5. Vow
CHAPTER 5
VOW
BILLIE
L ooking back on it, that was probably the most obvious thing in the world. If not that other humans, like, married demons or something, then that they’ve been to Earth before. If they’re such a big secret that people are sent to the dungeon to protect that secret, it would explain why it’s never got out to the press before.
I respect that.
I don’t like it. But I respect it.
And then Glaine goes on to say, “There is a reason I was in your apartment when I found you, Billie.”
Oh, really? I’ve got to hear this.
“There’s a book. The Grimoire du Sombra . It’s a spell book full of magic. Human magic. If a human reads the Verus Amor … the ‘true love’ spell… and they’re fated to be the mate to one of my kind, we are summoned. Manifested. I didn’t go to your world tonight because you summoned me, though if I had been more patient I’m sure you would have. I went to your world in search of the book.”
“Cool story, but we don’t have that book. Trust me. I live in our study when I’m home, and know all the books we have on the shelves. There’s no spell book.”
“There was,” insists Glaine. “And I know that because a Sombra demon was summoned to your quarters by that spell recently. It wasn’t the book that called me to your home. It was his essence. His, and that of the female who is his mate.”
Okay. This isn’t funny anymore. “Forget it.”
He doesn’t.
“I believe the demon who was summoned to your quarters is the mate to your kin.” He scrunches his face. “Sierra.”
He’s gone too far, now.
“How do you know about Sierra?” I demand.
Any hint of arrogance that was in his stance before as he told me I was supposed to be his mate disappears, swallowed up by his obvious confusion. “I have your essence. I know that she is your kin, and that you are very fond of her. But I also know that, before I met you, she met Dagon and she is his mate.”
Forget that second part for a second. “You have my what ?”
“Your essence,” he says again. He uses his claws to gesture at his bare chest. “That what makes Billie Billie. Your emotions. Your memories. Your hopes. You .”
“You mean like my soul?” Are you serious? “You took my soul, too?”
“When you touched my hand?—”
That didn’t answer my question. “You stole my soul?”
“I accepted your essence so that I would know you. So I could speak in your human language with you. So that I could help you understand your fate.”
My fate? My fate is to watch Sierra become the next Madonna.
But, wait?—
“You took mine. If I take your soul?—”
“My essence.”
Sure. “Whatever. If you pass it to me… I’ll know everything about your world?”
“You have to accept it.”
He said something like that before. “‘Accept it’ implies that it’s a gift being given, right? But I didn’t give you mine.”
Glaine smirks. I have half a mind to take off my shoe and whip it at him to get that smirk off his face, but I don’t have a shoe. And I probably would miss, considering he’s so much taller than me. Still. I’m even more annoyed.
“You didn’t know how to guard it. I’ll take anything you have to offer me, female?—”
I meet his smirk with a scowl of my own. “You have my essence. You know my name. Use it, okay?”
His smirk wavers, and I see a hopeful light in his eyes before he purposely extinguishes it. “And I have your permission to address you so familiarly?”
“You have my permission to pull that stick out of your ass,” I say sweetly.
Glaine frowns. “There is no wood in my behind, mortal. That is not something we do in Sombra.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s an expression. Never mind. It’s not worth it. But, listen… calling me ‘female’ or ‘mortal’ or… or ‘human’… that’s degrading, okay? It’s like calling you ‘demon’. Would you like that?”
“You may call me anything you wish so long as it’s yours.” A touch of sudden humor… and maybe lust… softens his harsh features. “Your mate. Your male.” Oh, yeah. That’s definitely lust now as he just about purrs, “Your lover.”
“I’ll stick with Glaine, thanks.”
Hey. It’s better than calling him my kidnapper.
“As you wish.”
I roll my eyes, letting what he told me about the essence-thing mull around my head for a second.
I’m pretty sure the duke took pity on me and spoke in English. And while I’m curious and want to know how the rule of this demon world learned a human language, that’s on the back burner for now. My big concern is that no one else seems to know it. I’m surrounded by a world full of giant demons who can all talk about me, chained to the one who abducted me because ‘fate told him to’ or some nonsense like that, and I have to rely on him translation Sombran to English for me—plus trust that he’s not making it up if it’s something I wouldn’t like to hear.
I could let him give me his essence. His soul. I’d know everything about him, including… and if that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it most likely is.
“What’s the fine print?”
Like every other time I say something that might not have a direction translation in his language, Glaine furrows his brow, making his ridges stand-out. “I do not understand.”
I figured. “The fine print is kind of like a small warning that’s not as obvious from the beginning. Like, I say that I’ll accept your essence, but there’s something I don’t know about how that’ll affect me unless I look for the fine print, or I ask.”
