“All good, babe. You had me worried there for a minute.”
I laughed, even as my heart squeezed in a way that was painful. There was a reason that bards and poets wrote of heartache—it was real. The organ beating in the chest was the center of it all, love, pain, and yes, heartbreak.
I’d worked hard to lock everything down when it came to Lothar, because I’d had no other gods-damned choice. For a really long time I’d successfully bottled my emotions up tight. I’d locked them behind a steel door and thrown away the key. Why was this loss of control happening now?
I released him and quickly stepped back. “There’s a swimming hole not far from here; I’m gonna go wash up.”
He nodded. “I’ll get a fire going.” He gathered the firewood he’d collected and dumped it into a pile, then opened his hand and hellfire licked up from his palm instantly. He aimed it at the pile, and blasted it, setting it on fire.
I grabbed my soap.
“I’ll go with you,” Gus said, quickly standing.
“Sit your ass down,” Lothar barked at him.
Gus did as he was told but didn’t look happy about it.
“Sorry, pup, not this time,” I said as I headed off.
It took everything in me not to sprint away, gods, not to keep on running. Lately, that steel door I’d been relying on so heavily felt as if the hinges were rusted and loosened, that the door was flaking away, and all that volatile and brutal emotion I’d locked up tight was slipping free. It wasn’t all of a sudden though, was it? I realized now, that it had been slowly decaying without me realizing it, and I was terrified it was too late to seal it back up.
I rubbed my hands over my arms as goose bumps lifted across my skin. What I was feeling right now, the lack of control I had over it—and what it would mean if I wasn’t able to lock it back up—was too much to even contemplate.
But still, despite all of that, a small, twisted, pathetic part of me that I hadn’t been able to smother wanted to fucking bask in it. The masochistic little bitch wanted to let every emotional wave crash into her, let it pull her under and drown her because, sweet Lucifer, I’d missed it. The way Lothar made me feel was intoxicating and terrifying all at once.
I wasn’t sure what to do, because for the longest time, I hadn’t allowed myself to feel anything around him. I still didn’t want to, because nothing could come of it, but I didn’t know how to shore up my defenses—or what had weakened them in the first place.
The clearing opened up ahead and I spotted the swimming hole. My sisters and I had bathed here more times than I could count. The water came from an underground spring and was clean, fresh, and warm. Shoving all the unsettling thoughts from my mind, I stripped off and sank into the water, sighing when the warmth immediately soaked into my skin.
Dipping my head under to wet my hair, I popped back up, grabbed the soap I’d put in easy reach, and lathered up my hair. I usually used a coconut-and-lime-scented shampoo, but I was traveling light. I dipped under the water to rinse it out?—
Someone fisted my hair and wrenched my head back, hard. A sharp blade flashed toward me.
I flipped in the water, and whoever had hold of my hair was thrown off-balance, plunging into the pool with me. They still had hold of my hair, and I grabbed their other wrist to stop their blade from slashing my throat under the water. Shoving my feet against the rocky side of the swimming hole, I ran up it and flipped again. Their fingers slipped from my hair, as we changed positions, and I finally got a look at my assailant.
Verahn demon.
Still gripping his wrist, I slammed it against the rock edging the pool, once, twice. The knife clattered out of his hand, and in one quick move, I snatched it up, locked my arm around his throat, and stabbed him in the chest three times. The demon shrieked as I slashed through the tendons behind each of his shoulders, then did the same behind his knees, before I yanked his head back so I could see his face. “What do you want, why are you here?”
Demons hanging out here in the forest was no big surprise, this was Hell, they were everywhere. Sensing them close, or in the hound’s case, scenting them, wouldn’t set off any alarm bells, because normally they wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack me.
More demons rushed forward, surrounding me. Verahn were built for fighting, which was why a lot of them made up security for most of the lords and some other immortals as well.
I tossed the flailing demon from the pool and bounded out. “How very impolite of you,” I said and smiled brightly. “Attacking a girl while she’s trying to take a bath. Why don’t you tell me who you are and what you want and we can talk?”
“Your head for a start, then...” His gaze trailed down my naked body. “We’ll see what else pops up.”
“You’re not going to give me your name? No problem, I’ll call you…hog face. Hey, hog face, did you just imply that you were going to rape my decapitated body? That’s pretty fucked up. You know that, right?”
He opened his mouth and shut it, confusion covering his extremely swinish features before he snarled. “Shut the fuck up. We’re going to kill you, bitch.”
I giggled. “No, you’re not.”
He waved around the cleaver he was holding but looked unsure all of a sudden. Then one of the very lonely brain cells in his thick skull betrayed him and convinced him that he had this. “You don’t have your backup with you now, handmaid. There are three of us and only one of you. You’re fucked.”
“You know what, hog face, you’re kinda adorable when you say stupid shit.” I lifted my hands. “I’ll give it to you, you have balls, no doubt big, pink, disgusting ones, but still, kudos to you. Question?”
He snarled.
