The king has a human mate, doesn’t he? And other demons, too, have found their fated ones in these strange, hornless, wingless creatures. So the witch standing before me should certainly be able to…
No.
She doesn’t.
If she did, she wouldn’t be looking at me like I’m about to harm her.
If she did, she would wait for a moment and listen.
“I sure the fuck do not,” she snaps.
“Don’t you?” I murmur. “So then it’s only me who feels it?”
“Feel what?”
I don’t answer, and her eyes dart back to the Veil, wider now. Her hands shake. Only a slight tremor, but I already feel so attuned to her I’m certain I’d be able to see it from a hundred paces away.
“Feel what?” she asks again, and the tremor is in her voice, too.
Hope sparks in my chest.
“What do you know of demonkind? What do you know of the witch who’s married our king?”
I see the moment the truth of it lands in her mind.
Her unnervingly green eyes go even wider. Her mouth falls open on a gasp. The tremor in her hands and in her voice reaches the hollow of her throat—a fast, staccato beat hammering against her pale skin.
I want to press my lips there. Soothe that racing heart. Draw her beneath the protective cover of my wings and keep her there until all that fright eases away.
Until she feels what I feel.
Goddess above, I need her to feel what I feel.
“Reach for it,” I urge softly. “You’ve got a tempest of magick inside you, witch, and I’d wager it’s strong enough to tell you that you’ve met your m—”
“Don’t say it,” she whispers, horror laced through each word.
3
Seren
Oh, Goddess.
Oh no, no, no.
“Don’t say it.”
The demon’s crimson eyes darken, and a deeply displeased rumble breaks from his chest. His lip curls slightly, exposing the tip of a wickedly sharp fang.
“Witch,” he says, and even though he doesn’t sound any more pleased about this than I am, the rich timbre of his voice still… does something to me.
It does something that curls like smoke low in my belly. It does something that heats my blood and sends a shiver of awareness all the way through me. It does something that tugs on the strange magick coursing through me and has me hearing his next words before he ever says them.
“You’re my m—”
“Don’t say it,” I tell him again, only this time it comes out more like a plea.
The demon—Callum, I think he said his name was?—rumbles again. Growling? Is hegrowlingat me?
