To Enthrall the Demon Lord

by Nadine Mutas

  Arawn tsked. “Lousy excuse. You are getting out of shape.”

  “Fine.” Lucía rolled her eyes and blew a lock of her midnight hair out of her face. “I may have let my training slide a bit. I was just surprised, is all.”

  Arawn shot her a dark look, the muscles in his shoulders flexing underneath his tailored shirt as he slid his hands in the pockets of his black pants. He jerked his head toward the door, and with a sigh, Lucía shifted into her cougar and padded out of the room.

  Maeve shivered on the bare floor behind the bed and hugged herself. “You knew this was going to happen,” she whispered to Arawn, having read the subtleties in his demeanor.

  “Eventually,” he replied without looking at her, instead examining the devastation of the room—burned furniture, smoking piles of ash, blackened walls and ceiling, the decorative branches charred. “I did not think it would occur so soon.”

  She realized with a start that he kept his eyes averted on purpose, a shred of decency which would have surprised her a day ago. But she’d since had a few perplexing glimpses into aspects of his character that contradicted his reputation.

  “I didn’t mean to…do that.” She hugged herself tighter, a part of her still marveling at the fact she was unscathed while the rest of her drowned in embarrassment.

  “No.” Arawn prodded a heap of ash with his shoe. “You were defending yourself.”

  She blinked. Thought back to the sequence of events, what had triggered the outburst. Eyes filling with tears, she shook her head, her voice thick. “But that’s never happened before. Not even when…” I would have needed it most.

  Arawn stared down at the blackened floor, his expression thoughtful.

  Lucía sauntered back into the room, now in human form—dressed—and carrying a bunch of folded clothes and a pair of shoes.

  “Here,” she said and handed Maeve the new clothes. “Your wardrobe’s turned to ash, I’m afraid, but I think some of my stuff should fit you, at least for the time being. It’s all fresh out of the laundry. We can go shopping tomorrow—”

  “We will have something delivered,” Arawn cut in, his tone brooking no argument.

  Lucía slanted a glance at him, but he’d already turned toward the door.

  “Get dressed. Meet me outside.” He strolled out.

  “I’ll wait for you in the hall,” Lucía murmured to Maeve, and followed Arawn out of the room, closing the busted-down door as completely as possible. Lucía must have rammed it open when she tried to get in.

  Did she hear Maeve screaming during the nightmare?

  She’d been doing better at the Murrays, hadn’t had an incident this bad in weeks. Well, she’d never had one this bad, anyway… Burning down a room? Inconceivable. She never had access to her powers after her grandmother bound them inside her, not even subconsciously. If she did, that fucker of a demon would have died a fiery death before he ever got her to the warehouse.

  No, her magic—the special, special magic that was the reason the demon abducted her—had never done shit for her. She could have died in that hellhole, and her powers would have continued to slumber, locked away beyond her reach.

  Bitterness coated her tongue and curdled her stomach as she quickly pulled on the loose yoga pants, T-shirt, socks, and sneakers. The clothes were a bit too big for her—she and Lucía might be the same height, but the demon-shifter packed more muscle, despite looking delicate—but it would do.

  Her attention snagged on one of the heaps of ash in the room, and her heart sank. Her duffel bag had been cremated, including its contents. She hadn’t fully unpacked yet, and when she went to take a closer look at the pile, she could make out the melted remains of her cell phone.

  So much for maybe trying to call Merle tomorrow. She’d forgotten the phone in the room when she went out with Lucía earlier in the day, and only remembered when they’d already wandered so far it seemed impractical to turn around to retrieve it. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to check whether she could get a signal above ground.

  Dammit.

  Something else poked out of the ash pile, and it stopped her cold when she understood what it was. She sank down next to the heap, pulled with shaking fingers until she held what remained of the picture frame she’d brought. The metal frame had survived, but the glass had shattered, the back had burned, and the photo…was incinerated as well.

  Nothing left of the picture showing her family before death and destruction ripped them apart. She used a finger to trace the vanished lines and shapes as she remembered them. The open, warm smile of her mom, her dad’s more reserved joy, Moira with a glint in her eye contrary to her serious attitude as the oldest sister, spunky Merle, her strong, dignified grandma, and little Maeve, beaming, in the middle. Only three of them still lived—Merle, Maeve, and their dad—the MacKenna family decimated and broken. And now…only Merle was officially a MacKenna by blood.

  No. There’s one more.

  Maeve smiled through tears at the thought of the spark of hope Merle was carrying, the future of their family.

  Her chest tight with both joy and grief, she let the ruined picture frame fall onto the ashes and walked out to join Lucía.

  “You shouldn’t have given her a room down here, without windows,” Lucía said as soon as the door closed behind her.

  Arawn leaned against the wall, arms crossed. His ward certainly never missed an opportunity to call him out.

  “It was obvious she was uncomfortable when she walked in,” Lucía pushed on, hands on her hips. “Which, considering where that scum of a demon held her, makes sense, and you know it. Why put her down here in the first place?”

  His mouth twitched the tiniest bit. “You two seem to have bonded well today.”

