The Book Reader (Daemon #1)

Chapter 1

One thing being alive for as long as I have has taught me is that life is a bitch and destiny is an even bigger cunt. It’s been one hundred and fifty years since I’ve lost her this time, and it never gets any easier.

I am the lord of the Dream Realm, one of the most powerful regions in the Underworld.

The devil had his army of lords to fight beside him, to make sure that the balance between good and evil remained.

He gave each lord the gift of a beast from hell, a pure daemon that lives within them, a soul carved from pure evil. They are our constant companions.

When they are not in control of our bodies, we can feel them and hear them in our minds. Our daemons are born with us, and we learn as we grow to control them, to make them a part of our lives.

When we need darkness, our bodies shift into a new form—their form. Larger, powerful, and more deadly.

Being a lord of the Underworld is a gift from the devil himself. The title was handed down to me after my father was killed.

Only lords have daemons, Hell monsters.

Millions of years ago, Tate—another daemon lord—overthrew the devil, murdered him, and took over his realm.

Since then, there has been nothing but death and destruction in the Underworld.

Tate, with the help of his top assassin, the Blood Bringer, has slowly been killing his way through each region of the Underworld. Destroying their lord protectors and anyone else who opposed him.

My soulmate was meant to stop him.

She never got the chance. I lost her in that life and every single one after that.

A heartbreak that makes each breath I take burns my lungs because the air is darker without her.

Each beat of my heart feels like it’s going to rip my whole soul in two because she was the one who kept me together.

Grounding me.

Every day, I wake up wondering if today is the day she returns me.

When daemons fall in love, it’s for eternity. And when you’re immortal, the time spent apart transcends everything making it a sentence worse than a mortal death itself. We mate and bond together, not only as lovers, but as soul companions.

Our mates become the very fiber of our being, the reason for us to wake up every day and live our dark lives as best we can.

For her, I was alive.

Without her, I am nothing. I might as well be lying in a dirt grave beside her.

Her destiny is to be the Book Reader. Still, fate and their asshole gods never gave her a chance. Every time, she is ripped from this world before she can learn to use the powers she was promised.

We never found out why she is reincarnated. Half the time, it felt like some sick fucked up joke.

Gracing the universe with a soul so beautiful and as pure as hers, to then rip it away from us.

From me. Over and over again.

A reminder that our darkness can never touch the light.

In her first life—I fell so hard. Her amber eyes filled with defiance and stunning smile drew me in. I never stood a chance against her strong personality. Her ability to defy my every wish and her strong will capture me and never let me go.

I’ve never loved anything like I’ve loved her.

Macy, the princess of hell, the daughter of the self-proclaimed king of the Underworld, thought that I could be hers. She felt that she could possess not only me, but my realm.

She decided if she couldn’t have me, then no one else could either.

There was a battle, and that’s when I had to pull a poisoned Reaper arrow out of my mate’s heart.

Reapers are deadly to everyone, which is why Tate keeps an army of them. Their combined force, with the Blood Bringer, has made him unstoppable.

He murdered my mate without even blinking.

I’ve had to watch my love die in my arms, cradling her body until the last breath left her lungs and the spark in her eyes went out.

They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

That’s fucking bullshit.

Watching the one person in all the universes, that was meant for you. That was your whole reason for being, die?

Is devastating.

For years, I walked around the Underworld feeling like I didn’t belong. The pain of just waking was too much sometimes.

Thoughts of taking my own life so I could join her crossed my mind every second. Killing a lord is almost impossible; I would have crawled on my hands and knees up the black volcanoes of the Underworld to beg the reapers to take me.

I never took it that far. She would have hated me in the afterlife for doing that, and I had my people to think about.

That very first time, I thought I’d lost her. I thought she was gone forever.

Nearly a century later, rumors circulated that someone new had been born into the world, someone so powerful that even Tate was growing restless to hear of it.

I was excited that someone would finally be able to avenge my lost love.

Imagine the pure euphoria I felt when I saw a woman with amber eyes burning, the Orion's Belt birthmark on her cheek clear for all to see: her Book Reader marking.

