Chapter 14
Zarathos
Ayoung abaddon demon boy stood before his father, noting the murder in his eyes. The dark disapproval filled the room with his malice, turning even the familiar surroundings, the armchair, the stark rug, the empty fireplace into foreboding enemies.
“The maid tells me you are refusing to take your potion.” The boy’s father towered over him, and the boy trembled.
The maid. Gresil had been there for him since before the ten-year-old boy could remember.
And yet, after all this time, she was still just the maid to his father.
Within the last twelve months, they had moved from a shack in the woods to one of his father’s manors, and she had started insisting that she give the boy this potion his father had sent. “I told her that it—”
“Take it.” The boy’s father held a vial filled with swirling clear liquid in his hand. He loomed over his son, anger flashing across his face.
The boy fought not to shrink, biting into the side of his cheek until he tasted blood. “Father, I can’t. It hurts me—”
His father slapped the boy, knocking him to the ground. “Do not speak back to me.”
His jaw throbbed, and the boy stumbled to his feet, cowering before the demon arch king standing over him. A dangerous threat flashed in his father’s gaze. The boy had learned long ago to always take his father seriously.
Tears stung his eyes, but he held them in. Crying was a sign of weakness and very well might get him killed. Slowly, he reached up and took the vial.
He unstopped it and hesitated. He understood he shouldn’t, but he did.
His father let out a low growl. The boy forced himself to raise it to his lips and down the liquid.
It flowed over his tongue, tasting like the remains of a burned out building and oddly something unexpected, something he wasn’t used to tasting, an added sweetness.
He lowered the vial and raised a wary gaze to take in his father’s satisfied expression. Almost immediately, the boy’s muscles tightened. Panic shot through him as a sourness gripped his stomach. His vision grew fuzzy, like a thousand pins and needles were being jammed into his eyeballs.
Not again.
His father’s lip curled upward. “Remember this, son, you are an abomination. You do not deserve to exist in this world. From now on, you shall no longer hear nor recognize your given name. You shall henceforth be known as Zarathos.”
The boy fell backward, his head striking the hard floor, staring into his father’s uncaring eyes as his body spasmed and reality careened out of control. With one more look of disapproval, his father dropped an envelope onto the boy’s chest before turning and walking away.
He couldn’t breathe.
He was dying.
And when unconsciousness came, it was a mercy.
Zarathos awoke with a pounding headache, feeling as if a ground ogre had torn him apart and stitched him back together. His mind wouldn’t work right. Something was missing, stolen from him.
His name.
Zarathos wasn’t his name, but what was it? What had it been? He couldn’t remember. It was the potion. The seizure it caused was normal, but there had been a sweet taste to this concoction that usually wasn’t there. What had it done to him? Made him forget?
It seemed an eternity before he could move. He sat up, tired and aching. He lifted the envelope that had fallen onto the floor in trembling hands and tore it open.
To my offspring,
You have one chance to impress me. Prove to me and this kingdom that you are more than a worthless use of space or the next time I visit in two days, you will meet your end.
Also, if you ever refuse to take your elixir again, I will kill Gresil.
The Demon Arch King
What could he do? How could he possibly gain the great demon arch king’s approval? A helpless burning gathered behind Zarathos’s eyes, and to his horror, a line of wetness traveled down his cheek.
“Zarathos?”
The voice caused him to stagger to his feet, swiping at the tear. He looked toward the doorway and saw a young demon boy standing there. “Casiel.”
His brow furrowed. “Are you all right, Zarathos?”
Zarathos stared at the boy. Was he really calling him Zarathos? Or was that all Zarathos could and would ever hear? He glanced away, refusing to meet his gaze as he nodded. “I just had a visit from my father. He wasn’t happy with me, but fathers are like that.”
“Mine isn’t.”
The letter in Zarathos’s palm scrunched as his claws curled inward. “Is there something you came for?”
The boy smiled. “I thought you might want to go fishing with me?”
He stared at his friend. His only friend. Still, the letter’s words burned into his skull. He shoved the parchment into his pocket. “Yes, that sounds good.”
Casiel’s grin grew. “Great! I left my rod downstairs. Grab yours and we’ll walk to the river.”