  “You saw how she reacted when she entered that room.”

  He sighed. Of course she didn’t take the bait. Feline obstinacy.

  “Why didn’t you—”

  “What I saw,” he interrupted her tirade, “was someone on the brink of implosion, not because of too much pressure, but rather due to lack thereof. Someone who had, by fault of good intentions, been treated like the burned corners of a parchment which might disintegrate at the slightest draft. Someone in need of some pressure, so she can discover for herself what she is capable of enduring, instead of others deciding it for her.”

  Lucía stared at him with her most thunderstruck expression. She blinked several times before she apparently regained her ability to speak. He tried not to feel smug about robbing her of speech for a good half minute—a new record?—and barely held back his smirk.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I forget what a sly jerk you are.”

  He could count the number of people who could get away with calling him that on one hand without even using all his fingers. Lucía was one of the lucky few, and she knew it.

  “So you decided for her by putting her down here,” she poked further.

  “No, I gave her a choice. The chance to take another room, or to try to make it work with this one.”

  “Well, it obviously didn’t work.”

  “Which is another matter.”

  She huffed, mirrored his pose with folded arms, shoulder to the wall. “And now?”

  “Now,” he said, angling his head toward the room, having picked up on Maeve’s movement inside, “you can take off for the rest of the night. I will handle it from here.”

  She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin, looking down her nose at him the way she’d been doing since she was three years old and too innocent and adorable to realize she was glaring at the Demon Lord himself, fully capable of killing her with a thought. Some days, her still-irreverent and haughty glare was his greatest source of amusement.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she eventually hummed in that puzzling way which seemingly encompassed a whole essay of judgment in two syllables, and stalked off to her room.

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, one arm still crossed over his chest.

  Maeve ex
ited her room a moment later, Lucía’s clothes a tad too large for her, making her look even more delicate than usual. Pieces of ash still clung to her unbound hair, the tumble of red strands a visual reminder of the fire inside her core. A streak of soot decorated her cheek, and he fought the urge to wipe it away.

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze, arms folded, posture defensive, pulse a fast tick in her neck.

  He did not want to lick that spot.

  Did. Not.

  “For obvious reasons,” he said, watching her come to attention without actually moving—she was good at that—her nostrils flaring a bit, “you cannot use this room any longer.”

  She swallowed, copper lashes fluttering. An open book, that’s what she was, her thoughts and emotions spelled out in detail, even without him accessing her mind. She was waiting for him to say it, to ask her if she now wanted a room with windows, forcing her to admit to her weakness in front of him, to declare defeat in the face of her nightmares.

  And she would hate having to agree with him. She was starting to quiver, her mouth pinched, her amber-gray eyes—reminiscent of the fire and smoke she called upon—glazing with a sheen of unspilled tears. The subtleties of psychology… It was one thing for her trauma to have shown itself so clearly in her outburst, but it would be worse for her to actually say it.

  Pride was such a brittle thing, wasn’t it? Right now hers was already shredded. He wouldn’t rip it further, not for this.

  He inclined his head. “I would offer you another room down here so you can be close to Lucía’s quarters. Unfortunately, all the others are currently occupied or not adequate for your needs. I will have to relocate you to a different area, where I can make the necessary adjustments in light of your emerging powers.” He paused, studying her closely. “Those quarters are above ground.”

  Her head jerked the tiniest bit, and she glanced at him. So quickly, the contact there and gone, her eyes lowered again the next second. His fingers twitched with the impulse to lift her chin, make her look at him once more, longer.

  “Follow me,” he ordered and walked ahead, his gait brisk. Her scent was tickling his nose, unbidden and quite distracting. Fire and wind, licked by sweetness.

  The patter of her soft-soled sneakers trailed behind him as he led her through the underground halls and up a winding staircase ending in a massive oak which he still remembered as a seedling. From there he guided her farther into the forest, fireflies swirling around them, and halted in front of the short wooden hanging bridge that connected this slope to a cabin propped on sturdy pillars, wedged between two large firs.

  It wasn’t a true tree house, its other side half attached to the rising forest floor behind it, and the drop to the ground from the front veranda was barely six feet. A string of fairy lights hung above the bridge, illuminating the wooden planks, and crystals cast a soft glow in the interior, visible through the huge windows taking up most of the walls.

  Maeve paused next to him, her breath fogging in the chill of the night, her eyes on the small domicile. He gestured for her go ahead, and after a second of hesitation, she grabbed the rope railing of the bridge and carefully made her way to the veranda. He followed, the bridge swinging with his steps, and watched while she walked into the one-room cabin.

  Big enough to accommodate a king-size bed, a couch and table, as well as a tiny kitchenette, the house also featured a private bathroom with functioning facilities. He might like the outdoors, and have lived through the age before plumbing, but he still appreciated modern amenities where applicable.

  Maeve turned in a circle and studied the open windows. They were truly open. As in, literally, no glass. Would she ask…?

  “Who worked this magic?” She’d raised her hand to one of the windows, her face holding a quiet sense of wonder as her fingers passed the invisible barrier that kept the warmth inside the cabin.

  “Your sister.”

