claimed by the demon king

Chapter 2

I opened the door.

A young woman stood there smiling at me. Ordinary looking in a way that was almost deliberately reassuring after everything yesterday had managed to be. Lanyard. Clipboard. The expression of someone who has shown up professionally and on time.

"Hi." She extended her hand. "I am Chloe. I am your guide for today."

"Oh." Yara appeared behind me still holding the egg whisk. "I completely forgot I booked a guide."

I stepped aside. Yara looked Chloe over then looked at the whisk in her hand like she was only now noticing it.

"Can you give us an hour," she said. "We are not ready."

"Of course." Chloe's smile didn't move. "I will be just outside."

I closed the door and stood there a moment. The pull in my chest from yesterday was still present. Had been there when I woke up. Quieter than it was at the ocean but not gone. I had gotten dressed around it and eaten half a piece of toast around it and I was going to do a town tour around it because sitting in the lodge thinking about a bracelet that burned my hand and a statue that wouldn't leave my head was not a productive use of a morning.

"You booked a guide and didn't tell us," Lucas said.

"It slipped my mind." Yara was already heading back to the kitchen. "Now give me the sugar."

"Absolutely not."

I let them argue and went to find my shoes.

Chloe was waiting outside when we left an hour later. Same smile. Hands clasped in front of her. She walked us through the town centre, past the old buildings with their carved stone lintels and faded crests above the doors, past the market streets and the festival decorations that looked cheaper in daylight. She talked the whole time, easy and practiced, the voice of someone who had given this tour many times and still meant it.

She told us about Valeria. The founding families. The way the town had been built on ley lines, which she said the way other people say built near a river practical, geographical, just a feature of the land. The supernatural factions that had coexisted here for centuries, each with their own quarter, their own customs, their own relationship to the territory.

"Supernatural factions," Lucas repeated. He looked at Yara. "You brought us to one of those towns."

"It is called the witches village," Yara said. "What were you expecting."

"I thought that was just a name."

"It's not called the witches village for no reason," Chloe said, still walking, still pleasant. "Valeria has had an active witch council since before most countries had governments. The supernatural community here is not metaphorical."

Lucas looked at me. I looked back. He was deciding whether this was charming local mythology or something to be mildly concerned about.

"So the festival," Yara said, her sketchbook already open, pencil moving. "What is it actually for."

Chloe's pace stayed easy. "The festival marks the anniversary of the binding. Eighty-three years ago a coalition of factions witches, fae, vampire bloodlines, rival pack leaders bound the Lycan King beneath the coastal waters. The festival is the annual ritual that maintains the seal." She said it the way she said everything. Matter of fact. No performance. "Valeria has been doing it every year since."

"The Lycan King," Lucas said.

"The most powerful Alpha in recorded history. Ruler of Asveron and the surrounding pack territories before the binding. The coalition couldn't kill him an Alpha King of that strength cannot be killed through conventional means. So they bound him instead and placed the prison under our waters because the ley lines made the binding stronger."

"Right," Lucas said.

"This town is so superstitious," Yara said, not unkindly, still drawing.

Chloe glanced at her. "It's not called the witches village for no reason."

Yara looked up from her sketchbook. "Fair."

I had not said anything. I was looking at the space between the buildings where the ocean was visible in flashes as we walked and trying to understand why Chloe's very ordinary recitation of very ordinary local history was making the pull in my chest do something it hadn't done since yesterday at the shore.

I kept walking.

She took us to the ocean.

The pull became something else the moment I felt it getting close. Not pressure anymore. Something tighter. A specific insistence low in my chest like a hand closing around something it intended to keep.

We came around the last street and the water opened up in front of us and I stopped walking without deciding to.

It looked the same as yesterday. Wide and dark and moving in those slow spiral patterns along the surface that I kept almost recognizing and couldn't explain recognizing. The same feeling as the statue. The same feeling as the bracelet. The same feeling that had been sitting in my chest since the border yesterday like something that had been waiting for me to get close enough to activate.