Trelor, my inner daemon, had been silent in his own grief since the day that she left us., When he felt this woman, he knew she was his mate.

This blonde woman was our Rose.

She didn’t remember me. In fact, when I tried to speak to her, she kicked my ass.

My Rose was reborn as a mortal witch, and a powerful one.

Still, I thought that this time would be different; we could make it right. But she wasn’t quite powerful enough. Our chance at being together ended with her being brutally murdered.

That’s when I realized the vicious cycle we were stuck in.

A never-ending loop, unbroken for thousands of years. I have spent more time grieving her than I have being with my one true love.

I miss her every single day.

Today is the anniversary of losing her in her most recent life. I remember each of her deaths like they happened yesterday. This last one seems to have hit me harder than the rest.

“My lord? Will you be coming back to the castle for dinner this evening?”

Mark, my assistant, breaks into my thoughts. I lift my head and watch as he walks further into my office. “No, I will be out again,” I say, my voice gone dark and husky.

Most nights this month I’ve been spending as close to her as possible.

My eyes shut tight as images of my Rose’s last life flash in my head like a flickering movie screen.

Pictures of us dancing together, of her laughing at me trying to cook.

The way her eyes rolled back in her head when I slipped my cock into her soaked cunt.

Every tremble and shake of her body when she would come so fiercely for me.

The last image is of her lying face up in the River Irise, in Alikni, a little sandy town topside.

She was naked, bruises covering her body in dark black and blue patches. She had slashes over her pale skin as if someone had tried to cut parts of her flesh off. Her head was at a funny angle from it being almost severed.

I had to pull her out of the river and carry her back to our home.

Every step was so painful. I didn’t want to go back to a house that she wasn’t in, to rooms no longer filled with laughter, to our cold bed where she would no longer be waiting for me, ready to show me how much she loves me. Loved me.

My feet carried me home as if they knew I couldn’t keep going. I fell to my knees on the floor as soon as my feet crossed the threshold.

Cradling My Rose in my arms, tears falling silently down my face, I was too broken to make any sound.

No one was going to hear me anyway.

I held her for hours, but when my rage started to creep in, I shimmered us back here, to the Underworld and my realm, and buried her in the marshlands, next to the lake she loved so much.

“My lord?”

My eyes open, and a tear slides down my cheek. The memories are almost too much at times. I look up to see Mark still there, and he is looking at me with so much sympathy that I feel I could break apart right now.

My tears usually fall when I am alone.

A lord in the Underworld is meant to be strong.

“I shall see you later,” my voice downcast as I stand and shimmer to the place she rests.

The two moons are shining brightly in the sky, their glow hitting the ground and making that dark, sad place a little brighter.

A stone grave sits next to the lake, a few feet from the shoreline. She always loved to sit here and tell me all the things she pictured for our life. The future she saw for us both.

None of it ever involved her dying.

My steps are slow and deliberate, my feet sinking into the soft, wet ground.

Trees line the edges of the marshlands, grass filling the gap between them and the lake.

She always said this is the best view to see both moons fully.

I stop in front of her headstone. I’ve left its nameless because I didn’t want any daemons coming here and digging up her body in hopes they may get to her book of power. They don’t know that the book protects itself; hides until she is old enough to not only control it, but to fight with it.

The book keeps her protected, hiding her from the world until it can bond with her.

That’s the moment I hate the most, when it decides she is ready, her scent is so sweet, that any daemon close knows who she is.

I shake those thoughts off. I don’t need to worry about that right now.

Shimmering a black rose to my left hand I place it on top of her gravestone as I go to my knees in front of it. “I’m so fucking sorry.” Tears stream down my cheeks, pain threatening to choke me like it does every day.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe. I miss you so much. There is no happiness without you.”

Thunder cracks in the distance and rain starts to pour down heavily around me.

My shoulders jerk up and down with my sobs; my right-hand fists, I punch it hard into the ground.

I break the first level of dampened grass and soaking wet dirt, the mud molding around my hand, tethering me to the ground where she lies beneath me.

A cry full of despair is ripped violently from my throat and echoes over the field,

It’s in these moments that my soul knows no greater anguish.