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Damas stepped back, refusing to shake. “What bargain?”
Gordin nodded toward the garden where the wyvern’s cries had turned to pitiful whimpers. “Shamadi is dying.”
Damas gave a start. “You know the demon?” Shamadi was the wyvern’s unfamiliar name, but Damas was still shocked Gordin knew it.
“Of course.” Gordin shrugged. “He serves my mistress.”
Damas could scent the firemage’s lie. “He serves me now.” Damas jutted a thumb in his chest. “His blood oath to her was broken when he changed hosts.”
“He will serve her again.” Gordin’s eye flared as shadows fell over his grotesque features. “So will you.”
Damas fingered the hilt of his sword, tempted to run it through the mage. “You seem awfully sure of yourself.”
“I am, because if we don’t heal Shamadi,” he answered in a taunting voice, “he will die. You will be useless without your wyvern.”
Damas puffed up his chest. “You don’t know my beast.” True, Gordin had correctly identified him as a metamorphi, but he didn’t know which kind of monster lurked beneath his skin.
Gordin gave him a long, cool look. “You’re a Nephilim.”
Damas arched back with a hiss, the hairs on his nape standing on end. “How do you know?”
Gordin crossed his arms, eyeing Damas through narrowed slits. “Because you’re not very smart.”
Bastard. Damas felt the monster beneath his skin, demanding to break free and crush the fire mage.
“Careful, giant.” Gordin walked a slow circle around him, tossing a ball of flame from hand to hand. “Kill me, and I won’t give your wyvern the cure.”
Shamadi let out an agonized cry, as if pleading with Damas to swear the oath and heal him.
Damas curled his hands into fists. “You have the cure?”
“His wounds are festering.” Gordin paused, transferring the flame to one hand before extinguishing it with a snap of his fingers. “My mistress made him a potion that will heal the infections.” His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowing with disgust. “I can also smell your host body rotting. It was dead for too long before the mage brought you to life. My mistress has a potion that can reverse the decay.”
Reverse the decay? “Why would you help us?”
“We want the same thing, don’t we?” He held out his arms, motioning toward the crumbling castle walls. “For demonkind to rule these lands.”
Demonkind? No. Only one demon wanted to rule. Damas knew he wasn’t the smartest demon, but what he lacked in common sense, he made up for with instincts, and his rotting gut was telling him to avoid a deal with this mistress at all costs. “I will not serve your mistress.”
Twin suns shone in Gordin’s eyes. “You will, or you will die.” Then he stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle.
Damas grasped the back of a wobbly chair when the castle walls shook, and the sound of rolling thunder filled the cavern. He scrambled back, climbing onto the dais when a hole sank in the middle of the floor. He shrieked when thousands of demonic spiders burst from the hole, racing across the floor and up the walls.
“Demonlings!”
Gordin’s laughter made Damas feel like those very same spiders were burrowing beneath his skin. “I forgot that Nephilim are terrified of spiders,” Gordin teased.
Damas jumped onto a wobbly table on the dais, his knees turning to jelly when the hissing spiders raced after him. “Get them away from me!”
“Will you swear a blood oath?” Gordin called from below.
“Yes, yes!” Damas wildly waved his hands, icy cold panic turning to sludge in his veins. “Just send them away!”
Flora
SITTING BY DERRICK’S side on the bed, I lamented these same four gray walls I’d been forced to stare at for three long days. No window to let in the spring breeze, just damp, stagnant air in this dark, dank cell. I realized now why they’d put us in this room. It was in the center of the tower, safer from wyvern attacks. But how I longed for the pungent smell of the ocean, the salty wind on my face.
I pressed a cool cloth to Derrick’s forehead while he moaned in his sleep. He was too hot, even for a fire mage. Odd, considering he’d been ice cold for the past few days. I dipped the cloth in water and gently cleaned his arms and chest, stopping to frown at that thick, dark vein just beneath his skin leading from the scar on his abdomen to his chest. The line was an infection, no doubt from the demon wyvern’s dirty claws, and it was only a finger’s length away from his heart. The green witch had managed to slow the flow of infection, but not stop it completely. Once it reached his heart, my mate would die. Our only hope now was that Tari reached us in time, for Gadea had said only a white witch had the power to heal an injury this severe.