Even though every muscle in him screamed with fatigue, Zarathos grabbed his rod and some bait from his closet and made his way carefully down the steps to join Casiel. All the while, his mind was spinning, plotting with possibilities.
He felt less, so much less than when he’d seen his father. He reached for his shadow powers and they were there, but they seemed… subdued. This had nothing to do with the effects of his seizure. This was something else. And it scared Zarathos.
Casiel chatted carelessly as they walked.
Over the last few weeks, through information his friend had let slip, Zarathos had discovered that his friend’s parents were deeply entrenched in a resistance movement against his father.
Not to mention some of the demons involved were shapeshifters, a forbidden form of demons.
His friend seemed to have a fascination with the species, but Zarathos’s father hated them with a passion as had the many demon rulers before him.
Of course, Casiel didn’t know that Zarathos was the son of the arch king. His father had always visited discreetly. Nobody knew that the manor home in which Zarathos lived belonged to the supreme leader of the demon nations.
When they reached the river, they cast their lines.
Zarathos only gave brief replies to his friend’s incessant inquiries.
And Casiel prattled on, not seeming to notice anything different.
Zarathos shut his eyes, for a moment shoving everything aside, enjoying the gentle trickle of the water, the slight sway of the trees in the wind.
This was his spot. His and Casiel’s, where they might relax and have no concerns.
But no. Zarathos wasn’t a monster. He couldn’t hurt Casiel. His mind grasped about for any other alternative, any other way to satisfy his father and stay alive.
The parchment in his pocket poked at his leg, insisting there was none.
Casiel was the only demon similar in age in the nearby town. He had been nothing but nice to Zarathos.
Casiel was a good demon.
In a nicer world, that would matter.
Zarathos had never lived in a nice world.
“Casiel.” He hesitated, but then forged ahead. “I’ve caught a new kind of bait. I forgot to grab it before leaving. But Gresil said it’s supposed to be irresistible to fish. You want to see it?”
“What is it? Is it ratchet critters? Oh, I bet it is a great horned beetle ram.”
Zarathos forced a smile. “It’s a surprise. Come see.”
Casiel lifted his empty rod from the water, excitement sparking in his eyes. “Yes! We have to try it! Let’s go fetch it.”
As they proceeded toward the manor, Casiel continued prattling on, not noticing Zarathos’s ever shorter answers.
They walked, and the guilt inside Zarathos’s body twisted.
The letter remained in his pocket, scraping at his leg, poking with every step, like a metronome in time, ticking down the moment when his friendship would end.
The trees bent in the breeze, a dark cloud brooding over their head, the chilled wind blasting in their faces as if begging them to go back.
To return to the river where he and Casiel could stay and cast their poles in the river without a care of life or death.
But that was the past.
Surely Casiel would understand. He’d understand that Zarathos didn’t want to die. That he didn’t want his father to kill him. Casiel’s parents were wrong. They were against everything Zarathos’s father represented.
They entered Zarathos’s room. It was plain, mostly. It was so big compared to the cottage that he’d grown up in that he’d never known what to place inside it.
“Where is the fishing bait?” Casiel asked, looking around.
Zarathos motioned toward a side door. “In the closet.”
He walked with his friend to the closet door. His eyes fell upon the latches up high. His father, when he visited, often locked him inside as punishment for hours in the dark.
Casiel peered within. “I don’t see any—”
Zarathos pushed him inside and slammed the door, throwing the bolt.
“Hey! Zarathos! Open up!” The handle jiggled, and the frame shook.
Shutting his eyes, Zarathos leaned against the wall next to the doorjamb. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
“Is this some kind of trick? Fine, you’ve got me, now let me out!” Casiel continued to bang on the door.
Zarathos did have him, but it wasn’t a trick, though he wished it was. Gods, he was a horrible person. A monster. And yet none of that diminished the prick of the letter in his pocket, reminding him of what would happen if he failed.
After warning Gresil not to release him, he left his estate, walking through the dark to the village. It only took a few questions to discover where Casiel’s parents lived. He walked up to the wooden hut at the edge of the town and knocked on the rickety wooden door.
It opened and a plain human woman stood before him. It was impossible for him to ignore the same light brown eyes that belonged to his friend.
“I am a friend of Casiel’s. May I come in?” Zarathos asked.