Chapter 1

ChapterOne

Asledgehammer to the face wasn’t how Greed expected to be welcomed back to his kingdom.

But it had certainly done the job his attackers had wanted.

His thoughts filtered back in as he tried to think past the pounding in his skull. It was hard to take down one of the demon kings. Apparently a sledgehammer would do it. He hadn’t expected that.

In any other circumstance, he might have allowed himself to feel surprised. Proud, even. His people were warriors first and foremost. They took what they wanted, and they let nothing stop them. Someone had been brave enough to attack him. It wasn’t the first time, but it was one of the few where he’d felt pain.

He’d like to meet the person who’d done it. Maybe clap them on the back and then crack their nose with his forehead. A little blood never hurt anyone, and he deserved a little retribution.

Grinding his teeth so he didn’t moan, he rolled over onto his side and set his palm down on the earth. No, not earth. Metal. Bad sign. He should have been flat on his back in the dirt, waking up moments after the blinding pain that he remembered. Not somewhere else entirely.

“Ach,” he muttered, groaning as he opened his eyes. Light flickered beyond where he could see and it burned behind his gaze, a headache suddenly blooming at the back of his skull.

He frowned, brows drawn down so tightly they almost hurt as he forced himself upright. His head throbbed. Worse than he’d thought it would. And he tenderly touched the knot on the back of his head while he looked around for any clues as to where he was.

What he found made his blood turn ice cold.

He was in a cage. A metal cage crudely made of iron and what looked like steel. The bars were all uneven distances apart, as though someone hadn’t had enough time to throw this together.

There was a bump on his skull that was the size of a chicken egg, and already he felt rage simmering underneath his skin. Greed could not lose it here. He would not lose control when his people were doing what he’d taught them to do.

Looking down at his body, he tried to assess the damage but was mostly surprised to see there wasn’t really much damage to see. He wasn’t wearing a shirt anymore. All his rings were gone, the necklaces he’d worn, not a scrap of wealth left behind. His pants were still on him, thank goodness, but even they looked dirty. Like he’d been dragged through the mud.

How had he gotten here?

Nerves churned in his belly as he looked around. They were in a cave, it appeared. Nowhere near where they had first attacked him, and unnervingly, his guards were not with him either. Greed had trained his people himself. They were impressive fighters who would stop at nothing to keep him safe, and yet, they were nowhere to be found.

The cave itself was dirty and old, not his attacker’s home base if he had to guess. And his new enemies were all sitting around a fire that burned through his eyes and set fire to the headache that was hard to think around.

They must have heard him sit up. Greed had groaned the moment he’d been upright, but none of them moved. It gave him a moment to look them over.

Dirty.

Musty.

Dirt streaked on their clothing and through their hair. But they were large, at the very least. Tall and broad and muscular. He might have hired them in his own castle if they had approached him for a job.

Unfortunately, they’d tried to kill him, and now he had to kill them.

The biggest of them looked up and yellow eyes met his glare. Yellow, just like Greed’s. Unusual for a human. The man stood up, his height making him seem even more massive than the wide set of his shoulders and broad chest. A scraggly beard covered his face, probably to make him more unrecognizable. His belly stuck out, but not only with weight. There was a natural power to this man, and Greed could see why others would follow him.

He wore leather armor over his chest, molded into the shape of pectorals and abs that he certainly didn’t have. And then the man leaned down, flashing a grin full of gold teeth through the largest gap in the bars.

“Look at you,” he said, his voice low and guttural. “The legendary Greed, all locked up. Right where we want you.”

Greed would not bare his teeth at this criminal like an animal. He was more than that. He was a demon king, and he’d taken this kingdom for his own and held it for almost a thousand years now. Just like his brothers, he could be the politician when the situation called for it.

So he reclined back on his palm and tilted his head to the side, even though it made the world spin. “I’m glad you know who I am. Now, who are you?”

The man laughed. His beard shook with mirth, although it moved slightly too much, like there was something living in the messy tangles. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

What was this? Some kind of kidnapping attempt?

