Page 12 of The Hive Queen

The chain around my wrist rattle as I weakly move, once more trying to open the steel box beneath me.

“Look at you go.” Joy fills Lady Casira’s silky voice. “Dead a hundred times and still hoping to live.”

I roll my eyes to see her standing on a platform at the top of the tank. She holds a metal box in her hand with a large button on the side nearest her thumb and a thick, black cable extending from the bottom and snaking down the stairs.

She takes a step closer, her shoes clicking on the metal platform.

With a snarl, I lung toward her, hands outstretched, but the chains yank me to a stop inches from reaching her.

“You’re devolving.” Glee shines in her eyes. “Soon you’ll be nothing but an animal, and then the real training will begin. Should I make you someone’s pet? Or an attack dog for your master? Which do you think Lord Talkis would prefer?”

I snarl and snap my teeth, willing to be the animal she thinks she’s created, and her pleasure deepens.

Lord Talkis had been the demon I served at court when the war began between demons and witches. I had been an enforcer for him, hunting demons who broke their contracts. But then the war called every demon who could fight to the front lines to protect our home.

I had risen through the ranks quickly, taking on a position with the high court, which is when I had been enlisted to bring back the prophesied one for sacrifice. My Merripen, who I had already lost when I refused to leave my station to join her on the human plane when the war began. The light of hope that got me through the days of death and misery.

All demos who served on the front line were promised a boon at the end of the war, and I planned to ask for my freedom. I would go to be with her, to beg her forgiveness for a thousand years, if that is what it would take to win her back.

Instead, I had been sent to bring her to her death.

When I arrived in her village, I could have warned her, could have let her escape. But others would have been sent to finish what I did not, and they would not have been as kind. War turned many demons into the monsters of human horror stories. Merripen’s fate was sealed the moment the High Lords demanded her life. The least I could do was make it merciful and join her in the sacrifice.

Only, we didn’t die. I came back trapped inside Marceau, his fire magic mingling with my ignis nature. A second chance to be with Merripen, even if I was reviled.

The war ended, though, and I did not receive my boon. I left the front lines before the battle was done, and my failure to remain dead counted against me.

My contract reverted to Lord Talkis, and after centuries of hiding in Marceau, I took corporeal form to die again, this time for good.

But death just doesn’t stick. While the Fox God killed my corporeal form, my core was sucked back to my touchstone, still held by Lord Talkis. And so my deaths continued for untold days. Has it been a month? A year? There is no way to tell while trapped in Lady Casira’s hold.

A red light flickers on the wall behind her, and she steps back, not confident enough in her chains to turn her back on me. “Already time to check in? How time flies when you’re having fun. I’ll ask Lord Talkis if he’d prefer a toy or a monster.”

As she walks down the stairs, I strain against my chains, but the spell steals all my demon strength, leaving me weak and vulnerable. Let her think I’m mindless. Let her forget only a thin metal plate separates me from my touchstone.

As she reaches the base of the stairs, she glances back up at me. “Do try to come up with a way to describe what you’re feeling while I’m gone.”

With a malicious smile, she presses the button on the box she holds, and the chains that hold my cage slacken, the grate beneath me plummeting back into the icy water.

Rage fills me as I claw at the steel plate, shredding nails and flesh until my bones slide against the metal. My blood turns the water pink around me. But still, I fight.

In desperation, I break off one of my fingers. Agony rushes through me, but I push it aside and dig the jagged end of the bone into the seam near the lock, wiggling it back and forth.

I feel it scrape against something as unconsciousness dims my vision, my racing heart burning through my oxygen too fast.

Not yet. Who knows when I’ll get this chance again?

My body spasms, water flooding my lungs.

No!

Beneath me, the cage shudders and rises, but it’s too late. My corporeal form is dying. The finger in my hand disintegrates, the fine granules swirling in a cloud around me. Then the damaged parts of my hands, and I lose my limbs as the cage rushes to the surface.

Water sloshes off my body, and a hand comes down hard on my chest, forcing the water from my lungs.

I cough it up, then almost drown in it again before a rough hand turns my head to the side, and the water dribbles out of my mouth.

Agony pulses from where the pieces of me already dissolved, and fire lives in my chest, but not the healing fires. These fires come from the salt still in my lungs.

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