1. Hailon
Chapter 1
Hailon
T here was a demon in the middle of my room.
He was tall and solidly built, but also quite beautiful, which surprised me.
I’d been expecting unconventional features at the very least, perhaps eyes with vertical pupils and hooves. But this demon could pass for human. Well, perhaps he could if he disguised the prehensile tail that was thumping along the floor in a manner that reminded me of a big cat.
“Hello,” I demanded, pulling the shabby coverlet up higher against my chest, nudging the little spell book I’d liberated from my captor under my leg. It had taken me a handful of days and many tries, but the instructions inside it had worked. “Can you understand me?”
His head tipped to the side, russet-colored waves spilling over his shoulder as it tilted. “Yes. I can understand you just fine.” A smile spread across his mouth, revealing two extra pointed teeth on either side of his canines as his gaze caressed my face thoroughly. So much for passing as human. He patted his hands over his body, as if checking that all his parts were intact. “I’ve never been summoned directly out of Hell like this before. It’s quite an odd feeling. Why have you summoned me? How did you summon me?”
I tucked my knees under my body and straightened up, trying to increase my size. He still towered over me, but doing so made me feel a little less overpowered. I’d been desperate enough to try summoning a demon for help, but now I found myself completely unprepared to manage the consequences of it having worked.
At my lack of response, he made a thoughtful noise and stepped closer to where I had drawn my hasty summoning circle in carefully pilfered fireplace ashes on the floorboards. The demon smiled again as he leaned down, head nearly inverted. The tips of his hair brushed along the floor, his hands precariously linked behind his back as he examined the writing, all but folded in half.
“Ah! This rendering is quite good. You’ve used an old sigil of mine, but one of mine all the same.” His head tilted to the side. “If I might make a little critique? This line here? And this? Those are unnecessary, but a nice artistic flourish.” He erased a few things with long, tan fingers. The black lacquer on his nails shined in the light though it was chipped in several places. I focused on that detail as he scooped up the few meager drops of blood I’d used to seal the circle with his finger. “Other than that, it’s all excellently drawn.” His tongue flicked out, and he licked the blood from his fingertip. Then he stood up straight, that smile that somehow seemed charming despite what he’d just done focused fully on me. I flinched when he stuck out a hand. “I’m Seir.” He frowned as he processed my reaction but didn’t move.
To be polite, as I didn’t want to offend a demon, I shook his hand. His palm was warm, calloused in the way hands that frequently wielded a sword often got. The slight contact with his skin made my pulse pound, a faint feeling of electricity passing between us.
“I told you mine, now will you tell me yours?” he suggested, eyebrows raised. “I promise I won’t do anything inappropriate with your name.” His voice dropped to nearly a whisper, and he winked. “I’m not fae.” Then his smile returned, wider than before, like he knew a secret.
“Derne,” I offered.
His head tilted to the side, and he gave a brief nod. “Pleasure to meet you, Derne.”
My aunt Sal had taught me what she knew about things like demons, angels, and fae, but her knowledge was limited. I did know that giving my name, for example, should be avoided if possible for my protection—but not at the cost of a lie. This much was true for anyone asking, though, humans included. Giving my family name was skirting the actual intent of Seir’s question, but still a valid answer.
He stared at me again, that odd grin on his mouth while I tried to find words with my heart thumping wildly behind my ribs. “So, Derne. Why have you summoned me?”
“I need your help.”
“I see. How can I be of service?”
A door slammed downstairs. I jerked, wincing as my chains rattled against the iron bed frame.
The demon cocked his head and squatted down low to the floor. With nimble fingers, he lifted the corner of the sheet to find the place my leg irons attached to the bedposts.
He frowned, studying my unusual confinement. “Why oh why is a little thing like you chained to the bed?” A spark came to his eye, and he smiled broadly, all but leaping to his feet. “Are you dangerous?” His excitement was palpable. Suddenly his face fell. “Or is someone else the danger?”
My adrenaline surged as footsteps echoed up the stairs. “Unchain me, please? I shouldn’t be here. They took me, and my aunt is?—”
“You sleeping, girl?” Ignus’s voice rumbled from the other side of the door.
The demon frowned and reached for the chain. “Who is that?”
“My captor. Hurry. Please, I have to leave this house. I need to get back to my aunt.” Frantic, I tried to help him by pulling the slack tight, my feet dangling off the bed. The little spell book I’d lifted from the councilman’s pocket fell to the floor, landing flat, open to the instructions I’d followed to draw the summoning circle.
The demon glanced at it as he tried to break the chains by sheer force of will. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he apologized, trying to pry the leg shackles apart by pushing his fingers between the iron and my ankle, then attempting to break one of the chain links with leverage from a dagger he pulled from a sheath at his back.
“I don’t care if you do, please just get me out.” I was already plenty bruised and battered, a few more injuries wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
The steps approached the door. The demon stood, smoothly pocketing the spell book as he straightened up. He took up a defensive stance in front of me, a dagger gripped loosely out in front of his body. As I kicked my feet out, the stretched chain caught the leg of my small side table. I watched in horror as the table tilted, and the flask that my captor loved to leave just at the edge of my reach tipped. It hit the floor, spilling water across the circle. The demon hastily grabbed it up, but it was too late. The ash marks disappeared along with my hope of escaping.
