A Throne of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales #2)(116)

Who is left…

My animal tried to rise to the surface on my sudden blaze of fury, but I held her down. He hadn’t made a move on me yet. I would kill in self-defense, and only then. For now…

“Why does he care?” I asked, flexing the hand near my dagger.

The demon tilted his head. “My patience is wearing thin, girl. His prolonged absence does not mean he has become any more merciful. Take note, or become one less member of this castle.”

That was definitely a threat.

Kill him! my animal roared. She struggled against my hold.

Not until he attacks!

“Be a lamb and let him know that I’m in the garden, would you? I couldn’t be bothered to send a note.”

I walked past him at an angle, giving off an air of arrogance carefully calculated to incite him. My distance away accounted for my height, and therefore my arm span, putting him at a disadvantage. The second my shoulder was even with his, he struck out, just as I’d known he would.

He was fast, but I’d been training with Nyfain for months. This demon didn’t have anything on the dragon prince.

I stepped to the side at an angle, grabbing for his reaching hand, and yanked him to me. Wrapping my arms around his neck in a sideways hug, I grabbed his chin and near his temple, and wrenched at an angle. His neck cracked, and his arms went limp.

“Yeah. I became a master at neck snapping, fucker. Now what?”

Pulling my animal closer to the surface so I could use her strength, I draped the dead demon over my shoulder and jogged toward the wood not infested by demons.

I’d read just about every book on shifters in the library by this point, and had pieced together some very interesting takeaways. Once a person could properly shift and establish a working bond with their animal, they always had access to the animal’s primal attributes. They’d always be strong and agile, have a great sense of smell, and see in the dark (in a black, white, and yellow color spectrum). That was why Nyfain didn’t have to pull and push as much with his dragon. He could use some of the dragon’s abilities without asking.

I still hadn’t shifted, though. The books referred to me as a “restrained shifter”—a person who could feel their animal, even establish a sort of working relationship with them, but still could not shift. Some people, for whatever reason, were never able to shift, although it was rare as a natural occurrence.

Of course, it was even less common for a shifter to be utterly suppressed…which cast a stark light on the kingdom’s situation. Most of the people around us couldn’t even feel their animals, let alone speak with them.

It was possible for a strong alpha to pull a suppressed animal from a person. Once that animal was pulled free, it should remain accessible. That didn’t mean the person could shift, especially if it was a genetic issue, but they could try. Often, it worked.

Nyfain and I could pull animals from the shifters around us, and often did by accident when we riled each other up. But we couldn’t get their animals to stay. The magic of the curse punched them back into suppression.

Another interesting tidbit—the demon king was known for his ability to suppress shifters’ animals. Yes, I’d read up on him, too. It was amazing the things a person could learn in a well-stocked library. The demon king was a wily cunt, apparently.

By himself, he had a certain level of power, like anyone. Quite a lot, obviously, since he was a king, but not unstoppable. His true power, though, came from making deals. When he made a deal, he could combine his and the other party’s power to bring that deal to fruition. It was why he was able to trap an entire kingdom—he used his power plus that of the mad king, who had a lot of power in his own right, to lay down the deal, or curse, in this case.

Being a wily cunt, the demon king excelled at trickery within those deals. The mad king likely asked for one thing, but through the negotiation period, the demon king twisted the terms, worked on the king’s confusion and apparent health issues, and created a final deal that worked heavily in his favor. The mad king had been outmaneuvered. Horribly.

I got the impression that was a demon king’s claim to fame. They might not be the most powerful king in the world, but they were often the most cunning. We were up against a strategist.

I suddenly wondered what happened to the kingdoms that had disappeared over time. Was it just the natural evolution of their kingdoms, or had they been trapped in the same way we were? Were some of them still out there, struggling to hang on?

In our case, and in the case of any shifters, here was the kicker. Breaking the curse wouldn’t automatically unsuppress all the animals. Once the curse was broken, the alpha would have to visit each person and pull their animal free. And while that wasn’t the end of the world, things got dire when the demon king planned to invade the second the curse was lifted. There would be no time to free the animals before war was upon the kingdom.

Definitely a wily cunt. It would not only take courage to take him on, but a damn good long-term plan.

When I was good and deep in the wood, I just chucked the body. I doubted they’d comb the wood that wasn’t already festering with their magic. And if they caught his scent and followed it here? Well…he started it.

The guys didn’t turn up in the garden as they usually did. When the morning started to wane, I felt a blast of panic through the bond. Nyfain was not having a very good day. Not long afterward, I heard the sliding glass door open behind me. Relief washed through the bond, and then I was in Nyfain’s arms, squeezed within an inch of my life. He breathed me in, and then tensed.