claimed by the demon king

Chapter 6

Rhea Pov

He found me this fast.

I kept turning that over and not getting past it. Anya had said warded. Had said hidden. Had said given his current state he cannot reach you like it was fact, like it was something solid I could stand on.

I had been standing on it for approximately forty five minutes.

The room had not moved since he walked through those doors. Not one person. Not one sound. All these supernatural beings with their bloodlines and their factions and their centuries of combined power and not one of them was doing anything except standing very carefully still.

I understood why. That did not make it helpful.

His eyes had not left me since he walked in.

I looked at Anya. She was already on her feet, eyes moving fast across the room, rebuilding something in her head. She caught my look.

Her face said she was working on it.

I needed more than that.

Then the air moved.

Not from a window. From nowhere. And then his hands were around my waist from behind and every single thought I had dropped out of my head simultaneously.

I hadn't heard him move. Hadn't felt him cross the room. One moment there was space behind me and the next there was none. His arms around my waist. His chest against my back. And he was warm. Genuinely warm in a way I had not expected and had no idea what to do with and my body went ahead and registered all of that before my brain had finished processing that he was touching me.

I tried to move forward. The hold tightened. Not hard. Just enough to make a point without trying.

"My love." Low against my ear. The warmth of it moved across my skin and went places I was not going to think about right now. "It is time to take you home."

Every hair on my body stood.

"Let go of me," I said. Flat. Steady. I was not going to fall apart in front of this room. "Right now."

He did not let go.

"Let her go." Theron's voice came from across the room. Sharp. Controlled. "This is neutral territory. She is under council protection."

Caelan didn't even look at him.

"Theron." The same low unhurried voice. Except the almost warmth that was there when he spoke to me was completely gone. What replaced it was something older and colder that filled the room without him raising his voice by a single degree. "How long has it been. However long it has been I see your understanding of the words no authority has not improved."

Nobody responded to that.

Not one person.

"I have heard a great deal about you," Anya said. She was standing straight, hands loose at her sides, looking at him the way she looked at every problem like she was already three steps into solving it. "I will not pretend I am not impressed that you found this location."

"Your warding is good," he said. "For someone who isn't a lycan." A pause. "I followed her scent."

I felt his head lower slightly toward my neck and my pulse went somewhere embarrassing and I grabbed his forearm with both hands and pushed. His arms did not move.

"I would love to continue this conversation," he said and I could hear something in his voice that was almost a smile. "But I have somewhere to be."

He looked at Draven near the door.

"Manage the room," he said.

"Yes my lord," Draven said.

Caelan was already turning toward the door when he stopped.

He looked around the chamber slowly. At the council. At the elders. At all those faces that had gone so carefully still since he walked in.

"Aren't you forgetting something," he said.

The room did not move.

People looked at each other. At the table. At Anya. At each other again. The specific look of people trying to identify what they had missed and coming up empty.

Anya's eyes moved across the room. Calculating. Checking.

Barnes shifted in his seat. Sapphire's eyes narrowed slightly. An elder near the back leaned toward the person beside him and whispered something.

Nobody spoke.

Caelan waited. Completely unbothered by the silence. Like he had all the time in the world and was genuinely curious how long it would take.

"My quarters," he said finally. Like it was the most obvious thing. "I will be needing somewhere to stay. For now."

The silence that followed was a different quality from all the previous silences. It had something in it that was almost disbelief. Almost. Nobody in this room was in a position to afford disbelief so what it actually was was the specific stunned quality of people who had just been asked to house the person they had spent eighty three years dreading.

He had walked through their warding. Taken their leverage. And was now asking them to give him a room.

Anya looked at him for a long moment.

Then she turned to the servant standing near the far wall. "Prepare the east quarters," she said. Her voice did not shake. I found that impressive under the circumstances.

"Yes my lady," the servant said, and disappeared.

"Someone will show you the way," Anya said to Caelan.

"Good," he said. Simply. Like it had never been in question.

I took advantage of the moment. His attention had shifted, his hold had not loosened but the room had moved, and I pulled hard at his arms and twisted and managed to get half a step forward before the arm around my waist pulled me back without effort and I was exactly where I had been.

"Let me go," I said. "Right now. Let me go."

"Rhea." Low. Just my name.

"Do not Rhea me," I said. "I don't know you. I did not agree to any of this. You cannot just walk into a room and decide I am coming with you. That is not how people work. That is not how anything works."

"I am aware you are unhappy," he said.

"Unhappy," I repeated. "I am unhappy. Yes. That is one word for what I am. I am also terrified and confused and I have not slept and I was almost drowned by whatever is under that ocean and then dragged through a portal and dropped in front of a room full of people one of whom suggested killing me and now you are..." I stopped. Took a breath. "Put me down."