  Her expression shattered into sorrow, quick and piercing. She withdrew her hand, lowered her eyes.

  “The cabin is also heavily warded,” he said, “and nothing—or no one—from the outside can reach through those windows or the door. Unless you wish it.”

  A slanted glance at him. “Even you?”

  He raised a brow. “If you tell me to stay out of this cabin, I won’t set foot in it. This is your space.” Turning to the door, he added, “I do, however, expect you to come out when I request it, and I have no qualms about compelling you out, should you cloister yourself in here.”

  When she sent him a withering look—a spark of hidden temper showing—he paused and prowled back to her, so close that she inched to the side. And yet her scent remained free of fear, even as he loomed over her.

  “You are mine now,” he said in a low voice that seemed to cause a tremor in her, “and one thing I will not allow is for you to revert to a living vegetable, never leaving your room.” He mapped her face as he spoke, noted the tiniest twitch of each muscle in reaction to his declaration. “Fire needs air to breathe. And yours has been choked long enough.”

  Those copper lashes quivered again, and her lips parted on a soft inhale. For a searing, short-lived moment, she met his gaze full-on…and his magic blazed inside him, as if in answer to hers. Something primal lurked in those eyes, age-old and feral, so similar to his own nature.

  That quickly, the moment was over, the connection broken, and Maeve shifted away with the grace of a doe. “There’s a lot of wood here,” she said, her voice soft, “and I’m surrounded by trees. What if it happens again? Aren’t you worried I’ll start a wildfire?”

  “Worried is not the word I would use. Eager may be more apt. Make no mistake—I want to see that wildfire of yours.”

  A delicate blush painted her cheeks.

  “In any case, though,” he continued, “it will be contained. The wards are also meant to keep an explosion like this from spreading to the forest, and for tonight, I will stay close and cast additional protections. Tomorrow, we will start working on the spell that binds your powers.”

  She gave a jerky nod, frowned. “It’s coming undone, isn’t it?”

  He inclined his head at her conclusion. “That seems to be the case, yes.”

  “Why now? It’s held all these years.”

  There was no reason not to let her share in his own conclusions, since they affected her. “Your grandmother was the one who worked the spell, and I suspect there is a flaw in the magic she wrought that she could not have foreseen. If the spell she cast was bound to the MacKenna line, drawing on the family as a bond to keep the spell active even after her passing, it makes sense that it would disintegrate now.”

  A soft sound of dismay. “Because I’m not a MacKenna anymore.”

  “Severing the link may have loosened some of the shackles of the spell, causing tendrils of your powers to rise to the surface. Whether it is enough to make the entire spellwork unravel remains to be seen.”

  Her features slackened. “You call that explosion tendrils? What the hell will it look like when all of it bursts out?”

  One side of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Perfection.”

  Chapter 8

  Light and the chatter of birds pulled Maeve from her slumber.

  She squinted at the sun streaming in through the huge, open windows, gilding the interior of the cabin. Fresh forest air filled the room, though the warmth remained inside, thanks to the spell on the windows.

  Maeve closed her eyes again for a moment to simply enjoy the peace of the morning before reality could steamroll her. The cabin still stood. No more nightmares. No more fire. The bed was soft and welcoming, her body loose and rested, and she floated on the vanishing mist of a dream, impressions and feelings lingering.

  She made a contented noise in the back of her throat and tried to remember the dream. The sensations remained so intense, her every cell felt branded with them—even though she couldn’t recall a single detail. Just this overall drifting feeling…pleasant yet powerful. Weaving itself into
every thought, every breath, an underlying rhythm she found herself chasing after.

  She loved it when this happened, when the fragmented memory of an elusive dream would whisper at her throughout the day, would color everything and change the way she walked, talked, thought, because the feeling wouldn’t let her go, and she’d find herself pausing mid-sentence, a piece of memory suddenly returned, tumbling her further into reminiscence.

  With a yawn, she eventually rolled out of bed. She showered again last night before going to sleep because ash still coated her skin, and she didn’t want to dirty the sheets. And she’d thoroughly beaten the pajama set to remove any remnants of soot before slipping into bed.

  She opened the door to the veranda, and stopped short, studying the tray of covered food and the pile of clothes in front of her feet.

  A piece of paper was tucked under the thermos that—by the faint trace of its scent—contained coffee. She picked up the thermos and the note, opening the latter.

  I will meet you here at twelve. Be ready.

  — A

  She jerked as a detail of the elusive dream flashed before her inner eye, flooded her with a sensual memory that short-circuited her brain.

  Her fingers running over dark bronze skin. Heat and friction, murmured teasing. Lips on her shoulder, trailing down to her breasts. She shivered and burned—for all the right reasons. Shadowy green eyes intent in a face of harsh angles, solely focused on her. “I want to see that wildfire of yours.”

  The thermos slipped from her hand. Hit the floor with a metallic clank, bounced and landed with another thud on her foot.

  “Ouch!”

  She jumped back with a wince, bit her lip and fell on her butt, holding her foot to alleviate the pain. The hurt, however, wasn’t sharp enough to eclipse the surge of tangled emotions at the realization that—