Dark Allure

by Imogen Sera

  "Okay," she says, and visibly relaxes. "Can I go home?"

  "Little witch," I say, and she tenses at the word. "You know that answer to that."

  Her face crumples. "But I don't," she protests. "You keep saying I do but I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not a witch, and I just want to go home and forget that this happened."

  She's crying again, and I wish she would stop. I rise to my feet and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her against my chest. Even sitting on my high bed, her head only reaches my chin, and I'm once again in awe of how tiny her bones feel against me.

  I expect her to tense or pull away, but instead she lays her head against me and relaxes her whole body into mine. The feeling is probably too good, considering how all my thoughts have been tinged with lust and violence since she showed up here. I should take my hands off her back; I should step away from her and leave her in my room and go figure out how to deal with her in peace. I do none of those things.

  "Come with me," I say, as her hair moves against my jaw. "I'll show you where we are."

  Eve nods quickly and sits up straighter, and then stands. The blanket that she's wrapped around herself slips slightly, and she frowns as she looks down at it. "Can I have my clothes back?"

  "They were destroyed," I say, and for the first time since I ordered that, I feel badly about it. Her composure is so fragile, and her face was so hopeful when she asked, that I feel monstrous for taking her clothes from her, despite the fact that on an average day I've done things a thousand times more monstrous than that.

  She pulls the blanket tighter and tucks in the end again, and then raises her chin. "Okay," she says.

  Her chin in the air is so endearing that I want to take it in my hand and kiss her jawline, but that would be a mistake. "I have clothing," I say.

  "For women?" she asks. "You're certainly pulling off the shirtless thing, but I'd rather not."

  Her sly little smile surprises me as much as it delights me, and I'm again struck with an overwhelming urge to touch her, to crush her to me and make her mine in every possible way. But instead I fetch a saty cloth from my wardrobe and spread it wide for her to see. "Females and males tie their garments from the same cloth."

  She raises her eyebrows. "Everyone's doing the toga thing?"

  "This is how some of the beings in Poremi dress," I say. I wrap the sheet around her in the customary style, and I know from before that she is shy about her naked form, so I don't even mind doing it over her blanket. When I tie the final knot around her neck, she pulls on it to test the strength, and seemingly satisfied, shimmies the blanket down her body.

  It's impossible not to think of the blanket falling down her this morning, when she didn't care and just pushed her naked body closer to me.

  Eve shoots me a small, grateful smile, and my cock pulses painfully.

  This is going to be difficult.

  Chapter 7

  Eve

  I'm more than a little surprised at how calm Az'ralon suddenly is. He seemed genuinely distressed to have hurt me, and he actually looked sorry when he told me that my clothes had been destroyed. I mean, I still have no idea why, but at least he's not a dick about it.

  And the fact that I'm somewhere that I've never known existed is blowing my mind. I did kind of suspect something like that, based on the fact that the only person I've seen is purple, seven feet tall, and has wings, but to have it confirmed is hard to wrap my head around.

  When he opens the door and guides me through, I have no idea what to expect. He did mention something about an underground complex, which I suppose explains the rocky walls of the bedroom, but we come out of the bedroom into a ridiculously nice house. The walls are stone, and it's basically the definition of open concept because it's one huge room divided into several smaller areas by furniture. The furniture looks shockingly modern, and beside the fact that we're clearly in some kind of cave, a house like this wouldn't be weird on the cover of a home decorating magazine.

  I glance up at Az'ralon's face, and I have a feeling that someone else decorated this place. He's all rough edges and aggression, and the vase of flowers on the coffee table don't quite fit what I know of him.

  I hope he doesn't have a wife... or a girlfriend... or whatever they do here. That would make me feel even weirder about the spontaneous panty-meltingly hot make out session.

  But this house, for lack of a better word, is empty aside from us. There are a few closed doors that someone could be lurking behind, I suppose, but I don't get the feeling that this part of the house is lived in at all.

  He takes me to one of the doors, and there's a welcome mat that somehow makes me want to laugh. I'm in some crazy demon's impeccably decorated house and he has a welcome mat.

  But then he pulls me through the door, and I can't even speak. We're outside. Kind of.

  We're in a cavern so enormous that I'm pretty sure you could fit several football fields and shopping malls and airports in here. At the same time. We're high above it, at the top of a fairly steep staircase, and looking down makes me a little nauseated. There are demons down there--a lot of them--and we're too high for me to really see what they're doing. I get the vague impression of movement. There are what looks like brightly colored roofs, and barnyard animals, and even a disturbingly dark underground lake.

  The staircase is steep and narrow, and I grip Az'ralon's elbow without even thinking about it. He looks pleased when I look up at him, though, so I just hold on tightly as we walk quickly down the stairs.

  There must be hundreds of steps, and once we're down a bit more, I realize that what I'm seeing is some kind of marketplace. The roofs are actually canvas tents for merchant stalls, and the demons are shopping or socializing. It's so weirdly normal.

  "This is Po...something?" I ask, watching everyone move below me.

  "Yes," he says. "Poremi."

  "How many people live here?" I ask. I have no idea how many I'm seeing, but from what I can see, it's positively full of people.

