too hard, so she stumbled toward the man who would always be her undoing.

“Varya needs to speak with you, brother.” He gave them both a meaningful stare. “Now.”

Rounding her shoulders, Varya turned toward Greed and resolved herself to a long, terrible conversation that wasn’t... right. It didn’t feel good. But she had to tell him, and he needed to know. “Can we talk?”

Some of the aggression leaked out of his body and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against himself with a watchful eye on the man behind her. “Of course, treasure. Anything for you.”

He might not want to say that after she told him everything. But that was her own fear to get over.

Varya followed him to a more private part of the encampment in the sands. She sat him down and then let the words pour out of her mouth. Reminding him of how they had captured her, how injured she’d been. And when she got to the words they said, the words that continued to echo in her mind, Greed had stood.

He prowled in front of her, tail lashing, hands curving in and out of claws. “I will kill them all,” he snarled. “I will rip out their hearts and mount their skulls in our castle.”

“Greed.”

“They dared? In my kingdom? They know what I will do to them. Death will be a mercy by the time I’m finished. They will greet death a hundred times before I let them fall into that dark oblivion.”

“Greed,” she tried again.

His hands flexed into dark claws. Was he somehow larger? Again?

“I will tear into them.” His voice deepened in a low growl that brushed along her spine. “I will rend flesh from bone and then I will feast upon their blood. I will bathe in it before I return to you, queen of my heart.”

Queen of his heart?

All the worry and concern bled out of her body. Varya walked up to him, not caring that his claws slashed through the air around her in anger. She walked right up to his chest and buried herself in it.

His arm came around her without thought, even as he continued to snarl and growl and mutter about death. But his arm around her shoulders and his hand on her waist were infinitely gentle, as though she were the only thing he cared about.

And she wondered if maybe she could get used to this. Being the center of someone’s world, and loved so much that even in anger, he didn’t hurt her.

“Thank you,” she whispered against his chest. “For believing me. For wanting to fight for me.”

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