Seeing Feros bound to a stake

  excited me perhaps more than it should considering he was technically

  under my employ and an important part of my royal arsenal. Ana had

  been calmly delighted when she pointed to the tall post that had been

  recently installed and commanded him to lean his back against it. It

  was an imposing piece of wood, obviously having been taken from a

  very tall, old hardwood tree and by the level of destruction of the

  ground around it, she had ordered it buried deep and securely.

  “This brings back wonderful

  memories,” Feros said with a wide, cheeky grin directed at Ana.

  “Remember that one night we-urgh!”

  The ropes made of glowing

  fuchsia magic suddenly tightened around the fiend’s torso, visibly

  denting in his chest and driving the air from his lungs. Ana then

  directed her bindings to swirl up his neck, pausing to wrap around

  his vulnerable throat a few times as if she was considering

  something, but then continued up to wrap a firm layer of magical rope

  around his mouth. The ropes were translucent enough to see the

  annoying smirk had not been driven from his lips. Once his ability to

  speak was denied, she focused her magic on tightly wrapping the rest

  of his body to the stake until he was unable to do much more than

  wiggle his fingers and toes.

  “I truly wish I could just

  leave him like this,” Ana mused. “I feel like perhaps I would be

  doing all of us a favor, but then there would be no one to deal with

  the girl.”

  “Alice?” I asked. “Surely

  you could work with her.”

  The demon let out a lilting

  laugh and shook her head vigorously. “I won’t touch fae magic,

  there’s nothing anyone could say to try to convince me, I’m

  simply not into the idea of going mad trying to learn. Playing with

  those kinds of forces if you’re not one of the fae is asking for

  your mind to be twisted and malformed.”

  I glanced to the fiend

  strapped to the stake. “Is that why he’s like this?”

  “One would think,” she

  said with a bitter laugh, “but I think he was already mad to start

  with, so dabbling in the fae has only enhanced his natural

  tendencies. When he began working with it, it seemed to make him only

  more like himself, almost as if he had been destined to cross paths

  with it.” Ana looked distant for a moment, deep in thought. “He

  was not the only one at the time to dabble, the others did not fare

  quite as well.”

  A muffled groan emanated from

  Feros and his lips beneath the bindings had morphed into a sad frown,

  perhaps the only time I had seen a genuine negative emotion from the

  creature.

  “No I have not forgiven,”

  Ana said quietly to the fiend and the bindings around his body

  constricted sharply, eliciting a panicked sound from the depths of

  his throat. “I have dreamed of being able to get my revenge in so

  many different ways and means, each of them designed to force you

  into absolute anguish and suffering, but in the end I have never

  devised anything terrible enough to inflict that would come close

  enough to being what you deserve. Death is too good for you, torture

  too light a sentence, you have created a maddening paradox that has

  kept me up at night scheming.”

  Feros’ eyes flitted to me

  with a look that begged for help, but the sheer emotional energy

  coming from Ana was more than enough for me to want to stay out of

  it. She was red hot to the core, pent up anger spilling into her

  normally controlled magical aura and making the air feel thick around

  her.

  “I had thought I had worked

  past much of it, my thoughts of revenge had cooled and I had started

  to move on, but of course fate would bring me back to having to see

  your smirking face again. Even worse that you've mixed yourself up

  again in fae matters, you can't stay away even when you know about

  the unthinkable horrors that come out of it” She let out a growl of

  disgust. “Had I known your wretched form was anywhere near this

  place I would have never agreed to this assignment and perhaps I

  should have turned around and left the moment I knew you were here.

  Perhaps it’s a testament to how far I’ve come that I didn’t.”

  I really wanted to know what

  had happened between them, but it seemed like a wise choice not to

  intrude and ask. As a royal I could demand to know anything I wanted,

  but not only did she laughably out scale my magical might, but she

  seemed like someone who was better off an an ally from a social and

  political standpoint as well. It is foolish to antagonize someone who

  could be at your back before you’re pressed into a proverbial or

  even perhaps literal wall.

  “How do you manage to sleep

  at night?” Her eyes stared daggers into his soul. “You have done

  nothing but joke with me since I’ve been here, how can you even

  begin to find laughter in your life? My heart still aches and burns,

  joy nothing but a meaningless word and you walk around with a

  permanent smirk of mirth on your face. I knew you were always a bit

  monstrous, a touch unhinged, however I truly thought the weight of

  your mistakes might be great enough to press upon your conscience at

  least a little.”

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  An eerie silence fell over the

  garden interrupted only be the soft hum of the magical bindings.

