Page 26 of The Demon Crown

“I didn’t see her.”

Ah, why had he wasted so much time bringing these two into existence?

Flopping back onto his back, perhaps a tad dramatic, he stared back up at the ceiling. “I will not rest until I have her back. You understand me?”

The two spirits remained staring at him, quiet and confident as always. He hadn’t meant to bring them into this world, not really. The two of them had followed him since the beginning.

They were his friends, he supposed. Neither of them were like him or his brothers. Their emotions were not as complex, nor were they as powerful as Greed or any of the others had been. Likely, they shouldn’t have been gifted bodies at all. But he’d seen them, trailing along behind him and never feeding—because when was he going to feel loyalty or passion—and he just... couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t let them continue on like this when they had attached themselves to him for some stupid reason.

He already knew what his brothers would say. It wasn’t his place to decide which spirits got bodies and which didn’t. In fact, it should have been the entire group’s decision. If they knew that Ivo and Morag were anything other than very strange twins, then they’d likely kill them.

And he didn’t know what happened to spirits if they were killed in their mortal forms. He had a feeling it wasn’t pleasant.

Still. He’d helped them find bodies. He’d poured them into the forms himself, and then he had trained them to be the perfect soldiers. The perfect guards who would never betray him, no matter how many mistakes he made.

Maybe he had been a little greedy in creating them but... well. It was in his nature.

“What do you want us to do?” Morag asked, her eyes flashing with the faintest pink. “I can hunt her down for you if you’d wish. She may fight me, but I doubt she could fight as hard as I.”

“None of us will hurt her,” he grumbled.

“Then I can send another battalion after her if you wish. They lost her tracks after the storm blew through the desert, but there are plenty of towns. We know what she looks like. Do you have her name? I could send the scouts.”

No, he didn’t have her name. That was part of the problem.

His mangled tail flicked. The pain that laced up through his spine helped to focus him on the moment at hand. If he knew her name, this would all be a little easier. Perhaps he could have sent out the scouts, asking for a very specific thief who had stolen from Greed himself. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t argue with them. They’d point fingers immediately.

But right now, all he knew was that there was a thief with blonde hair out there. A woman. That didn’t narrow their search in the slightest, and any scout asking about her would be laughed out of every town and nomadic group in the kingdom.

There were plenty of blonde women here. Plenty of beauties. Plenty of thieves.

Morag’s face appeared above his, her eyes seeing far too much. “You don’t know her name, do you?”

“No,” he growled.

Ivo grabbed onto his sister’s shoulders and shoved her back. “Leave him alone.”

“Ugh, brother. You are meant to be loyal, not blind! He does not know who she is, and has found himself stuck in obsession yet again that will lead us around the kingdom when we should do anything but!”

They argued like siblings, even if they weren’t. Their spirits weren’t even all that similar. Passion and Loyalty had no reason to be in the same room together, at least, Greed certainly didn’t think so.

He sat up again, his tail aching and his ribs screaming in protest at the movement. His two guards squabbled over what was the right decision here, and he couldn’t help but see the spirits inside them again.

This wasn’t why he’d given them bodies. They weren’t supposed to stay the spirits that were inside them. They were supposed to be mortals, people, learning and growing and changing. But he hadn’t even known if that was possible when he’d poured them inside the two children that had died in the womb.

Lust had proven that spirits could change when they were in this form. That they could grow, just as they did outside of bodies like this. But being in a physical form gave them even greater opportunities and abilities to develop. They didn’t have to just be spirits who were one thing or another. They could be many.

And though he thought himself too far gone for any of that, he’d like his guards to experience it.

Holding up his hand for silence, he waited until the two of them settled before looking at him. “I want you to feel this moment. Yes? Both of you are passionate about what you believe. Both of you are loyal to your desires. You are one and the same, with different opinions on how best to go about it.”

They stared at him with blank expressions.

“What I mean to say is that you’re both changing. Growing closer to regular humans every day. This pleases me.”

And there were the blank stares for even longer. They clearly didn’t care if they seemed like humans. They were still in the mindset that they were created for him to point at an enemy and fire. Strangely enough, he’d thought the same thing for a very long time.

Why the change of heart?

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