Doomed from the Beginning

22. Demon Blood

“It is really rude of me to be treating my guests this way. Would you mind waiting while I prepare some breakfast,” the entire hall became stunned at the words as the two junior angels almost watched her highness herself go prepare food for them. 

For a second there, Mohi wanted to ask something stupid but he stopped himself on time and instead said, “Um...let me come help you!” After all there wasn't anybody except them in that huge palace.

Still the fact that the queen herself would be making them food was a bit too overwhelming so, after knocking out Suiyo on the ground, Roy and Sila also joined the two. Sansara was about to go when Vinasaka instead pulled him saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” 

True that was, so Sansara stayed back but suddenly, a strange feeling engulfed him. The kind of feeling that he had never felt before.

It was as if a scene was playing on his mind on cue where he saw Vinasaka gently caressing Mir’s face when he was in the time maze stuck in Mir’s body and memory. No matter how much he thought about it, in fact that is what he has been thinking about very often now and then since he had seen it, that there is no way that it was just a way how a friend acts. NO WAY IN HELL!!

“What?” Vinasaka pulled him out of his daze and only then did he realise that he had said that aloud like an i***t!

“Crap!”

“No, it’s nothing,” Sansara quickly refused but seeing that Vinasaka didn’t buy it, Sansara ended up asking, “Say Vinasaka? Was Mir really your friend….only?”  He added the last bit of his sentence very carefully measuring his words and boundaries. 

“Well, well, what do we have here? What makes you curious about something like that?” Vinasaka quietly walked close to him, so subtly that even Sansara didn’t notice when he had been almost towered upon by the other person who threw him a look full of smirk and mischief.

He couldn’t answer for he had only realised the decreasing gap between their bodies and walked back to bring back the distance and Vinasaka, taking up the opportunity asked once again, “Your highness, what’s wrong? You are normally more alert! How can you lower your guard like this? Not everyone is as generous as me. Who knows what someone might try to do once you lower your guard like that again?” He still had the same amused smirk painted on his lips which just showed how much he liked teasing his friend.

Sansara hurriedly tried to cover up, “What do you mean? You are always trying to tease me!”

He almost thought that maybe this time too, Vinasaka was trying to simply evade the question about Mir when the later spoke up, “About your question from earlier, Mir was my friend but it happens that I was in love with him.”

Sansara was caught off guard way too much, so much that he kind of, for a second, had no idea what to focus on- the fact that he had brought up the topic by himself or that he was in love with Mir...wait “He was in love with him? f*****g LOVE with him?”

So he does like guys!

Sansara didn’t know how to reply to that, he was too busy calculating everything in his mind when Vinasaka nudged him, “What happened? Do you despise me now that you know I was in love with a guy?”

There were just too many things in that one sentence he had just spit out. Subconsciously, he also noticed the slight pained yet smiling expression on Vinasaka’s face. 

Does that mean he had to hear a lot from people just because the person he loved was a boy and somewhere he is still scared of that? But he doesn’t look like someone who would care about what anyone thinks of him right?

Sansara, noticing, how he was again drifting away in his thoughts, suddenly came back to reality and said, “No way, I was just thinking...to ..be able to be loved by the demon king…”

He hadn’t even finished his sentence when he was taken back by Vinasaka’s reaction whose smirk was abruptly gone and he sighed as he stared at his feet with his lips drawn in a straight line and his eyes back with the hint of sadness.

“Demon...right but I wasn’t a demon from the beginning you know! I was a stupid indeed haha,” he laughed but his eyes never changed, “but he accepted me as his friend and I...I still became a demon.”

This time Sansara didn’t miss the kind of meaning he was hiding in his words. He still had a lot to know about this person in front of him and for the first time, he knew that he definitely wanted to know more, wanted to know all about him and maybe even wanted to become his ‘friend’.

“Umm, can I ask you something? It may be too personal…,” Sansara wasn’t done yet but Vinasaka calmly said without looking in his eyes, “You don’t have to ask for permission.”

“Where is…,” however he couldn’t finish his sentence again, when suddenly Vinasaka covered his ears and shrunk on the floor looking visibly in excruciating pain. Sansara, suddenly at a loss, noticed the rest of them coming back from the kitchen with Mohi carrying the queen who also happened to be in extreme pain and was unable to even stand. As if on cue, Sansara related them both and quickly said to Mohi, “Why is it that only they can feel this? They are related though…”

“But Vinasaka has the demon blood, he shouldn’t still be linked,”Mohi almost stopped in his tracks when his words were coming true in front of him. It was true that Vinasaka was starting to recover, probably because he had the demon blood running in his veins. His eyes were red

and unforgiving like he wasn’t able to calm down.He was indeed trying his best not to create chaos. Honestly, all of them pretty much understood that he probably wanted to transform in order to be able to get rid of this pain but his body at that moment was just too unstable to perform any transformation. The results were too uncertain. As everybody watched him slowly losing himself, at the same time, nobody was quite courageous to step ahead and take a risk. The effect was mostly visible on Suiyo, maybe because he had demon blood running in himself. Who knows what was the current scenario of the demon world!

 Vinasaka was barely holding up to keep himself from getting unconscious. On the other hand, Sansara was busy tending the queen who had already lost consciousness a long time ago. As he continued to pass his vitality to her, he found something strange. It was unsaid yet they all probably figured out that the queen being someone Vinasaka cherished, might be the only one able to bring him back. So when Mohi found Sansara’s eyebrows pulled together as a troubled expression washed over his face, Mohi asked, “Is something the matter?”

“Strange...last time I was healing her, there was a particular flow of vitality that was hindering the process yet the queen seemed to be unaware of it. Now as I am doing the same, I can’t find the flow. It’s like it’s not there anymore and yet, something else has been hindering my treatment.” As soon as Sansara finished, all of them turned to look at Vinasaka who suddenly roared, the resonation of which was deafening and filled the entire hallway, the entire palace into a chamber of terror.

The room turned tense; the junior angels were scared to speak after watching Vinasaka behaving like that. Water demon Suiyo instantly kneeled in front of him, almost shaking, terrified. The onlookers had no idea what was going on until, Vinasaka suddenly grabbed Suiyo’s head and as he was about to do something really bad…..really gross, Sansara’s eyes widened gradually and fortunately he acted in time and rushed to the former, hugging him out of nowhere. No wonder, he was himself scared to his wits, his whole body trembling slightly in nervousness.

But suddenly, he felt himself relax a little as he realised that the body he had been hugging was far too cold….far too numb. He wondered whether he could feel anything anymore. He wondered whether he could feel the embrace. As he finally pulled himself back and looked at Suiyo, to his surprise, he found that the hand that was holding Suiyo’s head in a fashion that it was about to be ripped apart from the body, was now dangling on the floor. He looked back at Vinasaka to find those fatal red eyes gradually turning back the silent tranquility they had before and Sansara couldn’t help but sigh with a hint of smiling relief nudging the corner of his lips.

Not even a second had passed when Vinasaka jerked the hand holding him in embrace and pulling him beside himself as he grabbed a flying arrow with his bare hand right before it was almost about to pierce his eyes. It wasn’t a normal arrow, it was ‘tushara’- the ice arrow.

As if it was some nightmare, he looked up and found a man with a firm stature, strong shoulders standing right before the humongous staircase with his bow stretched aiming mercilessly at them. Vinasaka wasn’t shocked, he had already probably figured it out. However when Sansara saw the arrow, the sudden fright changed into something like uneasiness as he whispered, “Second prince,..... Mihas?”