Page 28 of Her Demon Daddy

“What have you done?” I shout as I look around the room desperately.

The tremors stop. After the sound of plates dropping and creaking of the castle’s foundation, dead silence fills the tense air. Only Siara’s low sobs break the menacing absence of sound. I run cold and feel my face flush as I breathe heavily, my heart palpitating as I look at her.

She’s still sobbing, but I have no time to comfort her or explain what will happen. I stand up and grab her arm from the floor, looking around for any place I could hide her.The door to the main chambers,I think. I run toward it grasping her hand. She keeps trying to resist me.

“Let go of me! Asmodeus!”

We round the corner in the throne room, and I see that the entryway to the main chambers is blocked by a fallen statue. I run my fingers through my hair and look around, the heat from running in my robes making me sweat. I turn around and try to take her back to the main entryway of the throne room, but she jerks her arm from me.

“What are you doing, Asmodeus?” she asks through sharp inhales. “What are you doing?”

I hear a loud bang and turn slowly toward the entrance to the throne room. My ears start ringing, and I freeze. I stop breathing, and my muscles tense as I stare at the doors, knowing the lock won’t hold them for long.

“Asmodeus!” she yells.

I grab her and hold her head in my chest as I keep my gaze on the doors. The room isn’t soundproof. She tries to beat my chest with her hands, but I hold her tighter against me. I look down at her, hating that I have to restrain her, hating that I let my charade go this far, hating myself for not locking up the beacon she held.

“What’s going on?”

“Stop, stop talking,” I whisper angrily, looking back at the doors. “They’re here.”

15

SIARA

They’re here.

The words snap me out of the animalistic panic that’s been driving me through the last few minutes.

“They?” I parrot, my voice uncharacteristically shrill. “They? Who’s ‘they’?”

Asmodeus doesn’t respond or even look down at me as the doors across from us nearly buckle under another devastating blow from the hall beyond.

His grip on me loosens only long enough to shift me behind him. The protective set of every line of his body only heightens the new dread pooling in my stomach. He’s the King of demons, the most powerful being on Galmoleth, maybe even Protheka.

So why does he seem so… afraid?

“Asmodeus,” I beg, tugging on his arm. He goes rigid at the sound of his name on my lips, but still refuses to take his eyes off of the door to the throne room.

“What was that thing in your office? Who are you talking about?”

“It’s too late for questions, Siara. We’re out of time,” he says over his shoulder. His voice is low, soft, as if he’s afraid of being overheard– but there’s a bitterness in his tone that doesn’t escape my notice.

His lack of answers does nothing to assuage my growing fear. Instead, it only fans the flames.

“What do you mean out of time? Why won’t you answer me?” I demand. I know I must sound like a petulant child, but I can’t bring myself to care right now, not when the palace and the entire demon continent was just careening out of the sky before slamming to a sudden halt.

Asmodeus doesn’t answer me. Instead, he seems to brace himself as sounds of movement– sounds of a lot of movement, more than just a handful of demons could make– echoes from beyond the falling throne room doors. It sounds as if a veritable army were gathered outside, and the only thing that separates us from them is a pair of bowing, once-stoic set of doors.

Something suddenly clicks in my mind, pieces I didn’t know I had falling into place. The dread that had been pooling in my belly turns leaden. The strange stone in his office, the way it glowed, its effect on Galmoleth, the way Asmodeus reacted when I tried to tell him about it, and now, the unknown presences trying to smash their way into the throne room, all begin to connect together.

That thing in his office must have been a beacon of some sort, or a summoning device, and by touching it I must have activated it.

It caused the quake- and it summoned whoever the mysterious ‘they’ Asmodeus is so worried about to Galmoleth. ‘They’ are not just any presence. ‘They’ are enough to scare the King of demons into a still, tense silence.

And nowtheyare in the palace– knocking down the doors to the throne room.

Which will lead them directly to us.