I’d been right.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, rolling to my tiptoes, holding up my light to try and see farther into its chamber. The demon hissed, its back curling up like a threatened cat, lips baring fangs that were sharp and dripping.
“Stop.” The command swept through the chamber, deep and grating, masculine.
I spun around. No one was there. It was just me, and the dozen-ish eyes of the jelmadag, watching. A manifestation of my own fears permeating the silence, then.
Holding up the torch once more, I paced the length of its cage. The frame of a muscular body, the delicate outline of wings, flickered in the dim light.
A flowing mane mimicked the lick of flames, streaks of blue glinting against the dark strands.
It lunged, ramming its shoulder against the door. Breath catching in my throat, I jumped back. Something swung from the demon’s chest, clanging against the metal—a hoof.
My dagger was heavy on my waist.
“Don’t you listen?” A growl rattled the ancient bars. “I do not wish to be put on display.”
Stomach twisting, I mustered up a response. “You can talk.”
The jelmadag grumbled, retreating deeper into his icebox.
“I don’t know why I thought…” You were a feral beast might get me mauled, so I settled for, “Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting a response.”
He curled into a ball of shadow on the floor. Throaty exhales rumbled in the air. My cue to go—but I didn’t.
“Are you sleeping?” I whispered.
“Are you leaving?”
Fingers curling around the thick iron, I leaned into the door. “Who put you here?”
“Fate.” The demon whipped his barbed tail, a flash of midnight against sparkling glacial walls. I shivered at the red streaks staining what should have been a sheet of white, at the pieces of bone bouncing off the stone when his heavy, cat-like appendage thudded to the ground.
A formidable creature, indeed. What else had the grimoire said—besides that he was basically a killing machine?
Part lamb, mostly lion, four in existence, one missing from the underworld…
“The book… it said you were missing.”
A satisfied chuckle lilted through the space like a cathedral’s copper bells. “They’re writing books about me now?”
“Did the queen put you here?” I asked. “After the Cross-Realm War?”
That random lamb leg kicked aimlessly, more of a twitch. “The Queen of the Huldufólk is merely a device for fate.”
As his wings fluttered closed, a feather slipped loose, adding to the piles scattered over the stone. It is the opposite of its Empyrean origin—a griffin—in every way aside from its wings. The feathers slowly fall out over the course of eternity.
One drifted near my feet, the edges serrated and sharp like the tip of a blade.
“Get that light out of my face.” Three bright, intelligent eyes cracked open, narrowing in on my chest. “And those fingers out of my cage.”
“Sorry.” I snatched my hand back, angling the torch away from the cell with the other. “I can’t see you without it.”
“I do not wish to be seen.”
I squinted into the enclosure. His body blended into the darkness seamlessly. I wasn’t sure what compelled me to stay. Curiosity, recklessness. Loneliness.
Keeping Kistuleitarinn locked up was questionable, but his gifts did give the kingdom an advantage, I guessed. But this beast? What reason to hold him captive if he was just going to stay locked in a basement, wasting away in the corner of his cell?