  "Close to ten thousand," he says. "This is a small portion of that."

  I'm distracted as I look over the edge, studying everything below me.

  "This is so slow," mutters Az'ralon beside me, and that's the only warning I get before he wraps his arms around my midsection and pushes me off the staircase.

  It's not a push, I guess, because he's still holding on to me. I'm too busy anticipating my imminent death to remember that he has wings, and by the time I notice him unfurling them and that I'm not going to die, we're already on the ground.

  I'm almost hysterical when I realize what's happened. "Warn me next time," I hiss at him as I shove my hand against his chest.

  Which...I apparently shouldn't do. Az'ralon doesn't seem to care and didn't react besides a sheepish smile, but all the demons--Yremy--in a close radius to us are staring in silence. It's because I'm human, I think, but then I realize that they're not watching me. They're watching Az'ralon, and they're waiting for a reaction.

  And then I kind of realize what a stupid thing I've done. An hour ago, I thought he was going to kill me, and I was so relieved when he said I was safe that I've just been treating him like...well, like he's human. It's not like I know him at all, and it's not like getting me clothes or answering my questions is a sign that he's friendly.

  And from the way that everyone's looking at him, I get the distinct feeling that his reputation is as far from friendly as possible.

  I'm as still as everyone else is, watching him and waiting for him to do...anything. And he looks conflicted for a moment, but then he pulls me against him in an embrace and leans down to kiss the top of my head. "My mate can touch me however she likes," he says, and it's loud enough that I know it's not just for me to hear.

  I'm so relieved that it takes me a second to realize what he said.

  "What?" I ask him, but we're already moving. His hand is firmly on the small of my back as he guides me through the crowd, although most of the demons seem to be
avoiding us, which makes it significantly easier. It also makes me wonder about who exactly Az'ralon is.

  "I already told you that you're mine," he murmurs into my ear, bending low to reach it. "And now I've told them. Now you're safe."

  "But you weren't serious, right?" I ask. "You didn't mean what you said, right?"

  His face is entirely impassive as he continues pushing me forward.

  "I'll take your silence as agreement," I say. "Because the other option is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I don't even know you."

  I'm babbling, but I don't care. He still doesn't talk as he steers me around a fountain, then under a bridge--there are actual roads here, with actual strange looking animals pulling carts on them--and finally pauses next to a wide stream that's cut into the rock. Aside from the unsettling fact that when I look up, all I see is a cavernous ceiling instead of sky, I would swear that we were outside.

  It's less crowded over here. We're next to a narrow bridge that crosses the stream, and I almost jump when Az'ralon turns to face me, puts his hands on my arms, and bends down so that we're face to face. "You're mine," he says. "I don't care if you don't know it yet. You will."

  I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything at all. He doesn't really wait for a response anyway. This time, instead of his hand on my back, he takes my hand in his and continues across the bridge.

  I'm distracted as we walk, my mind full of what the hell he's talking about. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that even now, even in the middle of a massive crowd, I want to strip my clothes off and rub my body against him. There's obviously a lot I don't understand, the least of which being how I got here, but I have the distinct impression that that's what makes him call me a witch.

  I don't know where we're going, but the further we go, the darker it is. I didn't really notice what lit the massive cavern, but now we're in a winding passage with a ceiling only a few feet above Az'ralon's head, and the lack of lighting is bothering me. I can't even see my feet.

  Which makes it easy to trip when the passage turns into stairs. I trip on the first step, not expecting it, but I don't even stumble. Az'ralon's arm is around me so quickly that I remain upright, and he keeps it there until I'm steady.

  "Can you not see in the dark?" he asks. His eyes look strangely lit from within, despite them being so dark. There's a glimmer of something around his irises.

  I shake my head.

  "How has your kind survived so long?" he asks. "Fragile little things."

  I want to take offense, but he's kind of right. "Everyone loves sex, I guess. Too many kids."

  "Here," he says, taking my hand in his much larger one and bringing it to the wall. He places my palm against the wall and covers it with his. It's not the hard, cool rock that I expect. It's cold alright, but it's strangely spongy and almost slimy, and I want to pull my hand back except that I'm enjoying his hand covering mine.

  And then I see light from underneath my hand. It's a phosphorescent glow, and as I watch, it spreads outward from where my hand is covering it. After another minute, the entire hallway is dimly lit in the strange blue light.

  "Is that magic?" I ask, turning my head to look up at him. He's behind me, his chest against my back, and being alone in this passageway is making me think all kinds of things that I shouldn't be. Like how I could turn my head and lick his nipple with basically no effort. And how I really want to try it and see how he reacts.

  "Spores," he says. He steps back from me, probably reading the desire on my face, and takes his hand back too. "The oils from your skin trigger the glow."

  "Wow," I murmur, and continue down the stairs that I can now faintly see.

  Az'ralon is right next to me, but he's not touching me anymore. There's no crowd here at all, and we've only passed like a dozen people since coming down here, so that's probably why. I kind of miss it, though.

  We continue down lots and lots of steps until we finally get to the bottom, and the narrow passage opens into another large cavern. Large might be the wrong word because this is tiny compared to the first one, but it's about the size of a house.