Greed could bend these bars in half if he wanted to. He could destroy the entire cage that they’d built him and then rip out their hearts with his bare hand! They had seen him do this. Everyone in the kingdom knew the rumors or knew someone who had died, impaled on Greed’s claws. Were they so willing to risk their lives?

Apparently they were. Because they all turned to look at him now, their eyes alight with something fierce and dark.

Curious. So curious.

Greed wanted to see where this went. He wanted to know their deepest desire, because they wouldn’t be in his kingdom of thieves if they were good or righteous. If they wanted something from him, they would have to take it. And he wouldn’t make it easy on them.

A few of the others stood from the fire, all their attention focused on him and their leader. The man tilted his head back and laughed. The sound boomed through the cave like thunder.

And Greed might have focused on him if not for a small shadow slipping across the rocks behind them all. He blinked, thinking perhaps the sledgehammer had done more damage than he’d thought, but the shadow kept moving no matter how many times he fluttered his lashes.

A little thief, he realized. A creature who had seen the opportune moment to slip into these villains’ camp. Unaware, they all continued to watch him and their leader without ever noticing the movement at their backs.

The thief was using his capture to their advantage.

He almost felt dirty knowing that. He was a decoy in whatever this person’s plan was. They slid over the rocks, as silent as Greed himself might have been. But then the light illuminated the padding around their shoes and he realized this had likely been the plan for some time. This thief hadn’t wandered across this camp. They knew exactly where these people were going to be and how to steal from them without getting caught.

“You are going to feel pain,” the man in front of him snarled. “For all that you have done. And then you are going to tell us exactly where the Beastmaster’s Horn is.”

That got his attention.

Greed snorted and looked their leader in the eyes again. The man really should notice that Greed hadn’t been paying attention until this moment, but he obviously didn’t. “Absolutely not.”

“You will tell us after the pain I cause you.”

Arching a brow, he replied, “That would require more pain than you are capable of.”

The Beastmaster’s Horn was legendary. It had taken Greed almost three hundred years to track it down. The stories about it claimed that it could control even magical creatures. It summoned them, the sound wriggling through their minds until they were completely under the control of the summoner.

It was not an artifact that needed to be in the hands of a warlord idiot who thought he could trap a demon for long. Still, it was an interesting request and Greed was curious to see how much pain the man thought he could cause.

Greed had spent his entire life fighting. He’d been in this form for a thousand years, and the first memory he had was pain. When he and his brothers had taken on their mortal forms, turning spirit into flesh, he’d been the first to fight off those who tried to stop them.

The taste of metal had never quite left his mouth since.

The shadow moved again. It snuck closer to the fire as the remaining few dirty scoundrels stood up and approached his cage with the others.

He almost growled at them to move. He couldn’t see behind them and watch what was happening with the little thief. Clearly, they were all idiots who were about to lose something important and he wanted to watch.

Then the firelight cast its glow upon golden hair that slipped out from underneath a hood, and all the breath in his lungs caught. Bright blue eyes flicked up, staring at him with wide shock from across the fire. Her face was covered with a strip of dark green fabric and her body was encased in matching leather, hugging her perfect, curvy form.

By all the seven kingdoms, he’d found a goddess in a cave. Maybe he was already dead.

She moved lithe and cat-like over one of the stones the bandits had sat upon. And then, to his surprise, she sat down and pulled one of their bags in front of her. Dismissing him like he was nothing interesting at all.

Even if he hadn’t been Greed himself, he still was a man in a cage. And she wasn’t even going to look at him for more than a brief flick of her eyes?

He should tell them she was there.

But the moment he had the thought, she looked at him again. A pale face with glowing chips of sapphire that widened for a moment and then narrowed as if threatening him. As if saying that she would kill him herself if he let them know she was here.

And so his attention returned to the leader of these bandits, and for the first time in his life, Greed distracted someone so another person could steal.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Greed snarled. “I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I, Greed.” He held out a hand and one of his cronies placed a knife with a silver hilt on his palm. “Do you know what this is?”