"Rhea."

I blinked. Yara was looking at me.

"You stopped," she said.

"It is a nice view."

She didn't look fully convinced but Chloe was already talking about the tidal patterns and Lucas was asking questions and the moment passed.

"Can we swim later?" Yara asked.

"The ocean is closed to swimmers during the festival period," Chloe said. "The currents are unpredictable during the ritual maintenance. It is a genuine safety issue, not a superstition one."

"Fine," Yara said.

I looked at the water one more time before I followed them. The spiral patterns moved slow and deliberate along the surface. Like they were going somewhere specific. Like they had somewhere to be.

I kept walking.

The afternoon passed slowly. Chloe talked. Lucas asked questions. Yara sketched things when she thought no one was watching. I watched the water between the buildings every time it appeared.

When Chloe said goodbye at the edge of the square I watched her go and stood there a moment in the space she left.

"She was lovely," Yara said.

"Very informative," Lucas said. "I now know more about supernatural faction politics than I ever expected to."

"You said this town was superstitious," I said.

"I said the town was superstitious. The guide was very convincing." He shrugged. "I am choosing to believe the Lycan King is a metaphor for something."

"A metaphor for what," Yara said.

"I don't know. Oppressive governance. The patriarchy."

Yara looked at him. "The patriarchy."

"I am open to other interpretations."

I laughed and it came out more genuine than I expected and the pull in my chest was still there underneath it, steady and patient, like it had all the time in the world.

Back at the lodge Yara dropped onto the couch and pulled off her shoes. "Something is off about this place."

"I thought it was interesting," Lucas said.

"You would." She pointed at me. "And you have been somewhere else all day."

"I am fine."

"You keep saying that."

She held my gaze a second longer than usual. I held hers back and didn't say anything and eventually she let it go, which was somehow worse than if she had pushed.

"Maybe we shouldn't have come," Lucas said.

"Do not." Yara didn't look up. "We are going to enjoy ourselves tomorrow. Properly. No one is going to be inside their head." She pulled off one shoe and looked at it like it had personally wronged her. "My feet are done. Goodnight."

She disappeared into her room.

Lucas and I sat in the quiet.

"Are you actually okay," he said. Quieter. Just for me.

"I promise," I said. "You would be the first to know."

He let it go. I hugged him and went to my room.

I showered. Stood under the water longer than I needed to. Put on full pyjamas when I got out and didn't examine why.

I lay down.

The ceiling. The ocean sound coming through the open window. The pull sitting in my chest the way it had been sitting there since yesterday, quieter now but not gone, present the way a sound is present when you have stopped consciously hearing it but would notice immediately if it stopped.

I got up.

I didn't decide to. I was lying down and then I was standing and reaching for my clothes and I watched myself do it from a slight distance, the same distance I had been watching myself from since the border yesterday.

The streets were nearly empty. I walked toward the water and with every step the tightness in my chest eased incrementally, which made no sense, which I noted and kept walking anyway.

At the shore I stood for a moment and looked at the water.

It moved in those spiral patterns. Slow and deliberate. The same ones from yesterday. The same ones from every glimpse between buildings across the whole day.

I took my clothes off and went in.

The cold hit all at once and I gasped. Then it settled and something in my body went quiet in a way it had not been quiet since I crossed into this region. Like this was what it had been waiting for. Like I had been slightly wrong-shaped all day and the water had corrected something.

I swam out. Not far. Just enough to breathe.

Then I turned back toward the shore.

Something closed around my ankle.

Not seaweed. Not a current.

It pulled.

I went under before I could breathe in. Cold dark everywhere, instant and total. I kicked hard and it pulled harder, dragging me down and back. My lungs were already wrong. Already tight. I clawed at the water and it didn't matter. The surface kept getting further no matter what I did.

My body was running out of things to spend.

Then I saw light.

Below me. Getting stronger. Getting closer.

I looked down at my own hands.

It was coming from me.