CHAPTER ELEVEN

When Avis returned to his own body, he lifted his head off Columbine’s with a slow breath that sounded an awful lot like a sigh of resignation in his own ears. He needed a distraction. Another one. His heart couldn’t take any more surprises of this magnitude.

“So, you and your sister got into trouble for fighting,” he said, deciding to stick with the only situation so far that he felt marginally in control of: the sibling rivalry between his children. Through the transparency of her memories, he’d caught glimpses of her and Cora struggling over the wall where the Highborn Hellions apparently stored their weapons. “That’s how this whole thing between the two of you started in the first place, wasn’t it?”

Columbine cringed, her entire body tensing as if she anticipated the back of his hand at any moment. “Yes, Father.”

To show her he’d never do such a despicable thing as strike a little girl across the face (across the ass, yes, but never the face) Avis tried hard to smile gently at her instead. He really did. But his lips refused to comply, and he ended up with his head tipped backwards against the headboard.

His teeth ground in small circles as he stared at the ceiling. Even as a child, he’d always heard of the differences between his kind and the Hellions, but he’d never in his wildest dreams suspected just how culturally different they were. And right on cue, he smelt that pungent odour of wafting smoke again.

Closing his eyes, he slowly shook his head. He didn’t even need to look. “Dammit, princess. Knock it off. I’m not a Highborn Hellion and I see nothing wrong with a small scrap now and again between siblings. If anything, it helps maintain the pecking order.”

He could almost sense Columbine’s uncertainty, but when he looked, the chest plates that had been pumping out the smoke like a set of bellows had stilled. “Pecking order?” she asked.

Avis nodded. “You’ll see what I mean when you meet my family, princess. Mystallians aren’t like the Highborn Hellions. We don’t protect our women. They have to learn to fend for themselves, or they learn to run faster than the family members who are chasing them. That’s their only two options.” He waited to see her reaction, not that he could gauge it well when she was in this form. But she did seem to be taking it onboard. That is, until she asked her next question.

“Do I … disappoint you, Father?”

“No!” Avis shouted, tired of having to say it every other second. Columbine hissed and jerked within his hold, but before she could resume that realm-damned subservient position at the end of the bed, he tightened his grip around her and drew her in close. “Shhh,” he shushed, rocking her slightly. “It’s all right, princess. I’m not angry at you.”

He didn’t stop until the tension in her wings lessened and she relaxed into his chest, her head using the flesh below his collarbone as a makeshift pillow. With so many emotions that he’d seen in her essence, he could tell she would have an ongoing battle to control her own. But that’s another battle for another day. Today was about their relationship, and he decided to change tactics. He gently stroked the side of her head until she rumbled against him in pleasure.

“Things are just … very different where I come from, that’s all.” As he rested his cheek against the leathery crown of her head, he ran his hand over the bony ridge of her right wing. “I don’t honestly think I could ever be angry at you for long, princess.”

“I do not ever want you to be angry at me, Father,” Columbine replied, as she encased his upper body with her wings and hooked one of her hands around his neck. Her breath was hot against his neck, but in the best possible way, for it meant she was there.

For the thousandth time since he had awoken yesterday morning, Avis mentally kicked himself for being so monumentally stupid. This was as real as it got, and he’d abused it shamelessly.

He pressed his lips into her head and returned that cuddle tenfold. Closing his eyes against the torrential guilt that threatened to drown him, he silently promised all of existence that he’d do whatever he had to, to make this right. To make them a family again. “I’m sure you’ll never give me cause to, Columbine.”

“I love you, Father.”

Avis smiled as a warmth akin to happiness flooded through him from deep inside, washing away the unpleasant bitterness of guilt. Listening to her say that completely made his day and for several long minutes, he dedicated every second of the feeling to memory. There was no doubt that this would be one of his go-to memories when things felt out of control. Peace, happiness, and the unconditional love of his little girl in his arms.

But all things must eventually come to an end and he felt her lift her head off his chest. “Father,” she said, pulling away just enough for him to see her face. “What is a princess?”

Avis was struck dumb by the naivety of the question. What is a princess? he repeated to himself, almost wishing he’d misheard. Oh, you have got to be kidding me! He stared at her, practically willing her to say she was joking, but then cold reality set in.

