“Oh, what a cute puppy!” A passing villager stopped beside Amma and reached out to give him a pat. Kaz nipped at her hand, just missing a finger.
“Sorry,” Amma said quickly, “he’s sort of a little demon.”
The woman laughed warily, eyes bulging at the worddemon, and she slipped into the crowd with a quickness.
“Master,” Kaz choked out from Amma’s arms, “I look ridiculous.”
“Yes, but you’ve stopped shivering.” Damien gave him a nod then turned, and they continued along the thoroughfare.
Nearing the market in the town square, Damien slowed. The discord was stronger there, and his senses were heightened as he covertly cast the spell to feel for other beings and magics once again. Though the day was not truly over, there was a rushed sense of completion in the air as many of the stalls were closing down. In a place like this, he would have suspected at least an hour or so more of regular work before a slow shut down after dark, but it seemed most of the villagers wanted to be home before the sun had disappeared. The keep in the nameless town outside of Tarfail Quag had mentioned demons, and most were ill-informed enough to believe it was only under nightfall that the infernally summoned prowled. Of course, demons did prefer the dark, it was often too warm dressed all in black out in the sun, but still.
“Stay here,” he said absently, handing the reins of the masked knoggelvi off to Amma and stepping away. There was a shrine in the center of the square they’d entered, a pedestal with steps on every side, and a statue of a woman there, one of the goddesses the people of the realm worshiped. Though he didn’t know which, he assumed she represented fertility or the harvest based on her scantily clad, generous breasts and the carvings into the base of her statue, wheat in a less-than-subtle, vessel-like shape.
He covertly sent his magic over the structure, feeling for that infernal arcana again. Around its base sat a number of small effigies meant to look like the goddess, and other trinkets and offerings, a bushel of dried flowers, a copper cup filled with spoiling milk, a small chunk of honeycomb. It was clearly cherished, yet the shrine was giving off an infernal aura, and not just any, but one he thought he might have known.
A jolt of alarm broke into the careful focus of Damien’s spell. There were plenty of others in the square, shouting and banging around their stalls and carts, and blood was pumping hard in most of the bodies as they toiled, but this pulse was different, this was laced with fear, and it had cut right through all the others to tell him it belonged to Amma.
She hadn’t appeared at his side again to hound him, and when he looked back, she was not where she’d been told to stay by the knoggelvi, Kaz sulking atop one of them in his new tunic, head down and not watching. Damien quickly scanned the crowd, sending the spell to chase after until he found her on the square’s other side, the sun catching her golden bundle of hair only for a second before it disappeared down a shadowed alley.
Damien strode to where she’d gone, snarling. What an idiot he had been to extend her any good will at all—a thing he had so little to spare as it was—only for her to make such a poor attempt at escaping. It was insulting really, darting off the minute he turned his back, barely any creativity at all, and that only made him more incensed in the short moment it took him to get to where she’d fled. Didn’t she at least respect him enough to come up with a more inventive plan of escape?
When he got his hands on her he was going to—well, he couldn’t exactly come up with something right then. The thought of cutting off some appendage or even bruising her was distasteful, her body too nice to mar, but creativity on his own part turned out to be unnecessary as he rounded the corner to see she hadn’t made the choice to run off at all.
There was a man, much larger than Amma, with a hand around her wrist, dragging her deeper into the alley and toward a darkened, empty cross street. She was trying to pull out of his grip but getting nowhere. Damien spat out Chthonic louder than he normally would have in a city full of humans and cast a bind at the man, hitting him squarely in the back and taking him down. Amma began to fall alongside him, but Damien caught her, yanking her out of his grip and into him as he unsheathed his dagger.
With Amma pulled safely up against his chest, Damien cut into his palm, already spitting out the Chthonic to slice through the man with enchanted blades of blood and bring him to a swift and deserved end.
“Wait! Don’t hurt him!” Amma grabbed his wrists, and he stilled beneath her hands, the spell crackling at the edges of his fingertips as his blood pooled in his palm.
The man had been laid out, wrapped in black tendrils of infernal magic, making him an easy target. The blades that were itching to leave Damien’s hand would sink into his flesh, bleeding him out in moments, and the urge to cast coursed through him, the desire to rip the bastard to shreds for trying to take what was his, but then, what the fuck was he thinking? Casting infernal arcana? Killing a man in the city center? Even in the shadows of this alley, there were others just beyond the corner that would hear his cry, find his body, and there was a door right ahead anyone could walk out at any moment.
And then there was Amma, fingers digging into his wrists, face turned up to him, pleading with her eyes.
Damien clenched his fist, the blood slick and eager on his palm. “He tried to abduct you,” he growled through grit teeth.
“No, he didn’t.” She tugged on his arms again, feeble but insistent.
“I saw him dragging you away. You were frightened. I could feel how panicked you were. I still feel—” Damien’s own heart was racing, infuriated, but Amma was still up against him, and he couldn’t entirely discern from where every sensation was coming. He dropped his arms, stepping to the side. “Explain what you think is happening then.”
Amma pulled her arms in around herself, like a replacement for his body. “He’s confused. He was mumbling about…about his daughter,” she said, head snapping down and back up like a nervous bird, eyes not settling on any one thing. “He just thinks I’m someone else.”
Damien strode over to the stranger still covered in magicked tendrils, turning him over with a boot. He was slightly older with flecks of grey in his beard, and though he was well dressed and clean, his face was red, light eyes taking too long to focus, longer than if the spell had simply knocked him out. “He’s drunk.”
“Exactly. He’s just confused.” Amma pushed Damien toward the alley’s opening. “Leave him. Let’s go.”
But Damien did not let her lead him away, staring a moment longer as the man slurred out incomprehensible words. He was built like he had worked his whole life, still strong and healthy despite the drinking. If he had gotten her alone—the urge to cast welled up in him again, but then Amma wasn’t exactly helpless. He glanced back at her, the dagger still strapped to her thigh. She hadn’t thought to pull it out and defend herself.
“Please, Damien.” She tugged at him a bit harder.
No, he couldn’t kill this man, but he still had him locked in a bind. Damien pressed his boot into his shoulder, eliciting a groan. He squeezed the blood in his palm and let it drip down onto the man’s forehead. As he whispered Chthonic, the man’s pupils dilated and found Damien’s. “This woman is mine. Do not even think of touching her again. Return to your home. Remain there.” Then he swiped over him, and the tendrils disintegrated into haze.
The man blinked and sat up, features slack, the drop of blood beading down his face. When he clambered back to his feet, Damien clenched his fist a little tighter and considered taking a swing but ultimately let him wander off down the alley and into the cross street. A mix of regret and satisfaction roiled in Damien’s guts, but then he clicked his tongue and turned back to Amma.
Her eyes were wide, face flushed, and she was not moving.
“What’s wrong?”
She blinked like she had just woken from a similar spell. “What did,”—her voice was hoarse, and she cleared it—“What did you do to him?”