  Feros had averted his eyes, no longer wanting to look at Ana whose

  gaze was still burrowing into him. She had begun this exercise in

  what I had thought had been relatively good spirits, but it had

  either been a rouse or something had snapped inside her and an

  emotional dam had broken. Even someone deaf and blind could have

  sensed that the demon had some kind of suppressed anger for the

  fiend, but now it had become unbridled fury and pain.

  “I’m sorry, Toria,” Ana

  said quietly, taking her eyes off Feros long enough to give me a

  tired look, “I thought I had it under control, but finally getting

  him in a position where I could get revenge and him still being so

  smug… this is not what we came here for. I was going to simply tie

  him up and then let you try to set him ablaze. He has a strong

  defense system and if you can work out how to crack through one like

  his, you’d have a leg up on many opponents. I promise I had other

  intentions in mind besides revenge.”

  “Sounds like you needed to

  get it off your chest and have a chance to lay into him without him

  cracking a joke or trying to divert the conversation. Even I have

  noticed that he is irritatingly difficult to have any sort of serious

  conversation with, everything is a riddle or a joke only you’re not

  in on it with him.”

  “Yes, I think that’s a

  good chunk of it. I have never been able to really tell him what I

  was feeling or thinking, even in the days just after it all happened

  he slunk off where I couldn’t find him, knowing that I would want

  to rage at him. When he did return he was all smiles and jokes, like

  nothing bad had really happened. He has never let me have a chance to

  articulate anything clearly or fully.”

  I nodded, it seemed exactly

  like what I would expect Feros to do. Whatever the fiend was beneath

  his human like exterior, he certainly struggled to express any sort

  of rational emotions. “Now’s your chance I suppose, I won’t

  stand in your way, though you did say that he would be hard to

  replace.”

  Ana let out a deep sigh and

  shook her head. “He could get out of this if he really wanted, it

  would be a struggle, but he could manage. He’s humoring me right

  now, that annoys me more than anything. He thinks that if I just yell

  and stamp my feet that I’ll get it out of my system and maybe learn

  to forgive him. What he doesn’t understand is that if if’s been

  nearly thirty years and I still feel this strongly, then there is

  little hope for me to ever forgive and certainly never, ever forget.”

  “You know I still love you.”

  The fiend had managed to part the bindings around his lips. I wasn’t

  sure how since his hands were still firmly at his sides. “I always

  have, nothing ever changed, I feel as deeply for you now as I did all

  those decades ago.”

  The demon made a hissing sound

  like a serpent and clenched her hands into fists, her long, pointed

  aubergine nails digging into her palms. “Don’t you dare say

  something like that to me,” she growled. “I’m giving you this

  one warning, do not test this route.”

  “It’s true,” he

  continued, though struggling to keep the bindings that were

  desperately trying to re-knit over his lips. “I think deep down you

  still feel something for me too, we always had chemistry. Bad things

  happened, yes, but that’s the past and we can’t dwell in the past

  when there’s a whole future waiting.”

  The most inhuman laugh I had

  ever heard screeched out of Ana and her power flared, expanding

  wildly and almost knocking me off my feet. I had to rapidly expand my

  own power to counteract and keep myself steady, though it was like

  trying to stand up against a humongous boulder threatening to roll

  right over me. I only lasted perhaps thirty seconds before I had to

  drop to a knee to ground myself and keep her power from pressing me

  flat.

  “Any positive feelings for

  you died along with our child,” she cried, the bindings coalescing

  into a more opaque and physical form. They tightened significantly to

  where I was sure Feros could no longer breath. “It was all your

  fault and you know it and yet you still walk around like the world is

  still full of happiness and joy while my heart is an open wound. I

  still mourn our son every day! Do you even think of him anymore?”

  She didn’t give him a chance to answer and instead focused and

  flared her power directly into her bindings, cinching them tighter

  and tighter until there was a gross pop of what I’m sure had to be

  bones being broken. They tightened until there was nothing left but a

  stomach-churning mass of flesh being extruded through the tiny gaps

  in the binds, there was no way he could still be alive. “I know you

  don’t, you don’t care for anyone besides yourself.” Her voice

  was so quiet, so broken, and so sorrowful. “I wish I had known that

  before I ever let you in my life or at least realized before I lost

  the most important part of my soul.”

  Ana’s power cut off suddenly

  and I gulped in air, grateful for my lungs being able to expand

  fully. The glowing binds dissipated and Feros’ mangled body slumped

  down from the pole and settled into an uncomfortably liquefied mass.

  Despite the amount of trauma, there was strangely no blood to be

  seen, instead it was like his bones had been held together with putty

  and flesh.

  “He’ll be back by dinner,”

  she said, voice still eerily quiet. “I’m not sure where he

  disappears to when his shell is killed, but he’ll waltz back in

  like nothing happened soon enough.”

  “Ah.” It was all I could

  think to say.