Page 70 of Demon Food

“Speaking of your ego,” he said, nodding to the cigarette, “use a candle. Do not conjure a flame in your condition. It’s absurd.”

I rolled my eyes skyward. Then I kept rolling them the whole eternity and a half it took to circle my bed so that I might use a damn candle to light my cigarette like some kind of a toiling peon. At least it brought me closer to him.

“Excuse me, little human,” I said, bumping his shoulder. “I think I’ll use this one right here.”

He glared. “I have lit a hundred candles around this room. You’re intentionally trying to—” He scrunched his face tight when I blew a long stream of smoke into it.

“Trying to what?” I asked, grinning as he blinked his lovely eyes open. I was so much taller than him. What fun it was to showcase it at this angle, especially when I could rest a hand atop the canopy of my bed and loom over him. “Ruffle your delicate feathers?”

“Alek, oh dear.” He pressed a cool palm against my forehead. “You are sicker than I thought.”

My eyes rolled shut as his touch whipped through my body like a windstorm. I leaned all the way into it. I couldn’t even help it.

“Foxes don’t have feathers, Prince of Novithia,” he whispered. “They have fangs.”

A grin had started to tilt my lips when he shoved me onto the bed, making me wince at the sting of pain up my side.

“Like I said.” He wasn’t trying to be sexy, but something about his tone was ruthlessly so. Especially as he said, “Lie on the fucking bed.”

I half-winced, half-chuckled as I stretched out on my side facing him, scattering ashes all over the black sheets.

“I need something sharp,” he said, twisting around the room. “I searched your room back when I wanted to stab you and couldn’t find anything.”

“But you did stab me, human.”

“Yes, but the servants have since swept up all my weapons. Do you have anything else? Or shall I break another mirror?”

Irony, the twisted cunt she was, would like to point out that I was really about to hand a proper weapon to the creature responsible for this chaos.

I held his gaze the whole time I leaned from the bed, pulling open my nightstand drawer. Beneath the hidden compartment was the box where my blade lived.

I lifted the plank of wood to reveal the specimen where it lay tucked in a satin case like a tiny coffin.

“Good gods,” he breathed, one hand hovering over his chest. “Good gods.”

“That sharp enough, darling?”

“Can I…touch it?”

Fucking touch whatever you like, human. “Please.”

He wiggled his long fingers into the satin to carefully cradle my blade in his hands like it was some fragile thing and not a slayer that had tasted centuries’ worth of blood. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

And he never would again. It was a post-war relic, a wootz steel, edged in silvery raw diamonds with an ivory handle intricately carved to resemble the sacred Hacerium tree. I didn’t use it for hunting as it was truly priceless.

Yet somehow, it felt particularly fitting for this occasion. The blade intended to cut the human so he could wash away my pain with his medicinal blood.

“How old is this?” he asked, weighing it in his hands.

“Three hundred years or so. Maybe older.”

“What is this part made of?” he asked, smoothing his fingers over the handle.

“Angel bone.”

His gaze zipped up to mine.

“That’s why it’s so strong. They used our skulls to pour their wine.” I flitted a hand around the air. “We used their bones to forge our weapons.”