The Devils Daughter

Chapter Five: Suspicion

The third morning brought a new problem alongside the familiar ache between my thighs: my food stores were nearly depleted.

I stood in my small pantry, staring at the nearly empty flour sack, the last few eggs, the dwindling vegetables. I'd been so consumed by Valdin and trying to survive him, that I'd neglected to notice how low my supplies had run.

I would have to go to the village.

The thought filled me with dread that had nothing to do with the usual cruelty I faced there. Someone in Thornhaven had sacrificed me. Someone had performed whatever dark ritual was needed to send a demon to claim my soul. Someone finally wanted to see me dead.

And I would have to walk among them, not knowing who.

I dressed carefully, choosing my only high-necked dress. A faded gray thing with long sleeves and buttons up to my throat. It was too warm for the weather, but it was necessary.

The marks Valdin had left on my body had only darkened over the past two days. The bruises on my throat were deep purple, the bite marks on my breasts and shoulders scabbed over. My hips bore the imprint of his fingers in shades of black and blue.

I looked like exactly what I was: a woman being brutally used every night by a demon.

The dress hid most of it, though I had to button it all the way up making sure my hair covered what the collar didn't. I studied myself in the small mirror, turning this way and that. The marks were hidden. I looked pale and tired, but that was nothing new. The villagers expected me to look half-dead anyway.

I gathered my basket and what little coin I had left, then set out on the long walk to Thornhaven.

The morning was overcast, the sky heavy with clouds that threatened rain. Fitting. Everything felt darker now, more ominous. The forest that bordered my cottage seemed to watch me as I passed. The birds were silent. Even the air felt thick with secrets.

By the time I reached the village square, my nerves were stretched taut.

The market was busy, full of people buying and selling, gossiping and laughing. Normal life continuing as though nothing had changed. But everything had changed for me. I moved through the crowd with my basket clutched tight, hyperaware of every glance, every whisper, every person who came too close.

Was it the baker's wife who had always looked at me with particular disgust? She was haggling over the price of apples, her face pinched and mean. Had she decided the cursed girl needed to meet an actual devil?

Or perhaps it was Thomas the blacksmith’s son who watched me from his forge with dark, unreadable eyes. He'd always been the one to torment me for onlookers to see. Was he finally taking the deed a step further?

The butcher's son sneered at me as I passed, making a warding sign. "Devil's w***e," he muttered, just loud enough for me to hear.

I flinched. Did he know? Could he somehow see what Valdin had done to me, what I had become? Or was it just the usual cruelty?

"Ignore him, dear," came a voice beside me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

It was Old Margaret, the herb woman who lived on the other side of the village. She was one of the few who had ever shown me anything resembling kindness, though even that was sparse and cautious.

"He's a fool," she continued, her rheumy eyes studying me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. "Always has been."

"Thank you," I managed, my voice tight.

She tilted her head, still watching me. "You look different, child. Something's changed."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you?" Her gaze dropped to my throat, to the high collar that covered Valdin’s marks. Something flickered in her expression. Knowledge? Suspicion? "Be careful, Elara. There are darker things in this world than the villagers' cruelty."

She shuffled away before I could respond, leaving me standing frozen in the middle of the market.

Did she know? Had she been the one?

I forced myself to move, to continue with my shopping. I bought flour from the miller who wouldn't look at me. Vegetables from a farmer who overcharged me and smirked while doing it. A small piece of salted meat from the butcher who handled my coin like it was contaminated.

Every transaction felt like a test. Every face could be hiding guilt. Every whisper could be about me. About what they'd done, about whether the demon had claimed me yet.

A group of women stood near the well, their conversation died as I approached. They watched me with expressions ranging from disgust to something that might have been fear. One of them, Sarah the tavern keeper's daughter, made a sign against evil.

"Stay back," she hissed. "Don't come near us."

"I'm just getting water," I said quietly, but my hands shook as I lowered my bucket.

"You shouldn't even be allowed in the village," another woman spat. "Everyone knows what you are. What your mother was."