I’m in business. Sierra’s lawyers are essential to making sure she gets a fair deal on every one of her contracts, but I don’t let Charlotte and her team go through them until I’ve read the mumbo jumbo and the legalese first.
Glaine thinks it over for a moment, then admits, “I have your essence. If you accept mine from me, that is the first step to finalizing our mate bond.”
Right. This mate bond that he’s certain exists, but that I’m having a hard time buying. He really wants me to believe that demons get a fated mate, just one, and that he’s so sure that I’m his, he’s willing to do the demon version of marriage with me? And, unless I’ve gotten it wrong, there’s no way out. No divorces. No annulments. It’s a true ‘til death do we part’ situation, only how does that work when demons are immortal?
I shake my head. Logically, I can’t except that I’m fated to be mystically bonded to a demon from another realm. I can’t . Not even if, the more I’m looking at him, the more… human it seems to me. He’s not just a demon. He’s Glaine, my kidnapper, and the big guy who willingly offered to join me in the cell so I wouldn’t be alone.
Not that his motives are entirely altruistic. Whether I am his mate or not, that doesn’t change the fact that he believes I am. Having me chained to him puts me right where he wants me: with him. It’ll be a lot easier for him to go ahead with his demon courtship if I’m here instead of back on Earth or wandering by myself in the demon world.
“That’s never going to happen,” I tell him bluntly.
He seems to disagree.
“I will do whatever I must to show you that I will be a good and honorable and devoted mate to you. Ask for anything in my power, female, and it is yours.”
There’s such a weight to his promise that I immediately feel buckled beneath it. I want to shrug it off, push past it, but the fact that it makes me so uncomfortable just slams home the realization that I’m in a dungeon with a seven-foot-tall demon, wearing little more than a skimpy red dress and my underwear, my feet are filthy, I’m feeling the effects from the coffee I downed and the no sleep I’ve gotten, and somewhere in a world out of my reach, Sierra is probably waking up, wondering where the hell I am.
Oh, and I don’t have my phone. I’ve never felt so goddamn naked and unprepared in my life as I do in this situation, and my determination that there isn’t anything I can’t do if I put my mind to it is really beginning to waver right about now.
“I told you,” I mutter. “My name is Billie.”
“Billie,” he says solemnly. “Tell me. I will do it.”
He wants to know? Fine.
“Help me get out of here. Help me get home.”
When he doesn’t respond to my conditions, I snort.
That’s what I thought.
Do you know how hard it is to ignore someone when you’re chained to them?
The answer is: very .
Glaine is so big that he takes up half the cell just by himself. And maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He’s definitely gotta be pushing seven-feet—maybe more if you count the horns—and he’s two, maybe three times as wide as me. It doesn’t matter that he’s crouching low to the hard, chilled floor, leaving the narrow cot for me. He looms, even with his back to me, and his silence is suffocating.
The clinking of the chain whenever each of us moves is about as much noise as I pick up. My professional side can’t help but be impressed by the dungeon’s excellent soundproofing. I guess the duke doesn’t want to be bothered by his prisoners’ misery—and, for the moment at least, only Glaine and I are locked up down here—which means that there is nothing to distract me from my cellmate.
So I find a way to distract myself. After complaining about the way the ash turned my legs grey, I start to explore the sink-thing. Turns out, it is a sink. He shows me how to use it, and since it’s similar to motion-sensor sinks back home, it’s easy.
Using the toilet… not so much.
There’s a hole in one corner, so dark I didn’t notice it at first. About the size of a dinner plate, it seems bottomless. Two smaller holes are positioned next to it. When I finally can’t hold it any longer—those damn espressos doing a number on my bladder—I ask Glaine what I’m supposed to do.
That’s how I discover that, in Sombra, you squat over the hole to go to the bathroom, then shift over to the other two. One is air. One is water. A mystical bidet that gets the job done if you’re not shy.
Luckily, I’m not.
As if eager to prove that he’s also a gentlemanly demon, Glaine gives me his back while I do my business. I clean up as best I can, using the sink to rinse off my hands, then clink my way back to the cot.
He says nothing at all as I curl up on top of it, facing away from him. Smart demon. One wrong word and I’m primed to explode. I need sleep. Now that I’ve accepted there is no getting rid of him—and after a questionable meal of hot meat and something that could pass for human potatoes brought down to us by a guard—I’m not fighting my growing unconsciousness any longer.
It’s only as I start to drift off that I hear his deep voice from somewhere from behind me.
“I will sit at your feet, my mate. I will watch over you. Have no fear while your male is near.”
I’m too tired to tell him I’m not afraid, I’m pissed. Or to remind him that he’s not my male. Instead, I made a non-committal sound that suggests I couldn’t care less what he does before I fall asleep, hoping like hell that, back in the human world, Sierra and Three still haven’t figured out I’m missing yet…