  And it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Apparently, the spores are everywhere in this room, because the walls and the ground and even the ceiling are all glowing. There are different colors, too; blue and green and yellow and even pink. The light is fairly dim, but it's bright enough that I can make out the many large mushrooms that dominate the cavern.

  There's smaller ones scattered around, too. The room is almost set up like a garden, with winding paths through the mushrooms and small rocks and boulders in between. Az'ralon seems to know exactly where he's going, heading straight for a patch of tiny, spotted mushrooms. He plucks several and closes his fist around them.

  "What's that for?" I ask, approaching him from behind.

  He turns around to face me. "For you. Eat this." He holds one out to me.

  I eye it warily. "I don't really like mushrooms," I lie.

  "It won't hurt you," he says frowning at me.

  "Why do I need to eat it?"

  He pauses for a second. "Because I have to know for sure."

  "Know what?" I ask. It's a weird situation that I'm uncomfortable with. I don't want this stupid mushroom, but I don't think he's going to force it on me. I feel like I should be more nervous than I am, but some weird little part of me just trusts him.

  He sighs. "I have to know for sure about what you are. This will force you to tell the truth."

  That...doesn't sound so bad. I'm not really lying about anything, I'm just confused and have no idea what he's talking about half the time. If I can convince him that I'm telling the truth, it can only be a good thing. "Okay," I say. "How does it work?"

  He looks surprised at my agreement. "You eat it, and then there's about an hour where you're relaxed and incapable of lying."

  "Okay," I say again. "You should eat it too. It's only fair." And I have no way to confirm that any of what he's told me is true.

  He frowns at me. "Don't be ridiculous," he says.

  I cross my arms over my chest. "Well then, I don't know what to say. You could force me to eat it, I guess; you're much bigger than I am."

  He steps closer, until I'm inches away from his chest. He lifts the mushroom to my mouth, and I wonder if he actually will force me. "I am the lord of Poremi and the master of Vadit, and you will obey me in this."

  I look up at him with wide, determined eyes. And then I clamp my mouth shut, pressing my lips together like a toddler refusing food.

  Az'ralon raises his eyebrows at me, and a long minute passes in which I don't open my mouth once. "You're being ridiculous," he says finally.

  I don't respond, I just pull my arm from his grasp and wander away from him, stopping to inspect a glowing pink mushroom that's taller than me.

  And then I look all around the room, my mouth shut and ignoring him. Well, not really--I'm sneaking glances his way as often as possible. He looks so out of his element, with the mushrooms in his hand and unsure of what to do to make me listen. I get the feeling that he's not used to people not listening to him, and I wonder if I'm being very stupid about this.

  Probably, but despite the worried looks that he got when I shoved him, I really don't think he'll hurt me. I get the impression that he's...violent, but I also remember the way that he was so distressed over my wrists being bruised. I somehow know that I don't have to worry about that violence.

  "Az," I say from across the room, pushing my luck, "can I call you Az? I'm bored of this place. Let's go back to your house...thing and eat some mushrooms."

  His response is just a glare, but I ignore it and cross the room to stand next to him. Feeling very bold, I take his hand in mine and thread our fingers together, ever mindful of his claws.

  And then I smile a little obnoxious smile up at him.

  Chapter 8

  Az'ralon

  I'm fucked. I'm so beyond fucked that I don't know how I can possibly come back fr
om this.

  Eve is going to destroy me. Eve is going to destroy everything.

  Because despite the fact that I took the power in Vadit by force, and despite the fact that I've killed indiscriminately, the thought of even threatening her is painful. I don't want her to look at me with fear; I don't want her to look at me with anything other than the barely contained lust that she did down in the Luminous Caverns.

  I'm going to eat a rekne mushroom, all because she asked me to. I--who battled for centuries to win my place, who sacrificed thousands of lives so that I might be their master--am going to potentially reveal secrets that are dangerous to me if revealed. All because a silly little human girl has pretty eyes and a mesmerizing smile, and I'm somehow incapable of telling her no.

  She's sitting on the wide couch in my house now, looking decidedly nervous. I don't know why, because I already know what she is, and she knows it. The only way this whole thing will surprise me is if she is truly as ignorant as she claims to be.

  And...I don't even know if that will surprise me anymore. Her reactions are so genuine, and her distress is so believable. I don't even know what to think.

  "Are you ready?" I ask, and she nods and stands. Her long hair is thrown over her shoulder, exposing her collarbone and the delicate bones from her shoulder. The sight shouldn't make me half as painfully hard as it does, and I remind myself again that it's intentional on her part.

  I've been with hundreds--thousands, maybe--of women, and not one has affected me with so little effort. There's human witchcraft at play, no matter what I want to think.

  I should leave before I make this mistake; I should go speak to Nox and let him help me figure out a way out of this entire situation. I should do anything but be here with her.

  But instead, I deposit one mushroom into her open hand.

  She frowns down at it. "Give me two," she says. "I don't trust you to actually eat yours. I'm going to make sure."

  Because I'm brainless around her, I do. It seems worth it when she smiles up at me, though.