“Aye, master.” She hung her head, twisting her fingers together.
“Yes.” He scrubbed his jaw, pacing back and forth as he fairly burst with excitement. “Yes, that will do, Dalia. You may leave now.”
“But, sir…” Squeezing her eyes shut, she thinned her lips before saying, “Perhaps what she saw isn’t a foretelling at all of why she was brought here. Perhaps the bowl is saying something else.”
“You may go,” he said again, quietly but with command.
And when she faded and the scent of her sulfur was gone, Rumpel went to see Euralis.
The torches flared to life the moment he stepped through. The bird gazed at him from behind its steel cage.
“Boy,” he whispered, noting the molted feathers littering the bottom of the cage. The bird was covered in sores, some of them scabbed, most of them wet and raw-looking.
Euralis did not shift as he normally would.
Looking around, he noticed the floors had been recently scrubbed, but he smelled no blood, saw no gristle hanging from the bird’s beak.
“Have you fed, child?”
The bird cocked its head. Apart from the sores and the fallen feathers, he looked robust. Rumpel had fed him every morning, but if it was true what Giles said, that he would no longer eat unless from Rumpel’s own hand, he figured he’d need to increase his feedings to include the night as well.
Calling forth a large hunk of raw pork, he slipped it through the cage. Euralis exhibited slight curiosity and pecked at it a few times, but the boy did not change and he did not eat.
“She has seen a vision and I can only hope that her vision is ours. I will fix this, Euralis, I vow it.”
The bird cocked its head and then turned around.
With a heavy, suddenly burdened heart Rumpel turned back for his room. Why could the world not just be black and white, why must there always be shades of gray to muck it all up?
His tongue was wet and hot, lapping between her thighs and filling Shayera with a coiling kind of heat that made her feel ready to combust.
Moaning, she fisted the sheets in her hand, arching her back as her fingers joined in. He played her body like a maestro, plucking at the very strings of her soul and making her sing in praise.
“Cry out my name,” he demanded and she was slave to his every whim.
“Rumpel,” she moaned, rubbing her finger faster against her sensitive center.
“Again,” he shouted, suckling her now, pulling her nub into his mouth and making her scream in agony and pleasure.
“Rumpel! Rumpel! Rumpel!”
Jerking, she gasped, clutched at her chest, and stared at the ceiling as her heart raced and her skin glistened with a sheen of sweat. The room was dark, the flame in the hearth low, and she was all alone.
It’d been a dream.
The heat of shame traveled up her neck and then settled in her cheeks. Who all had heard her scream that way? Her energy spiked through the room, leaked from her pores. Rumpel had awakened her and now she didn’t know how to contain it, her need for him. For his touch.
Mouth pulling down, horribly embarrassed that the man himself might have heard her, she rolled over and shoved her face into the fluffy down pillow. A hot, pitiful tear leaked from the corner of her left eye.
This was misery and in that moment she hated that she’d ever allowed him to touch her. Grabbing a pillow, she hugged it to her chest and pretended it was Briley, cooing to it and rocking, rubbing her fingers along the top of it, and finally, finally she was able to fall back asleep.
Three weeks had passed since that night and every night the dreams came, each night more potent and real than the one before. In the mornings, she was exhausted and loathe to even leave her room.
“C’mon, miss, it’s a fair, fine morning. The birds are out and the world smells of sunshine. Won’t you go outside? Please?” Dalia threaded her fingers together.
Gripping the bedpost, forehead pressed against the cool wood, she moaned. “No. I don’t feel well.”
Suddenly the curtains were flung wide and the sun poured through the room. Dalia was framed by sunlight and wearing a glower. “You don’t feel good because ye keep yourself locked away in this room like it’s a tower. You don’t read, you don’t eat, ye barely even wash yourself. ’Tis a crime!” Her voice grew shrill at the end. “Up, up, up, and I won’t be hearing another word about it.”
Hissing, Shayera narrowed her eyes, but the beautiful demone was not to be cowed.
She lifted a thin, ebony brow and shook her head. “Ye are forgetting who I work for, miss. Now, I order ye to bathe, to get to the garden, and to do your damn best to impress Rumpel.”