“No.” He didn’t have to try to sound bored. He was.

“This blade is known as Bonescraper.” The man held it over his head and drew it out of the scabbard. The light gleamed on the faint yellow edge. “I think you know it well.”

Damn it.

How the hell had a bandit gotten his hands on the Bonescraper? That blade had been lost to the desert centuries ago, for the last time it had carved its way through Greed’s back. The damned knife deserved to be locked up in his castle, where no one would ever put their hands on it again.

Bonescraper. These bandits were lucky, and they didn’t even know how lucky they were.

Wincing, he leaned to the side to get a glimpse of the beautiful woman rifling through their bags. She had three of them around her knees now. Elbow deep in the third, she noticed him looking at her again.

Rolling her eyes, she widened them forcefully and then nodded at the bandits. As if telling him to keep his attention on the problem at hand.

But something in him said that she was the problem here. He knew how to handle bandits, and Bonescraper wouldn’t kill him. It would just hurt like a bitch until he lost all control and likely tore himself out of this cage. The wave of blood afterward would be so wondrous to see.

His eyes flicked to the blade before he bared his teeth in what he hoped resembled a smile. “That blade is familiar to me, yes.”

“Then you know it will make you scream.”

He knew nothing of the sort. Leaning back on his hand one last time, he noticed the little thief had tugged out a roll of parchment from one of the bags and stuffed it into her pants.

If it was that important, she shouldn’t shove it against skin and fabric. The damned woman would ruin whatever it was that she was risking her life for. And she was risking her life.

These men were ready to kill him. What did she think they’d do to her?

Greed had never once wondered about the repercussions of another person’s wellbeing. Clearly he had been affected by his time with Lust and that rather pretty sorceress his brother had captured. And he’d spent far too much time watching them go all moon-eyed for each other before he’d left.

He didn’t care if she got caught. He didn’t care if she stole that scroll that she’d risked her life for. None of it mattered to him because... because...

One of the bandits was turning around. He was going to see that woman, sitting at their fire like she belonged there, and he would have to show them how powerful he really was because he damn well wasn’t going to let her die.

Greed let out a snarl of rage that had everyone in the cave freezing. All the bandits watched him with wary eyes, but the woman bolted upright, immediately looking for her exit. Good girl. She knew how to run when she had to, and that’s all that mattered.

He launched himself at the bars, ensuring all the bandits saw him move. They would fear him. They would soon writhe underneath his claws while they begged for mercy.

The moment his hands touched the metal, his palms burned. He released the bars, hissing in anger and backing away from them. Not a metal he was used to, apparently.

“Did you think we haven’t spent time learning about you? Hm?” The bandit leader bent, tilting his head to the side and brandishing the blade. “We’ve been hunting you for a very long time, Greed. We will not waste all that effort on a single night where I just cut you up a little and then give you a chance to escape. You’re going to tell us everything you know, and I’m going to break you by the end of it.”

Unease bubbled in his stomach. “Who exactly are you?”

The man raised his arms from his sides, stretching them out wide. “We’re the Horde.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t. But it’s the only answer you’re going to get.”

One bandit tossed something into his cage. Smoke erupted between his feet and Greed wondered just how much trouble he was actually in. His guards didn’t know where he was. No one would come for him any time soon. The bars were untouchable, and the people here wanted him dead.

The mist hit his nose and rage went wild through his body. He hadn’t been in his battle form for centuries, and yet he could feel it writhing underneath his skin. Claws piercing through his nails, teeth lengthening into fangs while his tail whipped wildly behind him. He’d never lost control. Never...

His eyes sought the little thief. She’d used the distraction to scramble back on top of the rocks at the mouth of the cave, slipping into the shadows. All three bags were placed exactly where they had been before, not a single thread out of place.

As a roar built in his chest, he had a single moment of pride. She’d stolen it. She’d succumbed to her own greed, and that was... good.

The roar ripped out of his chest and Greed lost himself in the anger, rage, and torture that would soon come.