Page 19 of Demon Food

I couldn’t tell if I was standing or sitting. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing as the room tilted on its axis. I pressed my hand over my chest where a new pain was gasping as it grew and grew.

He was gone. This boy I’d attached myself to since he was a starving child, had left me.

“Feloré,” a voice said.

The door. I didn’t even hear it open. Or maybe I’d never closed it because there stood Jaxlyn.

“Feloré,” he repeated. He was so pale. Pale as I’d ever seen him. “You have to come downstairs.”

I tried to speak, but my voice was a hoarse wreck. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and finally said, “Go away. I need a minute.”

“I can’t.” Jaxlyn’s face was white as sand and his eyes enormous. He seemed almost in a trance. “You don’t understand. You have to come now.”

I blinked for a long several seconds. “Wait, why? What’s going on?”

“Downstairs,” he said, the word nearly swallowed by his erratic breath, “is the king of Novithia.”

The air got sucked from the room in an instant.

“The king is here,” Jaxlyn whispered. “And he’s asking for you.”

Dear Feloré,

Please don’t try to find me. It will only make this harder. I can never repay you for all you’ve sacrificed. Something tells me you wouldn’t accept it anyway.

I can only hope that my leaving will create room in your heart for something greater. You are destined for great things, Feloré. I’ve always known that, which is why I am not afraid of what the future holds.

Until our paths cross again, may we both carry fondness in our hearts for when they were one and the same.

Love deeply,

Landry

8

My head was reeling in a dozen different directions.

Jaxlyn held a palm against my lower back, like he was either trying to comfort me or prevent me from running. Either way, it wasn’t working.

We weren’t walking fast, but it felt like the walls were blurred as he escorted me down the hallway to the Tasting Room, where a normal vultus might wait to have a taste of a human before they made a decision.

But a normal vultus wasn’t here waiting. The supreme ruler of these lands was here. The king of Novithia was here, waiting for me.

“He’s cordial,” Jaxlyn was saying as I stared ahead, my expression vacant.

I had no idea how long he’d been talking, but he might as well have been speaking another language.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Jaxlyn continued, “but he’s not nasty.”

My heart was thrashing inside my chest, beginning to claw up my throat as I started to push through the strings of mismatched emerald-colored beads that opened to the waiting area just outside the Tasting Room. Then I froze.

“What?” Jaxlyn whispered, stopping so short he nearly ran into my back. “What’s wrong?”

I swallowed, shaking my head, my voice uneven. “He’s gone.”

“Who?”

My breath was shaky as I said, “Landry.”