What I was. If only they knew the truth of it now. That I belonged to a demon. That every night he would come to me and use my body. Mark me, claim me. That I was starting to crave it.

I pulled up my bucket and walked away without responding. There was no point. There never had been.

But as I left the village, supplies weighing down my basket, I couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on my back. Watching. Waiting. Wondering if their sacrifice had worked.

Someone in Thornhaven had tried to kill me. And they were still there, walking among the others, pretending innocence.

The thought followed me all the way home.

By evening, I had worked myself into anxious energy. My mind kept circling back to the villagers. To their faces trying to find guilt in their expressions. But it was useless. They all hated me. Any one of them could have done it.

I heated water for a bath. I needed to wash away the feeling of their stares, their disgust. As I sank into the warm water, I let myself think about what was coming.

Valdin would arrive soon.

He would take me again, use me, mark me further. The soreness had finally started to fade. My body adjusting to his brutal claiming. And despite everything, despite the pain, despite the wrongness of it all, I was waiting for him with something dangerously close to anticipation.

I washed carefully, cleaning every inch of my skin. My hands moved over the bruises and bite marks, tracing the evidence of his possession. They were starting to fade, the colors shifting from deep purple to greenish-yellow. Would he be displeased? Would he mark me again, darker this time?

Heat pooled low in my belly at the thought.

I dried myself and stood in my small room, looking at the torn nightgowns that lay in tatters. Two nights, two nightgowns destroyed. I only had one left and I would need it for actual sleeping. For the cold nights when he wasn't there to warm me with his demonic heat.

A decision crystallized.

I wouldn't wear anything.

He was going to take it off anyway, tear it away in his impatience to claim what was his. Why pretend otherwise? Why cling to modesty when I had none left?

So I sat on my bed, bare, and waited for darkness to fall.

My heart raced as the last light faded from the sky. I was naked, exposed, sitting like an offering. What did that make me? What had I become that I would present myself this way to a demon?

But I knew the answer. I was his. He'd made that clear. And some part of me, some dark, shameful part, was accepting it.

The shadows in the corner of my room deepened and I knew he was there before he materialized. My breath caught as he stepped out of the darkness. His massive form filling the space. Those frost-colored eyes finding me immediately.

He stopped, his gaze traveling over my naked body with an intensity that made my skin flush. The dark markings on his skin writhed faster. His expression shifted into something fierce and pleased.

"Well," he said, his voice a low rumble that I felt in my bones. "What do we have here?"

"I..." My voice came out breathless. "I didn't want you to tear another nightgown."

"Is that so?" He moved closer, predatory and deliberate. "Or is it that you're finally accepting what you are? What you're for?"

I couldn't answer. Didn't know how to.

He reached out and traced a finger down my throat, over my collarbone, between my breasts. "You waited for me. Naked. Ready." His eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "Good girl."

Those words again. They shouldn't affect me the way they did, but heat flooded through me at his approval.

"You please me, little mortal," he continued, his hand cupping my breast, thumb brushing over the fading bite mark there. "And when you please me, I reward you."

Before I could ask what he meant, he pushed me back onto the bed and dropped to his knees between my thighs.

My eyes widened. "What are you-"

"Quiet," he commanded. "I'm going to taste what's mine."

His hands gripped my thighs and spread them wide, exposing me to his gaze. Vulnerable, laid bare in every possible way, but I couldn't look away from his face. From the hunger in those inhuman eyes.

Then his mouth was on me and I cried out.

His tongue was hot and wicked, licking through my folds with no gentleness, no hesitation. He tasted me like he was starving, like I was a feast laid out just for him. The sensation was overwhelming. Nothing like his fingers, nothing like his c**k. This was intimate in a different way. More intense, more consuming.

“Valdin,” His name tore from my throat as his tongue found that sensitive spot and circled it mercilessly.

