Rae blinked. "Wow."
"Yeah." I closed my eyes. "Did anyone die today yet?"
"One lamia."
"Fuck. Mia's alive?"
"Mostly. Leon got a few bites in. She and Charity locked themselves in their room for now, so you've got a few hours to figure things out with your captive. Dinner will be a shit show, but that's nothing new."
It was always a shit show.
I cooked for myself as much as possible because of that, but I couldn’t let the other demons in the mansion think I was hiding from them, so I couldn’t stay in all of the time.
“What about Sylva?"She was the current siren queen. She was the best one we’d had in the last decade, so I was trying to keep the peace with her, even though she drove everyone insane with her constant requests. She wasn’t trying to seduce me, so she was a world above the last one.
"She went to the spa, so I'm sure she's terrorizing whoever's there."
"Alright. Thanks for the update."
Rae nodded.
She didn't leave, though.
"Spit it out," I said. She wasn't someone who stuck around for fun. If she was still there, she had something to say.
"I think you should just be honest with her, Grayson. She seems pretty reasonable. If you just tell her what's going on, you guys can make a decision together. If she's not willing to play the mate role, you really might have to find someone else."
My gut clenched. "I don't think I have it in me to be with anyone else."
"The alternative is death, without a capital d, so..." Rae shrugged. "Sorry. Sucks to be an incubus."
"You're always so empathetic," I grumbled.
"Dying in a dirt cellar will do that to a girl."
She disappeared into the shadows, like the name she'd given herself.
The Wraith.
Unlike the rest of the demons in Rumor, Rae wasn’t just connected to the shadows. Shewasa shadow.
Mostly.
She was… complicated.
She was also strictly against relationships of any kind, preferring to stay in her apartment, away from the mansion, as much as possible. She survived on text messages, video games, and takeout food, with a side of murder. I was the only person shereally talked to, though Charity and Mia had almost managed to worm their way onto her good side over the past decade.
Rae had been sixteen when I found her in a dirt prison the vampire king at the time had kept, ten years earlier. Her connection to the shadows was stronger than his, so he abandoned her there, assuming she’d starve to death without blood to drink. He'd worried she was strong enough to challenge him for his throne.
She was.
She’d saved herself with the shadows, becoming one with them in the process. I had no idea how, and had never asked. She wasn’t one to volunteer information, but I wasn't convinced she knew either. She’d never even told me who her parents were and where she'd come from.
I’d killed the vampire king, obviously, but the teenage shadow had basically imprinted on me because of it.
We’d become like siblings as I helped her learn how to handle the world outside the dungeon. I'd lost my family a little over a year before I found her, so having her there had been good for me too. She’d adapted, as much as anyone who survived hell really could.
Her lack of interest in relationships undoubtedly had everything to do with what she’d gone through, but I didn’t push her on that either. Rae would do whatever she decided to.
