The book clattered on the ground as I clumsily knocked it off the pile.
I brought my hands to my eyes to rub them, but the bandages scraped against my eyelids. Reading for so long had strained them; I felt like my brain was digging through mud.
Magnavex snapped her fingers, and the imp started to move toward me.
“Stop!” I held my palm toward the imp and jumped out of my seat.
It stopped, glancing toward Magnavex. She ignored it, her eyes remained on me.
I knelt down to grab the book. That’s when I saw the back of my chair had a hole in the bottom of the backrest.
I inspected the chair next to me, then I looked at Magnavex’s chair as well. Her tail was going through the hole.
I twisted, looking at my back.
No tail. Is this a special Demon Lord thing where we don’t have a tail? Did Dormathis have one?
I cleared my throat. “Magnavex?” I paused momentarily before continuing. “Why are all of these chairs designed for people with tails?”
Magnavex’s brow lifted ever so slightly. She shifted in her seat, her tail swishing from side to side.
“I had told you I was placed in charge of this library by Colbran, our previous Demon Lord, correct?” Her tone was even, but her eyes brightened faintly when she spoke his name.
I nodded.
She let out a soft breath, closed her eyes, and tapped her fingers in a steady rhythm against the tabletop. Her tail flicked once, slow and deliberate, like a cat deciding whether to pounce. “Bring us some tea,” she said to the imp without opening her eyes.
She looked at me once again. “This would be better discussed with some tea.” She explained
She was probably trying to stall for time, to figure out what to tell me, which is a thing grownups do when they don’t want to tell you the full truth.
I didn’t plan on giving her the opportunity. “Why do you have a tail and I don’t?” I asked, pressing her. A memory popped into my mind. “Dormathis had mentioned something about a Sigilborn?” I added.
I kept eye contact. Her amber eyes stayed locked to my brown ones.
“No, my tail has nothing to do with so-called Sigilborn,” she finally said. “Eclipserans are not naturally born with tails. A Demon Lord before my time, Drazmeth, had come to the decision. He thought we should look the part. We crafted tails”, she stood up and pointed to her own, “that we might better mirror the devils we were accused of being. Horns, to mark our authority. Hooves, to tower above the rabble.”
I reached for the top of my head, not finding any horns. I wiggled my toes, definitely not hooved. I hadn’t even noticed. I guess I haven’t paid sufficient attention to my appearance.
Wait… were my eyes even brown?
“We wear it to show our loyalty to the Demon Lord… to you.” At that she bent, bowing. I looked away from her and saw the imp bowing behind her, holding a tray with the teapot.
I shifted my gaze to the left and saw the gray demon, who was also in a deep bow.
A jolt went through my back, a sign of loyalty, to me.
***
I lowered the empty teacup on the plate, my hand shivering as it clattered on the porcelain.
Magnavex had left a little while ago, but she left her demons behind. The imp was standing about twelve feet away. It kept tugging on his shrunken outfit, its legs shaking slightly as if it struggled to stand. At the very least it was blind; I didn’t feel its gaze on me the entire time, even if it was looking in my direction.
But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was the gray one, Virellin, the book named it. That long-limbed freak kept moving all over the place, bringing me books. At first it would place them right next to me, nothing scarier than having a demon pop up beside you while you’re reading, but I reprimanded it. Now it always placed the books across the table from me. Not that it helped much. With its range it could easily lunge at me before I could even react.
I mean, by Lumisiel’s grace, I don’t even have magic in this stupid body. What kind of existence is this, where kids have to be so helpless? The only thing stopping them from killing me is my authority, the authority they think I have. Cole’s authority.
My leg started tapping excessively. Without magic… without magic—they have magic, Magnavex showed me. they summon demons. That’s what Eclipserans do. I—I need to get my thoughts in order.
I stood up. “Give me space, I need space to think.”
The demons hesitated, then bowed almost in unison. The imp shuffled backward, bumping into a chair, while the gray one lowered its long arms and crept several paces away, its movements stiff and unnatural.
I waited until they had retreated to the edges of the room before I began pacing around the table.
I need to make a plan. Father always said: You can’t harvest before you sow, and you can’t sow before you clear the weeds. One thing has to happen before the next. So what comes first here?
