Page 18 of Demon Food

I finally looked up from a daze. That was when I saw him. The demon they were protecting.

He was handsome. Painfully handsome and so pristine. Wealth and strength alike emanated from him as he lifted his hand swathed in black satin to his lips to hide a smirk.

Of course, he was smirking as he clutched the burdensome, silver-buttoned coat he wore tight around him, like someone might steal it.

Anger bloomed in my chest. Rage.

Here he was in satin and leather, having fed so well that his skin was glowing and dewy as he crinkled his nose as if in disgust of what he saw around him. And Lennox was likely already dead. Dead. Because of rice.

Because of…me.

I hated him. I didn’t need to know this fucking vultus to know I hated him.

Whoever this was, I didn’t care. I didn’t give one single fuck. It was not going to be me he chose for whatever extravagant nonsense this was.

I shot up from my lounge, shoving my curtains aside to hop down while every head in the room swiveled in my direction. The special vultus’s included.

“Um, Feloré,” Jaxlyn said, alarm growing in his wide eyes as he tried to fake a smile. “Where are you going? Please sit back down⁠—”

“No,” I said through clenched teeth.

The demon’s gaze was glued to me. Something was so strange about him. It was his demeanor. It was the poise he wore like a magical cloak. He looked familiar.

“Feloré, return to your nook,” Jaxlyn said, eyes growing even larger as sweat began to bead on his brow. “Now, please.”

I glared at the demon. Glared without abandon. Then I said, holding his gaze, “I’m not interested.”

7

The stairs felt twice as high as they normally did as I took them two at a time on my rush upstairs. I couldn’t outrun the images of something so horrifying. I’d told him to take the rice. I should’ve taken it myself and given it to him—why did I tell him to do it? Why?

“Landry,” I called up the stairwell, grunting as I tripped over a step. “Landry!”

I was crawling out of my skin with nowhere to go.

He was dead. Dead for trying to feed himself. A part of me was angry for him, and another part was angry at myself for thinking this world could show even the slightest bit of mercy. Of course, it couldn’t.

They were monsters. Every last one of them was a vile, fucking monster.

I finally reached the landing. The dim orange of the hearth glowed from my ajar door, like Landry was waiting on me. I didn’t know what I needed from him. Maybe just to hold him in my arms where nothing would touch him. Where he would be safe from the cruelty of this place.

“Landry,” I said, charging up the last four stairs, pushing the door open. “I know you’re mad but⁠—”

I stopped cold.

My eyes scanned the room as an uneasy feeling clenched my chest. The bed was made, the rainwater bucket had been emptied, and the whole space looked like it’d been tidied.

He didn’t own a lot of clothes, but the heavy trousers he wore outside and the only hat in his wardrobe were missing from the hook. His shoes were nowhere to be found.

I twisted around the empty room, my voice vacant as I called his name aloud like it’d make him appear. Something was wrong. It was like a rope was being severed inside my chest. A cord from him to me.

He couldn’t be…gone.

Then I saw it.

A note lay folded on the pillow of our bed. My chest was a hollow cavity, and my blood was running cold as I reached for it.

I read every word. And every word again.