Why had he expected her to know something like that? She was of the demonic hierarchy. Emphasis on demonic. At four years’ old, she’d probably never left the Well of Hell in her life, so at what point was she supposed to have learned about Mystal or other realms that use royalty? He rubbed his finger across the pointed tip of her beak, for that thought begged the question: “What exactly do they teach you here, baby?”

Columbine pulled herself into a sitting position on his knees. “I know how to behave, and how to please, Father. I am very fast at shapeshifting and I know how to read and write in many languages. I also know how to sing and dance.” The flame that hovered in her eyeless recesses intensified enthusiastically. “Would you like to hear me sing, Father?”

“You can sing and dance?”

Columbine nodded, the fire in her sockets growing in her determination to be believed. “Oh, yes, Father. I asked if I could learn some of your grounded bipedal dances too, because Maxrintha says I learn too fast to be with the others, so she teaches me all by myself. But she said she did not know any of your dances, so she taught me some of your grounded bipedal songs instead. I have been practising …”

“We’re Mystallians, princess.” Although Avis had made the correction as gently as he could, Columbine closed her beak and the flames in her eyes dimmed until they almost went out. “Call my kind Mystallians. Grounded bipeds isn’t exactly flattering.”

That was the understatement of the year. ‘Grounded’ because Mystallians couldn’t shapeshift, and ‘bipeds’ because the only form they had consisted of had two arms and two legs. It was incredibly insulting … and probably not that dissimilar to the ‘mindless blob’ jabs which he and his kind shot at the Hellions in return. He twisted his lips wryly, making a mental note not to call them that within his new family’s hearing. Or at least, I’ll try not to.

Columbine’s eye sockets rounded in fear and suddenly her head was bowed, and her shoulders hunched submissively. “Forgive me, Father. I did not mean …”

An instinctive curse rushed from the back of his throat and it took everything he had not to let it pass his lips as he clamped his hand around her beak to silence that realm-damned apology.

“For Mystal’s sake, I’ve told you how I feel about apologies, princess, and I’m fast losing my patience with the way you keep offering them anyway. I’ve told you I’m not going to take offence at every little thing you say, but it is going to annoy me if you keep ignoring what I’m telling you.”

He pulled her forward gently by the beak until his nose brushed against his knuckle and their faces were only a hand-width apart. “Stop. Apologising. To me. Do you understand?” Her head dipped a little against his hand and he let her go. “You’ll know when I’m angry with you, princess. Trust me, with my temper, you’ll know.”

Columbine nodded dutifully, but when another resentful growl crept past his clenched teeth, she said, “Yes, Father.”

A deliberate shuffling of clawed feet at the doorway was the first indication Avis had that they were no longer alone. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but if he and Columbine had been in Mystal having this private discussion, whichever servant was dumb enough to interrupt them would soon be replaced. If they ever found the body.

Sliding his narrowed gaze to the door, he watched as Frash slid to her knees with her head bowed. “What is it, woman?” he barked, for Frash had unknowingly given Avis a target he could rant at.

Frash leaned forward and pressed her forehead to the ground, then rose to her feet. “Forgive the intrusion, Milord,” she replied, though her attention was more on Columbine than him and she wasn’t at all happy—well, that made two of them. “But you need your rest and it is necessary for Lady Columbine to leave now. Her presence is clearly upsetting you.”

Avis’ head shot up in disbelief. He wasn’t sure what part of that condescending garbage he wanted to rip apart first! “You seriously think I need the likes of you to decide what I need and how I feel, you fucking overgrown larvae?” he bellowed savagely, wishing he knew exactly where in that servant’s demonic body Clarise had hidden the seclusion ring that protected the bitch from his mental assault.

He’d learned in the first few hours of consciousness the day before that his wife had ensured her beloved servants were beyond his mental control by issuing each of them with seclusion rings, and ever since then he’d been at their mercy. At the time, he’d sulkily compared it to the way tefsla neutralised shapeshifting. Now, they were crossing the line by telling him how things were going to be. They. Were. Servants. The realm-damned mother-fucking help!