“No. Wait!” A look of distress crossed the demon’s face. “Where are we?”
“Olinbourg.”
“I’ll—” He reached out a hand as he vanished. One moment he was there, standing in front of me, and the next he was gone.
Disappointment crushed through me. For a moment, I’d actually believed I could get out of this house, away from this cruel situation. Then I’d acted in clumsy haste and ruined everything.
I swallowed a sob as I tossed my thin blanket to the floor and scrubbed with it. I hated to abuse my only covering by getting it wet, not to mention having to soak up my wasted ration of water, but there could be no evidence of what I’d done. I was almost certainly already facing punishment for making so much noise.
I’d barely gotten back onto the bed when my door slammed open, the knob coming to rest in a groove carved deeply into the plaster of the wall.
Ignus, a teamster at the grain milling warehouse by trade and a bully by nature, loomed large in the frame. His undershirt was stained, his body rank as usual with sweat and cheap booze.
He assessed me in bed, eyes traveling the rest of the room, a deep scowl on his face. “You talking to yourself, Jane?”
There was no safe answer with him, so I just pressed my lips together and shook my head.
He let out a crass belch that made my empty stomach turn. “You know what day it is.” As if I could forget. As if I hadn’t been measuring the weeks by research days for the past few months.
I carefully stood, lifting one foot at a time so he could replace one set of leg irons for another. Begrudgingly, I also allowed him to force the crude leather strap into my mouth. It was an improvement over the previous muzzles, at least. A length of rope pulled my wrists together at my back. When I’d first arrived, I’d tried using the ropes and chains as a weapon against him. I was no longer strong enough for that.
Ignus reached out a hand and clapped it painfully to my shoulder, leading me from the room. Every cell in my body cried out for a weapon. Intervention. Anything. I glanced longingly at the faint ash smear on the floor.
I whimpered, barely a breath of complaint, but my captor took this as a personal affront. He laughed and tightened his grip on my bony shoulder.
“You know whining won’t help you.”
Ignus led me down to the dark, wood-paneled den he did his after-hours business out of. The air on the main floor always smelled like old cigar smoke and felt heavy, like even the room couldn’t process the horrors it saw.
My job was simple most of the time. Cure someone’s aunt or granny of her joint pains. Take away the cough a merchant couldn’t shake. Fix the ailments of anyone who could afford to pay Ignus to abuse my gift. I was an annoying but mandatory accessory to the process.
But research days… they were different. I hated research days with twice the venom as regular ones.
The men gathered in the den were there to study me instead of watching as I healed people who had paid for the privilege of such a gift. I was more certain than ever that I wasn’t even human to them, except the parts of me that were obviously female.
They’d all looked, too. Most of them for too long, too often.
The first and only time one of the men had actually touched me in a way I didn’t care for, I’d bitten off the tip of his finger. I’d been soundly punished for my reaction, then fitted for the muzzle. But they were all much more careful about where they put their hands after that.
Ignus shoved me through the doorway of the den where four of the usual six other men were already waiting. “Go on.”
I hesitated. In addition to the two missing men, the room was not arranged like it normally was. Instead of being in the middle of the room, the big table was pushed into the corner, all the chairs stacked on top of it. A simple wooden stool was the only seat, placed in front of the fireplace atop a patchwork of heavy cloths. I glanced at Ignus, eyebrows drawn together in question.
“Sit,” he insisted, roughly shoving me again.
I complied, heart racing. Scanning the room over and over, I looked for anything I could use as a weapon.
This was not how things typically went. Usually, I was put at one of the chairs around the table or even on the table itself. I had learned to grit my teeth through their normal poking and prodding, the occasional bloodletting, and things like leeches, skin scrapings, dental examinations, nail and hair clippings. Anything they could think to study was taken from me.
My meager midday meal of broth and old bread turned in my gut. This looked like I was being prepared for sacrifice.
Ignus and the other men came closer, two heavy hands resting on my shoulders, pushing me into the hard seat, others holding my ankles still against the legs of the stool.
“You sure we shouldn’t wait for?—”
“We’re fine,” Ignus growled.
“But the…” He gestured vaguely to the floor. “I’m not sure it’s quite right, though. We don’t have the book, so I was going off memory and—” Ignus slugged his friend in the jaw, drawing a glare and his silence.
“I said we’re fine. We don’t need to be babysat by those two haughty pricks. They think they get special privileges because of their money and connections, but they don’t. I’ve done all the legwork here. The circle is fine. We can do this on our own. Now shut it.”
“I do apologize, Jane,” Dr. Lang said, a pensive frown on his face. Bile rose in my throat as he turned around, a tiny precision blade in his hand. I thrashed against the hands holding me, screamed into the leather strap as he moved closer. “This might hurt.”