Chapter 17

ChapterSeventeen

This was stupid. He should have gone after her himself rather than wait for anyone else to bring her back.

Yes, there was now the added nonsense of his brother coming to his castle. Gluttony had cut too many ties with all the other kingdoms, and that was the only reason he was coming here. Greed was certain of that.

Of course, Gluttony and Greed did have their shared gripes with their counterparts. The others lived in rather easy kingdoms. No one else had been tricked into taking on a jungle kingdom that was slowly degrading into a desert. And Gluttony’s kingdom was a swamp that rarely saw the light of day.

Greed didn’t even know what he was going to do with him. He could keep him in the back of the castle, he supposed. He needed to make sure that all his servants understood they were never to be alone with the visiting demon king. Likely, he’d want to put Ivo or Morag in charge of keeping them safe. But that also put them far too close to his sibling who would notice that they weren’t human.

Gluttony had a big mouth. His brother would be the first to tell the others that Greed had broken the covenant they had all taken when they first took to mortal form.

No other spirit could join them. Not until they were certain what their existence would do to the world, and how it would affect the kingdoms that they ran.

But... It had been a thousand years since they’d taken these forms and he didn’t believe they’d changed that much. The mortals looked up to them as gods, however, and he supposed Pride recognized the inherent problem.

No one needed an abundance of demons or gods running amuck about the kingdoms.

Sighing, he ran his fingers through his hair until it stood up in all directions. He had so much to manage inside these walls, and all he wanted to do was to be outside of them. He wished the sands were blowing in his face, cutting at his cheeks, whispering that he needed to find more hidden treasure. Treasure that he now found in the heart of a woman.

“You’re obsessed,” he muttered as he followed a stream that ran through his oasis. “Obsession is never good.”

He knew this about himself. He’d find something that he wanted and then he couldn’t think until he had it. Not even his mind could focus until he could put it on a shelf, looked at it every day, and then eventually grew bored with it.

The woman would bore him. Varya might be a strange mortal who had argued and slapped at him, but she was still the same as all the others. Someday he would look at her and she would have lost her shine. Her newness.

But that day was not anytime soon, and he wanted to keep her for as long as he could. He wanted that thrill in his chest that he had caught something impossible.

And oh, there was nothing like adding something to his collection.

Her golden hair would look so lovely spread out on his dark green pillows. Her tanned skin would lighten each day that she wasn’t subjected to the sun for long hours of the day. Soon her muscular body would round with luxury and all the food he would ply her with. He’d watch those changes knowing that he was the one who had bid her to change.

Having a mortal treasure might not be so bad after all. If he could only find her.

Tilting his head back in the air that was cool with mist, he filled his lungs. He could almost smell her on the wind. Her lovely, spicy scent that always smelled like the wilds and the tombs that she haunted.

She was still in his nose. After days of missing her, she was still in every one of his senses.

Until the scent mingled with blood.

A low growl rumbled in his chest and his eyes narrowed on the entrance to his home. The low wall would provide no protection against anyone who wanted to attack the castle, but no one had been so foolish in centuries. Who would want to directly anger the demon king who ruled them all? They had a death wish.

Or they wanted to draw him out.

Again, he filled his lungs with her scent and the acrid bite of blood. It wasn’t possible. Whoever had taken her wasn’t so stupid that they would drag her to his front door? They would know he would tear them apart limb from limb for the insult.

But maybe she hadn’t been kidnapped. Maybe she had been running all this time, waiting for him to find her. Though it was an unlikely thought, he still sprinted to the front door without calling for his guards. Without calling for anyone.

If she was injured in another man’s arms, Greed would kill him.

With a single jerk, he flung open the doors. He’d already prepared himself for a wall of men and women, armed to the teeth, ready to battle with him. He was looking forward to the blood he’d splatter across the sands, feeding the very desert itself.

He hadn’t expected to just see her. Varya. His little thief and treasure, weaving where she stood.

Alone. She looked so small as she stared up at him with those wide blue eyes. Well, one of them. The other had swollen shut. There were so many bruises over her lovely face that he almost didn’t recognize her. Her arms were tied behind her back, every breath was labored, and her clothing was beyond ripped and torn.

His heart wrenched, and he felt his eyes burn with tears at the sight of her. “Varya?” he whispered, as though a loud noise might scare her away.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

She staggered forward, and that was all he had been waiting for. Greed opened his arms and gently caught her long before she hit the ground. He cushioned her head against his chest and swung her up into his arms as though she weighed nothing. Light as a feather in his arms, she curled toward him. Trusting him.

He’d never felt this heat in his chest before, but he knew that he never wanted to let this feeling go.

Spinning, he raced into his home once again. Calling out for his guards, he shouted, “Ivo! Morag! Get a healer now!”

His two guards appeared as if summoned by magic, one of them racing out of the gardens and the other appearing high over his head at the edge of one of the glass domes. Morag darted down the stairs toward them, while Ivo leapt from one platform to another, quickly making his way down until they both met him at the entrance to the healing dome.

The healers were... somewhere. He didn’t know where they spent most of their day, but he knew they’d come at his call. No one denied him anything in this castle, and he refused to lose her.

Varya had gone limp in his arms, and he could only hope that she’d passed out. Considering the amount of injuries all over her body, he didn’t want her awake. That amount of pain was too much for even a demon like him. Let alone someone so fragile.

He looked down at her slack features, at the bruises that turned her lovely skin shades of purple and red, and he found his arms shaking with rage. He would kill them all for touching her. For touching what was his. He would rip their tongues out of their mouths and serve them to her on a golden platter. If she wished for him to paint her with their blood, he would. If she wanted their eyes in a goblet and their heads on pikes, he would gladly tear them to pieces.