He looked down at me.

"Please," I said. Quietly. Just that one word.

He set me on my feet.

His hands stayed at my waist. Loose now. Not gripping. Just present. Like he was giving me the ground under my feet but not the distance.

I turned around to face him.

That was a mistake. Because facing him meant looking at him directly and looking at him directly meant looking at the face from the statue up close, the jaw and the eyes and the specific way he was watching me like I was the only thing in this room worth watching, and something in my chest pulled toward him so hard I took a step back just to counter it.

His hands fell from my waist.

"My friends," I said. "Lucas and Yara. I need to know they are safe."

"They are safe," he said.

"I don't know if I believe you," I said.

"I know," he said. Not defensive. Not arguing. Just acknowledging it.

"That is not reassuring," I said.

"No," he agreed.

I looked at him for a moment. At the complete calm of someone who had never once needed to justify himself to anyone and was not going to start tonight.

"Anya." I turned toward her. "My friends. You promised."

"They will be taken care of," Anya said. Something in her voice was careful in a specific way. She was answering me but she was also watching him while she did it. "You have my word."

I turned back to Caelan.

He was looking at me the way he had looked at me on the beach. Like I was something he had been waiting for and now that he had found me the waiting was simply over and everything else was detail.

I did not know what to do with that look. I had not known what to do with it on the beach and I did not know what to do with it now.

"I want to go home," I said. "I know you are not going to let that happen tonight. I am not asking for tonight. I am telling you that I want to go home eventually and that is not negotiable."

"Okay," he said.

I stared at him. "Okay."

"Yes," he said.

"That is the first reasonable thing you have said to me," I said.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

A servant appeared at the chamber entrance. "My lord. Your quarters are ready."

Caelan looked at me.

"Shall we," he said.

"I am not..." I stopped. Looked around the room. At Barnes who had suggested killing me. At Sapphire who had stopped him for strategic reasons not moral ones. At Anya who was still doing her calculations and had not found an answer yet.

None of these people were going to help me tonight.

I looked back at him.

"Fine," I said. "Fine. But you are going to walk behind me not hold me and I am going to walk on my own two feet like a person."

He said nothing. He stepped back and gestured toward the door.

I walked.

He fell into step behind me and the servant led us through the corridor and I stared straight ahead and told myself I was handling this. I was handling all of it. I was a person who handled things and this was simply a thing I was handling.

The corridor was long.

"This is a very long corridor," I said. Because the silence was worse.

He said nothing.

"Where does it go," I said.

"To your right in a moment," he said. "Then stairs."

"I wasn't asking for directions," I said. "I was making conversation because the silence is..." I stopped. "Never mind."

His footsteps behind me were completely quiet. If I hadn't known he was there I wouldn't have heard him at all. Which was its own kind of unsettling.

We turned right. Took the stairs. Another corridor. The servant stopped at a door and opened it and stepped aside.

I walked in.

The room was large. High ceiling. A window with the dark outside it. Furniture that belonged to somewhere that had been built by someone who intended to stay. And a bed.

A large bed.

I stood in the middle of the room and looked at the bed and then looked at the door where he was standing.

"My room," I said carefully. "This is my room. Separate. You have your own room which is the east quarters Anya just had prepared."

He walked in.

He walked past me to the center of the room and looked around it the way he looked at everything taking inventory, unhurried, completely at home in a space he had been in for approximately eight seconds.

"The east quarters," I said again. "That is where you are going. This is where I am staying. Those are two different places."

He reached up and pulled his shirt over his head.

I stopped talking.

He set it on the chair beside him and rolled his neck once and I stood there and looked at him and my brain performed a complete and total evacuation of every thought it had been holding.

He was...

There were no relevant words.

"What," I said. My voice came out at a slightly different register than usual. "What are you doing."

He looked at me.

"Getting ready for bed," he said simply.

"This is not your bed," I said. "This is my bed. Your bed is in the east quarters which is a different location in this building."

"Mm," he said.

"That is not a response," I said. "That is a sound. I need a response."

He sat on the edge of the bed.

My bed.

And looked at me with those eyes that had been looking at me since the beach like I was something that had already been decided and everything happening between us was simply the time it was taking me to catch up.

I thought about what I had said in the council chamber. About marital bliss. About absolutely not.

About him saying the beginning of a long and eventful marriage.

I had not actually believed he was serious.

I pressed my lips together and looked at the window and told myself very firmly that I was handling this.

I was handling this.

The window was dark and the room was warm and he was sitting on the edge of the bed without a shirt on looking completely unbothered and I was standing in the middle of the room in my pyjamas and none of this was real.

It was definitely still real.

"You cannot be serious," I said.

He looked at me.

Said nothing.

Which was the most terrifying answer he could have given me.