20
I feel like I’ve burned my soul.
The boy haunts me. I can’t escape him. I try to hide in the depths of my mind, but he always finds me.
I wake up in my bed, exhausted. My skin remains warm.
The smell of burned flesh still stings my nose, Nárs’s whimpering echoes in my ears.
My throat is dry, the air is bitter. I look at my hands.
Did my skin burn them? How? I sit up, my heart pounding.
The Demon King stands, leaning against the headboard. His face inscrutable.
“How are you?” he asks. Without thinking, I jump up and lunge at Darya. I punch his jaw, but all I achieve is a crack in my wrist.
“Ouch!” I cry out, but I don’t relent. Though it’s futile, I keep hitting. I grab the book from the bed and throw it at him. I throw myself at him with all my strength. I try to scratch his face with my nails, just like he did with the child.
He killed him in cold blood. Slaughtered an innocent little boy!
I just scream, hit, kick, until at some point Darya has had enough. He grabs my wrists, throws me onto the bed, towering over me.
“Let go, you monster!” I snarl, writhing beneath him, but I have no chance of breaking free.
“Calm down, Kindra.”
“That’s not my name, you fucking demon!” I shout at him, spitting in his face, visibly fuelling his anger, but I don’t stop. “My name is Lotte, you fucking monster! There’s no way I’ll ever be yours!”
Darya stares at me with irritation, then at my chest. I’m squirming under him; I know what he’s thinking without words.
If he wanted to, he could claim me right now.
He could tear me into as many pieces as he wished.
I hate him. From the depths of my heart, I despise him.
Whatever I felt for him before the ceremony, it burned away along with everything else.
“Fuck you, Darya!” I hiss, and a silver streak flashes in his black eyes.
I hate him, hate him, hate him. Anger clouds my vision.
“Why?” I sob. “He was just a little kid!”
Darya’s eyes narrow.
“He shouldn’t have been there. His teacher didn’t do a good job, he wasn’t ready.”
He says it as if that’s the answer to everything.
“That’s a fucking cowardly excuse!” I snarl at him, and even though his face is just twenty centimeters from mine, I shout, “It was your responsibility to let him live! Here you are, thousands of years old, and you can’t even figure out who’s truly broken and who’s not! And you still call yourself a king!”
Darya’s face is unreadable.
“One thing I’ve learned for sure in all this time, Kindra, is that everything happens for a reason.”
“No!” I yell. My tense muscles tremble with nervousness.
“Don’t call me that! My name is Lotte, and I’ll never be your champion!
” I hiss through my teeth. “You can burn in your own hell, but I’ll never open the gate for you!
I hope you never, ever see your father again, and if you ever wonder why that is, just know that you only have yourself to blame, because you’re a disgusting monster who couldn’t even—”
Darya screams in a tone only a demon or a predator could, gritting his teeth, his fangs growing. He snarls and pushes me further into the bed. I scream as he presses between my legs. His leg on mine, his body on mine, his arms on mine.
I remain silent. His forehead is almost touching mine, his gaze freezing me to ice. Ink pours from his blackened eyes, solidifying into a tattoo.
With his sharp fangs, he approaches my neck, and I whimper.
My muscles tense, my throat dries up. If I don’t open the door for him and never change, I’m nothing more than a meal for him.
I close my eyes in fear. With a tense body, I await his bite; the scene coming to life in the darkness as I once again see Darya sinking his teeth into the boy’s heart. He’ll feast on mine too.
But nothing comes. Instead, his lips graze the sensitive skin under my chin.
We stay like this for a while. I only hear our heartbeats in the room, along with my sobbing. Darya buries his face in my neck.
“I want to taste you so much,” he says, licking me close to my ear. “You have no idea what I would like to do to you right now.”
The ambiguity of his words makes me tense. He leans his entire weight onto me. Slowly, the last remnants of my strength fade away, and I yield to him. I relax my wrists and I no longer try to break free. I built enough armor around myself from my hatred. He won’t break it down anymore.
After a while, he withdraws from my neck and looks into my eyes.
“Perhaps you see me as a monster,” he says calmly. “But my people need this to survive. I’ve never lied to you, Kindra. I’ve never said the demonic world is painless.”
No, he truly never said that, but it doesn’t matter.
“You kidnapped me,” I say, even though I know it’s not entirely true. “You didn’t give me a choice.”
“Would you rather choose to live among the herebias?”
“Yes!” I no longer believe, not even a bit, that they are the real monsters. In truth, I never believed it, but getting to them seemed so unattainable that I never even thought about it. Could I escape? What awaits me there?
Darya snorts.
“You only think that because you’re not yet capable of seeing everything.”
I hate that he considers me foolish. I see it perfectly now. What worse could the angels do?
“A child from my people died because of you,” I say softly, my tears of anger having now dried. I see the face of my brother again in my mind. He was the same age as the Swedish boy when he died.
And now they are both dead.
Darya nods, eyeing me. His face is too close, and his campfire-scented breath slaps against my lips. A tingling sensation runs through my mouth, but I don’t give in to the feeling.
That boy was someone’s brother. Like Bengt is to me.
“I’m done with your game,” I speak before the demon can say anything. “Find someone else. I won’t be the champion of monsters. Do with me what you want, kill me if you have to! It’s over.”
When I say it, I mean it seriously, but then my heart tightens. Darya could really kill me. You only mean more to me dead if I see you on the side of the angels . Maybe that statement isn’t true anymore. Maybe he’d kill right now since I won’t help him.
“You’d rather choose them…” Darya’s gaze wanders far away. Slowly, he descends from me, stepping towards the door. Before he goes out, he looks back. His voice is irritated. I can truly feel his thousands of years now.
“You can skip today’s ceremony. Every demon will be in the hall – you’ll be safe here.” He grips the doorknob with his hand and looks towards the tunnel. “Don’t fear those who show the truth, Lotte. Fear those who hide it.”