Page 19 of To Hunt a Demon King

“Don’t say it,” I growled, feeling somehow both irritated and excited by the smirk he kept giving me.

“Interesting.” His smile morphed into a grin and good Goddess above, I needed to stop getting distracted by his lips.

I rolled my eyes in what I hoped was a convincing show of annoyance and stood. A quick inspection of my heels told me they were well on their way to being mended, and I gingerly slipped my boots back on. The discomfort was tolerable, so I squared my shoulders, ready for a long day of hiking. Hunt was still sitting sprawled on the ground, looking up at me as he rested his arm on a knee.

“Ready?” I asked, feeling a little unnerved by his stare. And excited, if I was honest. No man had ever looked at me as long or as intently as he did, and he was thankfully not terrible to look at. Maybe Vera was justified in her pursuit of pleasure now and then.

A pang struck me at the thought of my friend. She would have no idea what had happened or where I had gone. Would she try to come find me?

“Let me ask something, Red,” Hunt said, snapping me out of my anxious thoughts as he stood and brushed leaves from his cloak. “How much exactly do you know about demons?”

“Not much,” I said with a shrug, picking up my basket and gesturing for him to lead the way.

“Tell me what you think you know,” he said, as Akela loped to his side and Artemis took off with a screech.

I sighed. “Well, what all mortals and witches know, I suppose,” I said, trying my best to follow his footsteps on the uneven terrain. It was difficult as his legs were so much longer than mine. “That they practice blood magic. That they banished us to the Witchlands and keep us trapped behind the Bloodwood because they want our magic. That they tortured the mortals, feeding off their fears, until the Coven saved them.”

Hunt let out a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.

“What complete bullshit,” he scoffed, cutting a path through the thick undergrowth with his dagger.

“What is?” I asked, panting a bit to keep up with him. There was no way I would be able to maintain this pace all day.

“All of it,” Hunt said angrily.

“Excuse me,” I said, a little affronted that he was disparaging everything I knew. “But you performed blood magic yourself.”

“Fine,” he conceded, “the blood magic part is true for some demons. But the rest is all lies.”

“Wait,” I added, another question striking me as I huffed after him. “How did you even do that as a human? Do humans in the Darklands have magic? And why would the Coven lie about demons anyway?”

I remembered that Mama had suggested not everything we knew about demons to be true. Now that I thought about it, I realized a lot of what I knew to be true I had heard from Vera. Mama rarely spoke of the demons in front of me growing up, but Vera would tell me stories from her mother that turned my blood to ice. Stories about demons eating mortal babies and seducing witches to drink their blood. I supposed some of it might have been girlish exaggeration.

“And how do you claim to know so much anyway?” I continued when he didn’t answer, stopping to catch my breath against a tree. Hunt stopped too, frowning down at me.

“If this is the fastest you can move, then it’s going to take twice as long to cross out of the Bloodwood,” he said, folding his arms and leaning on a tree across from me.

“I’m sorry,” I said irritably. “I’m not used to hiking all over the woods with annoying men and their pets for hours at a time.”

Hunt muttered something to the sky that sounded a lot like “Goddess save me,” then looked back down at me with a scowl.

“Should I carry you, your highness?” he asked. “Or perhaps you would prefer a nobler steed?” he added, gesturing to the large wolf standing next to him.

“I’d prefer you to slow down a little,” I said, finally feeling like I had enough breath to push myself off the tree. “And to answer some of my Goddess-damned questions.”

“I’m trying to get us through quickly so we don’t get eaten,” Hunt said, a little more gently as his scowl relaxed. “But I will try to slow a little, and I may even deign to answer a question or two when it’s safe to stop. You know, you could try to be a little nicer in return.”

My stomach lurched. I hadn’t meant to be rude or snappish, but I definitely had been taking out my frustration on the man who would ostensibly get me out of this wretched place.

“Thank you,” I said more gently as Hunt slowed his pace a little. He grunted in response, still trudging ahead of me through the wood.

“Wait,” I said, finally registering everything he had said. “What do you mean? What will eat us?”

“You don’t want to know,” Hunt said darkly, plunging back into the endless wood and forcing me to follow.

Chapter 8

“My feet are killing me,” I complained. We had hiked all day through the Bloodwood, the path seeming to become more difficult to traverse the farther we penetrated into the wood. The trees grew more densely, and huge, gnarled roots stuck out from the ground in odd places. I had tripped and landed on my face more than once, and both my legs and my ego were bruised.

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