He made a sound of approval against my flesh, the vibration making me gasp. His hands tightened on my thighs, holding me open. Holding me still while he devoured me. There was no escape from the pleasure he was forcing on me. No way to close my legs or pull away.

His tongue thrust inside me and I arched off the bed with a broken moan. He f****d me with his tongue, rough and demanding, then returned to that spot that made lightning shoot through my veins. Over and over, building me higher, pushing me toward that edge I'd only recently learned existed.

"Please," I gasped, my hands fisting in the sheets. "I-I can't-"

He pulled back just enough to speak, his breath hot against my wet flesh. "You can. You will. Come for me, Elara. Let me taste it."

Then his mouth was on me again, his tongue working that spot with ruthless precision, shattering what will I had left. The orgasm crashed through me, my body convulsing. He groaned against me as he licked up everything I gave him.

He didn't stop. Even as I trembled and gasped, oversensitive and overwhelmed, he kept going. His tongue was relentless, pushing me higher again before I'd even recovered from the first peak.

"Too much," I whimpered. "Valdin, it's too much-"

"One more," he growled against me. "Give me one more."

His fingers joined his mouth, thrusting inside me while his tongue circled and flicked. The combination was devastating. I came again with a cry. My vision whiting out, my body no longer my own.

Only then did he pull back, his gaze gleaming with dark satisfaction as he looked at me sprawled and trembling before him.

"Beautiful," he said, his voice rough. "You taste like sin and salvation."

He stood, and I saw that his c**k was hard and ready. The head already glistening. He'd pleasured me, but now he would take his own.

"Turn over," he commanded. "On your hands and knees."

I obeyed with shaking limbs, positioning myself the way he wanted. Exposed. Vulnerable. Offering myself to him.

His hands gripped my hips, and the head of his c**k pressed against my entrance. I was wet from his mouth, from my orgasms, but I still tensed at the intrusion.

"Relax," he said, though there was no gentleness in his tone. "You're going to take all of me."

He thrust forward, burying himself inside me in one brutal stroke forcing a moan from my throat. The angle was different this way, deeper making me feel impossibly full. His hands tightened on my hips as he began to move, each thrust driving me forward.

"That's it," he growled. "Take your demon's c**k. Take everything I give you."

The pace was punishing, rough, his hips slamming against me hard enough to leave new bruises. But my body responded anyway. Clenching around him, getting wetter, making those obscene sounds that filled the room.

One of his hands left my hip and tangled in my black hair, pulling my head back. The position arched my spine, changed the angle again making me moan at how deep he was.

"Who do you belong to?" he demanded, his voice a snarl.

"You," I gasped. "I belong to you."

"Say my name."

"Valdin! I belong to Valdin!"

"That's right." He released my hair and both hands gripped my hips again. His pace increasing to something almost violent. "Mine. Every part of you is mine."

The pleasure coiled tight in my belly again. How could I come again? I'd already come twice from his mouth. But my body didn't care about logic. It only knew what he was doing to it, how he was claiming it.

His hand reached around and found that sensitive spot. Rubbing it in rough circles and I broke apart with a sob. The orgasm tore through me and he groaned as my body clenched around him.

"f**k," he snarled, and his thrusts became erratic, harder. Then he buried himself deep and came with a roar. He filled me with his heat, marking me from the inside once more.

He stayed inside me for a long moment, both of us breathing hard. Then he pulled out slowly, turning me over, his silver eyes studying my face.

"You did well tonight," he said, and there was something almost like approval in his voice. "You're learning what you are. What you're for."

I should have protested. Should have argued. But I was too exhausted, too overwhelmed, too thoroughly claimed.

"Sleep," he commanded, and for once, his hand was almost gentle as it brushed the hair from my face. "Tomorrow night, I'll have you again."

Then he was gone, dissolving into shadow, leaving me alone, naked and marked.

I lay there in the darkness, my body aching in new ways. Still feeling the ghost of his mouth on me, his c**k inside me. Someone in the village had tried to kill me. Had sent him to take my soul.

But instead, he was taking everything else.

And I was letting him.