Columbine squirmed in his arms to get away and he quickly redirected his attention to her. “Princess, no, wait,” he said, but she was already starting to shift through his fingers.

“Milord, let her go. Lady Clarise has left explicit instructions regarding your recuperation and they do not involve the presence of Lady Columbine.”

“No, I …” But then the servant’s cavalier attitude along with her words of command finally sank in and the rage that coursed through his recovering pride soared to life like wildfire. “Fucking what?” he all but roared at the woman.

Never—not ever had he been treated like a mindless invalid, and by a fucking servant no less! Over the last two years he’d been attacked, violated, tortured in the most unfathomable ways, but every one of those actions was designed to break him and he knew it.

That wasn’t to say they hadn’t succeeded, but never in his life had he ever been subjected to such patronising mollycoddling, and what was worse, in his weakened physical state and her mind hidden behind a seclusion ring, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it!

And he hated it!

Ordinarily, he could punch through marble-like paper if he felt like it and he had neither wanted nor needed this level of care in his fucking life! Not even after his father was done with him as a child! He’d always found a hole to fall into to lick his own wounds, then crawl out days later once the storm of Lord Theodrick had passed. This—this suffocation from well-meaning females that were beneath him made him want to scream!

“Love you, Father,” Columbine called, and misted through his fingers like a ghost before he could stop her.

“No!” Avis surged up on to his knees with his hands still outstretched towards the open doors. That doorway was the only way in or out of the bedroom, so he knew she had to have hightailed it in that direction, even if he couldn’t see her. “Columbine!” he shouted, but so long as his daughter remained invisible, he couldn’t bring her back. “Wait!”

Frash rushed across the room and grabbed his outstretched hands at the wrists, using her height to try and wrangle him back into bed. The aggressive contact shocked Avis, but not enough to distract him from the open door. If he maintained his focus and she slipped up and returned to a solid form just inside the sitting room, he could still catch her.

Red haze filled his vision when the seconds ticked by and it didn’t seem likely. “Get off me, woman!” he snarled, heaving against the Hellion grip to break contact.

“Milord, you must calm yourself. You are getting too excited,” Frash insisted, as a second set of hands took his shoulders and forced him back onto the bed.

Avis swore and dug his heels into the mattress, arching his back beneath the hold. By the twin notes! She hadn’t seen excited yet! He was going to kill this servant! Somehow, some way, someday, she’d die for this! His rage and humiliation would be vindicated! If he swore to nothing else …

“Milord!’ Frash insisted, stretching her height to tower over him so she could add gravitational weight to her restraining hands. “Please! You must stop!”

Her demand only fuelled his fury. He twisted his weight on to one leg and struck out at her with the other, attempting to kick her away. She sucked her belly out past her spine in an unnatural angle and he completely missed.

Fucking shapeshifting bitch! Before he could try again, something pierced the insides of his wrists within her holds, just over the veins, and he felt an uncomfortable burn work its way to his shoulders. Almost immediately his rage subsided, and a light headed euphoric sensation took its place. He stared at her, and he knew he wanted to smash her, but the drive to do so was slipping out of his reach just as easily as Columbine had.

“Forgive me, Milord,” Frash said, supporting his weight as she eased him back on to his side of the bed with his head on the pillows. On his way down, he’d thought his vision was playing tricks on him since the demoness seemed to have two sets of arms coming out of her elbows.

But then all four hands let him go and he realised she really had sprouted a second set of forearms and hands to restrain him. There were only two of them in the room after all. Frash stood over him—her four forearms melding back into two. “You are not well enough to be so excited.”

“F-Fuck … you,” Avis forced himself to say as his eyelids sagged heavily. He blinked hard and shook his head, willing himself to not surrender to whatever was happening to him. He wanted to be angry at this woman. This female who was currently sliding in and out of focus. More out than in with every passing second. Shapes, then colours all rolled together. “Wha … whasha do … t’me?” he slurred, fighting the darkness that pressed in relentlessly from all sides.

Frash smiled in a matronly fashion and drew the sheets to his neck, tucking him in with all the care of a mother. “Sleep, Milord,” she said, bowing at the waist as she stepped away from the bed without answering him.

No matter how much he didn’t want to, darkness overcame him just before she reached the door.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

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