“Greed?” Ivo quietly said, his voice pitched low and worried. “Is this her?”

He couldn’t answer for fear of what he would say.

Instead, it was Morag who replied. “Yes, that’s the woman I saw with him the first time. Hard to recognize her in this state, but...”

She stopped the moment she saw the anger in his eyes. She toed a line, and she knew it. No one would say another word about Varya’s injuries until the healers were in the room. She needed their silence, help, and attention. Not their judgement on how ruined her body was.

And it was ruined. He could hardly look at her without a lump forming in his throat and that damned heat burning in his eyes again.

This room for healing was one of the prettiest in his home. Tall windows let in the sunlight that fractured off the warm terracotta walls and floor. Plants decorated the corners, and low beds with cream-colored sheets were placed three to each wall. Not many, but there weren’t many people to heal in this castle. The entire room smelled like lavender and chamomile. Shelves on each wall contained items needed to heal. Thread, needles, jars of green healing plants and pastes that would encourage the body to mend itself.

“Greed?” Ivo said again as Morag sprinted out of the room to find the healers. “We need to release her hands.”

“Her hands?” he rasped, and then set her down on the bed. “What do you mean, her hands?”

Then he saw them. Her arms were tied behind her back. He’d thought she was just holding them strangely. He hadn’t thought they were still tied up. Rage made his vision skew. He knew he was already getting too close to changing into his battle form, incapable of stopping himself as he wondered about all the nightmares that she’d endured and what they had done to her.

They’d tied up his treasure. They’d beaten her and who knows what else. Greed would chew on their bones and anchor their souls to this realm so he could kill them again and again. He would rip out their spines. He would shred their bodies to the last sinew and then stitch it all back together so he could rip it apart again.

Ivo moved behind her, his features carefully arranged into a semblance of calm. “I will remove them.”

“I’ll do it,” Greed snarled, his voice a little too deep and a little too rough.

He reached behind her and sliced through the cord with a single claw. Her free arm fell forward, the wrong way. All limp and stretched while her shoulder looked too bulbous. Swollen underneath her leather armor.

Greed swallowed hard as his eyes trailed down that limp arm to her swollen fingers. Wrong. This was all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to get a broken treasure back when she was meant to be alive and well and golden.

He was supposed to decorate her with jewels. Hand feed her and pour wine through those plush lips until she whispered sweet nothings to him and instead, he’d been given this broken doll. Someone else had played with her too hard, and he feared she’d never be the same.

A woman rushed into the room with Morag right behind her. He vaguely remembered this healer had been the woman to put his tail back into place. Her ivory curls billowed around her head, perhaps showing her age, although he hadn’t ever paid enough attention to humans to know if that was correct. She wore a white coat around her silk clothing, almost as though she’d still been asleep when Morag had retrieved her.

The healer sucked in a breath as she saw the state of her new patient. “What happened?”

“I do not know,” Greed snarled. “She showed up at our front doors in this state. Or are you suggesting otherwise?”

Ivo put his hand on Greed’s chest, gently pushing him away from the healer who ignored the snarling demon who stood on the opposite side of her patient. The woman had no fear as she started trailing her hands over Varya’s limp body and then shifted her onto her back.

“Careful,” Greed hissed.

Again, Ivo moved him farther back. “We have to let her work.”

“If she keeps moving her like that, she’ll do more damage.”

“She won’t.” Ivo stood in front of him, forcing Greed to meet his gaze. “The healer will do her best. Your treasure is weak and we do not know how long she’s been like this. We cannot interfere or we will be the ones hurting her. Yes?”

He couldn’t stand to leave her. Not like this. Not when the healer was already cutting her out of the leather armor, and what if she cut through Varya’s delicate skin? He refused to see more holes in that skin that haunted his dreams, not when the thought made his throat close up and panic claw in his chest.

He’d never felt like this before, and Greed hated it. He didn’t know what to do with empty hands and eyes that had seen too much.

“I can’t leave her here on her own,” he said, wide gaze locking onto Ivo’s. “If she wakes in a strange place... She’ll be terrified.”

“Humans are often terrified.”

“She won’t know where she is.”

“She will.” Ivo gave him a little shove. “She came to you, Greed. She knew where we were and she knew to come here after what happened to her. We will leave her here. This is where she needs to be.”

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t suck in enough air because what if she woke up and needed him? What if she required a familiar face in a place that surely wasn’t what she had expected?

Breathing like he’d sprinted for hours, he stared into Ivo’s calm expression. “She’s never been here before, Ivo. She’ll wake up and have no idea where she is or who is around her. I can’t put her through that after everything that’s happened to her.”

Ivo’s gaze softened, but before he could say a word his sister blurted, “We don’t even know if she’ll live, Greed.”

And oh, he wanted to take out all his rage and aggression on her. He wanted to scream at her to say that again. To suggest that Varya wouldn’t make it because that wasn’t an option. His treasure would live. He demanded it.

Because he couldn’t think of a life where he wouldn’t see her mischievous expression in the middle of a tomb. Or the sound of her laughter as she raced away from him in the desert. He didn’t want to know what life would be like without her little grunts of frustration as they sparred, or the catch of her breath in her throat when he kissed her.

He couldn’t let her go without seeing happiness in her eyes. And not just a smile, but true happiness as she saw the kingdom change because she’d asked him to do it.

He would give her all of that. All of it.

Pushing past Ivo, he moved the healer away so he could lean down and press a soft kiss to her bruised and bloody forehead. “Live for me,” he whispered against her skin. “And I will give you the world.”