I started another circle around the table.
Okay, one: I need to not get eaten. Scratch that—let’s make it stay alive. For that, I need the demons to keep thinking of me as Lucarion the Demon Lord, formerly Cole.
Another lap.
Two: Nobody in my life can know what I’m going through, at least not until I have the hang of it. Alaric already tried to exorcise me once. Who knows? Next time it might work, and I don’t know what would happen if the me that is Lucarion dies. Or I might get arrested for colluding with demons and end up in the Spire of Judgement like Duchess Aurelisse.
“My pace quickened, each step louder, sharper. I swiped at my hair but came up empty, so I tugged at my sleeve instead. The motion made my bandaged fingers throb with ache.”
No, no, I can’t let anyone know. They could do experiments on me or use me to get information on the demons or the Demon Lord. Assuming they don’t know it’s me, which, if they do, they might just kill me, me to kill him, me. And what if that doesn’t work? I’d just have to go the rest of my life working with the demons, my family thinking I’m dead, just waiting for the Hero to appear and—
“Ugh!” My leg clipped the table’s edge. Pain jolted me out of the spiral.
I stopped, trying to continue thinking, but my thoughts seemed to freeze as I stood still. So instead I limped the next lap, my fists still balled so tight my hands shook.
Okay. As I was thinking: nobody can know. That brings me to three.
Reforming the demons. If I want the Hero to not kill me, and to get help with this whole dual-body thing, I need the demons to no longer be a threat. For that, I need to convince the Eclipserans to no longer use the demons, and then we can live freely.
So in order to reform the demons, I need to stay alive. If I want to stay alive, I can’t tell anyone who I am. Which means to not get killed, I need to maintain my cover. Which I can use to then get rid of the demons.
Now what would a Demon Lord do?
***
I clasped my hands behind my back and started to walk around Magnavex. She followed me with her eyes alone, her head never turning, tail twitching lightly each time I passed. I tried to stand straighter, puffing my chest the way Father used to when talking to merchants, but the effect felt forced.
“Last night you summoned a group of Virellin demons, but when you did there was a whole spectacle involved. Was that just for show?” I tried to flick my hand sharply the way I’d seen officials do, but it came out jerky, awkward. “Were you merely trying to wow me with a performance? Because if you were…”
My voice trailed off. I hadn’t thought of what to say next.
“My Lord.”
She rose to her feet in one fluid motion. Her horns caught the torchlight as she straightened to her full height. Her shadow fell over me, long and heavy across the stone floor. I swallowed, fighting the urge to step back.
“With a hand on her chest she said, “I promise you that was not theatrics. It was just a different way of summoning. What I did last night is called concentric summoning. It allows me to summon multiple demons at once, which I thought was necessary in order to find you sufficient books.” Her words were calm, deliberate, but her gaze never wavered.
I glanced past her at the imp, its knees wobbling weakly.
It would make sense if she isn’t using it all the time. Given that I haven’t even seen the sun once since being born here, there is no way for them to recharge their spell limit. But then why would she summon them individually? Isn’t that a waste of a spell? Why wouldn’t she just use the better one?
“Why would you summon one at a time then? Isn’t that kind of a waste?”
“Waste?” she echoed, tilting her head slightly. Before continuing “Concentric summoning has plenty of disadvantages, the main one being its limited range. If I had used it to get imps, then Sebastion over there wouldn’t be capable of getting us tea, for example.”
She named the imp? No, not important. What would a Demon Lord do now?
My throat tightened on the words, and I forced my voice lower, deeper than Olivander’s had ever gone. “Magnavex, I demand you teach me this concentric summoning spell.”
“My Lord, I apologize, but I can’t just teach you concentric summoning.” Her voice apologetic “It requires for you to already have a contract with a demon.”
“Well then, umm…” Ugh, a Demon Lord wouldn’t hesitate.
I slammed my palm onto the table, pain lancing up through my bandaged hand. The crack echoed through the silence. ‘Then we will simply make a contract!’ I declared, forcing as much authority into my pained voice as I could.
The gesture hung in the air a beat too long, and heat rushed to my cheeks at how childish I must have looked.