Mead Cute (Roll for Romance #3)

Chapter 1

Calamity

Being the daughter of a demon lord had its perks.

For one, Calamity wasn’t afraid of him. Sure, he towered over her, his obsidian horns and knife-like talons glinting against the dusty landscape, but he needed her.

Or, at least, he thought he did, and that was what mattered.

She was his heir of chaos; not that she ever intended to cash in on all that entailed.

Second, she could actually hear him over the chaos of Pandemonium.

For any other creature, who would have been deafened by the wails and screams that echoed off every surface, Trulnuroth would have had to raise his horrible, croaky voice, driving even the sanest visitors to madness.

But, as his daughter, Calamity was protected.

Finally, and most importantly, was the fact that demon lords tended to be a bit more in-the-know about powerful dark magic than the average adventurer.

Magic such as that sought and wielded by The Twelve, a shadowy syndicate of would-be conquerors that had been snapping up all-too-powerful artefacts across Calamity’s home world.

She and her friends had been hunting The Twelve for years, but they’d only managed to take down two.

Now their leads had dried up, and she hadn’t known where else to go.

Her friends would have been horrified to know where she was.

They knew she was of demon descent – one look at her purple skin, long tail, and gold-tipped horns told them that – but her true heritage remained a secret.

It was frowned upon to even say Trulnuroth’s true name out loud, much less claim any connection to him; he was more often referred to as the Prince of Pandemonium.

This fear stemmed from an ancient prophecy that the demon lord would one day return from his exile and conquer the material plane, ringing in a new reality of chaos and carnage.

And the part that concerned Calamity, and made all others too afraid to even utter his name?

He would have help. Someone would hand him the tools he needed to subdue the world.

The moment Calamity had been born, he’d decided it would be her, even naming her for the chaos she would supposedly help him unleash.

“It is good to see you, child,” Trulnuroth said, his voice so deep that, even despite her protections, it shook the bedrock beneath her feet. “What brings you to me? Have you the key to my ascension?”

According to the prophecy, a servant of Trulnuroth would one day deliver a powerful key, which would enable his rise to power.

As fond as Calamity was of a little chaos, she wasn’t actually keen to let this prophecy come to pass, and she had no intention of accidentally becoming that servant.

She couldn’t risk something seemingly innocuous causing the ruinous end of everything she knew and loved, so she’d been careful to bring with her as little as possible – just the spell scroll she’d need to get home and her spellcasting focus, which was the broken tip of one of the obsidian black horns atop her father’s head.

If she’d had any other place to go for information, she would have. But there was no point protecting her world from Trulnuroth only to let it fall to The Twelve.

“My party and I are after a group called The Twelve,” she said, straight to business. “We’ve dealt with two of them – Lord Arnault and Lady Nephrine – but if we’re right, then there are ten left, and we can’t find any more leads.”

Trulnuroth laughed – a menacing scratching noise that made Calamity’s skin crawl. She opened her mouth to hurry him along – she didn’t have time for posturing or power trips – but he finally answered.

“I have heard rumblings,” he said, crouching down before her, drawing in the dust at his feet with one curved talon.

The image quickly took shape: a perfect twelve-pointed star.

The emblem of The Twelve. He swiped over two of the points with his huge hand, smudging them from the image – the two that had already been vanquished.

“Do you know who the others are?”

Trulnuroth considered her question for another long while. His eyes were completely white, all sclera, but she somehow knew he was holding her gaze. Judging her resolve. She steeled herself, doing her best to project confidence. Determination. Single-mindedness.

Was it just her, or did the feared demon lord’s face soften slightly?

Calamity grew impatient as her father seemingly weighed up whether to help her.

She would not make any deals; any promises.

She would leave empty-handed if she had to.

She would not bend to him. But she really, really didn’t want to return to her friends with nothing.

It had been risky to come here, and she didn’t want it to have been in vain.

She saw the resolve set in his gaze; he seemed to have finished assessing her. She sucked in a nervous breath and held it as he stood, unfolding to his full, terrible glory.

“I know who they are,” he rumbled.

“And you’ll tell me?”

Trulnuroth nodded slowly, and Calamity heaved out a sigh of relief.

Thank god, she thought. Or, I suppose, thank Dad.