4 #2
I close my eyes, cupping my nose between my two palms. This hallucination has gone too far. I suddenly slap the table and decide to play into this delusion.
“So,” I start, “I have demon blood. Got it. So even though I look like my parents, I’m not really their child, but my actual father is a demon with horns and a forked tail, who is probably the Demon King and for twenty years I’ve lived in peace.
Me, the lost daughter of the Demon King and on a completely normal day, when I want to live my mortal life, suddenly the angels – sorry, herebias – attack, then my father sends a demon army after me.
I guess these horrible monsters actually want to save me, but meanwhile, some of them realize they’re hungry and want to eat me.
” I casually turn a piece of muffin in my mouth with my finger.
I’m terribly tired. “So, is that how it’s supposed to be imagined? ”
My portrayal seems to amuse Darya, but when he speaks, his voice is so cold it gives me chills. “He can’t be your father. Because the Kraldem, or what you call the Demon King, is me.”
I blink, then begin shivering as this new term enters my vocabulary. I shrug to warm myself.
I know what the word means, but there’s no French expression for it. Ruler over demons. Demon King. I swallow hard.
“You don’t seem very demonic,” I say. Which is true, aside from his gray eyes and white, seemingly dyed, hair. Maybe he doesn’t look like a monster, but, then again, upon closer inspection, he’s not quite human either. Too beautiful for that. His movements are too graceful, too effortless.
“I can’t walk around in my natural form in this world. The spies would notice it.”
“You mean the reporters? Journalists?”
“However they call them in this century. They all have one goal.”
Now it’s my turn to ask how old he is. But he dismissively waves his hand, claiming he doesn’t count it anymore.
Darya slowly surveys my face, his gaze making the hairs on my neck stand on end. “Do you have siblings?”
My mouth goes dry, my stomach clenches. I press the straw of my pomegranate smoothie against my lips. I stare at him longer than necessary, then gulp hard.
“I had two,” I whisper.
It’s much more enjoyable to look at the red drink than anywhere else. The man sizes me up. “Had?”
I shrug, locking eyes with the smoothie. “I have a sister. I had a brother.”
“How did he die?”
I grip the edge of the table, staring in astonishment at the stranger. Who asks such a question? And yet… no one ever asks about it.
“He was sick,” I whisper, my voice trembling weakly. I don’t turn away from the man’s gray eyes. “He had cancer.”
The shadow turns its head to the side, as if sensing that this isn’t the whole truth.
“Actually, that’s what’s interesting,” Darya begins, resting his chin on his palm again. “For more than twenty years, neither side noticed anything. Neither the demons nor the angels. Why would this be, Lotte? What changed?”
I like the way he says my name. There’s a certain sharpness to it, a well-honed blade.
He pronounces it differently from the French, yet it feels familiar.
Unconsciously, I smile at the only normal thing to me seeming the only strange thing to him.
I thought an average girl could live peacefully until her twenties, surely not too much to ask.
I feel a tingling under my skin as it becomes clear what the one thing that could have changed is, but I’m not sure if I should share it with a stranger. However, I need answers too.
“I haven’t taken my medication for two days,” I say cautiously, still focusing on my trembling left arm, which is being tossed around by withdrawal symptoms.
“Interesting.”
“For you, everything normal is interesting.”
“And how long have you been taking them?”
“Since I was very young.”
“And why?”
I hate this question. It always feels so humiliating.
“I have nightmares.”
“You take them for that?”
“Yes.”
“And do they help?”
“To some extent.”
Tilting his head to the side, he scrutinizes me, but I still refuse to look at him. Too much pain is tied to the medication, and I don’t want to talk about it.
“Tell me about your dreams,” he instructs softly, and I find myself complying.
“They’re similar. Monsters chase me, like the ones I saw today. That’s partly why I thought I was hallucinating,” I confess.
“Do they hurt you?”
A weak voice comes out of my throat, and I feel my cheeks flush crimson.
“Very much.”
“Do you hear anything from the way they speak?”
“I don’t understand their speech. Just… a word or two.”
Darya leans forward even more, and, reluctantly, I look at him again. A new light of interest shines in his eyes.
“What do you understand?”
“As I said, it was just a word or two.”
“What?”
Swallowing hard, I look at the ice cream counter. The frothy colors sharply contrast with the cloudy atmosphere between us. I don’t take my eyes off its surface as I say the ridiculous word.
“Kindra.”
The man doesn’t reply, and I can only curse myself for being so foolish.
This word has made my entire family and all my therapists ponder, and they’ve all come to the conclusion that I probably heard it in a children’s tale and built my nightmares around it.
“They might represent your parents,” my psychiatrist once said.
In fifteen years, these monsters have represented everything, except they haven’t been defeated by any clever-looking fucking therapist.
I glance uncertainly at Darya, but as I see his face, it feels like I’m being stabbed in the back with an icicle.
Whatever happened today, nothing has tensed my muscles as much as the way the man looks at me now.
My thighs turn into stone. Black fire burns in the man’s eyes, an all-consuming flame.
A silver streak appears in the middle of his pupil, extending like a rope around my chest. I can barely breathe.
Beneath his eyes, purple circles gather, as if they had just been painted there.
The hidden wrinkles seem unnatural on his porcelain skin. But his mouth…
His lips are half-open, a merciless smile lurking in the corner. Black smoke rises from his lips. I can’t move, as if I’m under a spell. My heart hammers against my ribs.
“What happened? I don’t understand…” The words leave me as a blissful sigh, and I’m not even sure if I actually uttered them. What has changed? I can’t take my eyes off the silver streak in his eyes.
The table is narrow between us, and Darya presses his legs against my trembling thighs. I try to pull away, but he doesn’t let me. His hand searches for my chin. His triumphant gaze holds mine captive. His glare lingers on my lips.
“My little champion,” he hisses like a snake, and his thumb gently strokes my lips. In my daze, I don’t know what to do. He’s so beautiful and alluring, and as much as I fear him, I feel safe with him, however little that makes sense.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers. “Everything will become clear soon.”
He gently places his index finger under my chin and slowly brings his face closer.
I can’t speak. His gaze entraps me as if I’m under hypnosis, drawing me to him like a magnet.
He’s so close. I can feel his fiery breath.
Part of me wants to close the distance between us, but I also have the urge to flee.
His lips barely touch mine, when someone beside me shouts.
“Lotte!”
The familiar voice pulls me back to the present, tearing me out of Darya’s spell. What the hell am I doing? It’s as though I wasn’t myself just now. I turn towards the voice, and my head starts to ache again. Nathan stares at me with clenched fists.