Page 63 of Dancing With Demons
One drapes a robe around my hardened figure, bare, but for the heavy scars marring my flesh from our transference to this planet. But it’s their sightlessness that spares them from the worst of my disfigurement. The one that can drive soz’garoth off the lip of the island out of madness.
Their volvath fingers make quick work of the tie around my waist before they dismiss themselves from my presence. The emptiness I had fled comes pouring back into my suites, and I light a fire in the hearth with the snap of my fingers.
Maybe its flames will make for good company.
In them, I see many things.
The murmur of my underlings all about the castle. The whispers of my enemies. Those that have yet to face the demons in their skies, speaking on things they know nothing about. It is how I watch, though many think I’m held up in my quarters, as blind as my servants.
Tonight, I watch through a candle, flickering forgotten in a corner.
The images spark, of the woman, Piper, and her faithful demons.
They cherish her, body and soul, more completely than my son would have managed, and their passion is unmistakable. I wonder if that is how she had come to be pregnant in the first place, the soz’garoth and trolvor taking turns, at first, then claiming her together.
To any other witness, it might have been titillating.
But I am beyond such notions, only finding the tripling distasteful. How powerful her child could have been, if it had shared my blood, the blood of Lamian. It would have been a force to be reckoned with, perhaps even outpacing my great power.
I could only imagine…
Still, it is a child of mixed breed. Tolmond is a powerful enough soz’garoth, and even the trolvor’s weak blood will suffice. Nevertheless, it is a child that will be of Ti’lith, a citizen ofmyrealm, to be shaped by the unrelenting hand of chaos.
It will not be its mother’s child.
I am satisfied in that thought when the door to my suite opens again, and a cart is wheeled in with my usual fare. My loyal servants roll it in front of me, as I am reclined on a hard leather couch. It is a large tray, big enough to contain half a binmou if I so desired it. But tonight, it contains something else. Something far more delectable.
“My King,” says one, rolling it to a stop. “As you commanded.”
I bite my scarred lip. “Very good.
“Now, make yourselves scarce.”
They bow and disappear as quickly as they appeared. I listen for the slight rustle of my meal beneath the tray lid, waiting until my gut tightens, and I can’t wait any longer. Though it’s made of obsidian, I pull the lid free with ease to reveal my tender sample for the evening.
She is bound with wire that cuts into her succulent flesh.
And in her mouth is an exotic fruit that silences all but the slightest muffles from her taut throat. She is naked, exposing her breasts to me as if presenting them, a drizzle of binmou blood chasing down her front to her open thighs, which are pulled to either side to reveal her stuffed cunt and ass, overfull with vegetables the soz’garoth have summoned from below. The human’s eyes are squeezed tight at first, but when the tray comes away, they flare open, falling on me instantly.
She sees me.
I know she does, because the delicious scent of fear rolls off of her, and she wriggles against her bindings while her throat works madly in a muffled scream. I take the scent of unfettered terror in through my slitted nostrils. Insanity will come shortly, so I have to make this quick, before she loses her mind entirely.
Her eyes are saucers as I lean over her, observing the beautiful swell of her body that will make her a fine specimen for the evening.
I catch the tip of the vegetable poking out of her and twist it hard, shoving it deeper in so that she lets out a sob, a pathetic sound. “Beautiful,” I tell her, drawing a claw down her front to sample the blood there. “You are a fine catch.”
She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut again.
But that is not how this works.
I snatch her jaw and force her to look at me, pitying the waste of her perfect body. At least it will be given to the ur’gin before day’s end, so it won’t be a total loss. “Look at me,” I growl. “Unless you want me to cut away your eyelids.”
Her eyes flare open again, round as the wretched sun above.
“I need you afraid for this to work, beautiful one.”
Her throat works again, and I know she’s trying to plead with me before the madness takes hold. Tears well in her pretty eyes, but the connection is made. She is snared, and it’s only a matter of time before she is mine, completely. “They tress you humans up like this every time, and I’m starting to suspect it’s for their own pleasure.”