To Bewitch a Devil

213 All in the name of love

“Maybe if you didn’t have such a lonely life, you would be able to focus on someone else,” Neera said.

Freya bristled. “And I am thankful I don’t have my brain tied to foolish decisions in the name of love.”

“Or maybe you are just trying to convince yourself,” Neera said. “How about Azriel? Or one of the Dukes? Maybe a talk with the King would see that you have someone to contain you.”

“I am not some wild animal.” Freya snarled at her. There was the faintest hint of a raised brow from Neera at that. “And you have no right or power to do anything to me.”

“I am going to be Queen, you are forgetting that.” Neera reminded her. Freya held herself back from slashing her claws through Neera’s face. With what happened between them in the last encounter, she wasn’t sure of what Neera was capable of doing or the kind of powers she possessed.

“Be on my good side,” Neera continued. “And we won’t have any problems. Get in my way, and, well, you’d have to try to see it. So, do you agree to sit quietly in a corner and be a good girl?”

It was one of the worst anger that coursed through Freya, and what was even worse was that she wasn’t able to unleash it. Not on purpose. Her hands wouldn’t move. If anything, Neera would have been mincemeat after uttering that statement.

“I would repeat myself only once again,” Neera said. Freya held back a scream as each of her claws began to dig into opposite palms, and she could feel the blood trickling down.

“Would you sit and stay quiet like a good girl?”

.....

“You cannot kill me,” Freya grunted out.

“Maybe. But I can make you beg for it.”

Her claws pierced even deeper, and Freya tore out a scream as she fell to the ground. Where Neera had come to possess such powers as a demon, Freya didn’t understand. It was unseen, different, and evil.

“I will… behave,” Freya said at last.

Something unlocked in her hands, like shackles coming undone. She brought her hands before her, and five deep indents of wounds bloodied her palms.

“That wasn’t so hard,” Neera said. “I will have you as my maid of honour. Look, even I as a maid, didn’t have that kind of privilege.”

It wasn’t a request, but an order. And as Freya stared at her bloodied hands, she didn’t want to come to know what other worse fate she would suffer in the hands of Neera; for Zavian, for herself, she had to act along till she was sure of a plan to end this unhinged maid.

“It was nice having a sisterly chat, but I must go now,” Neera said. She left, and the gates opened just as they did before, with some invisible power.

Freya noticed that Neera didn’t lock it back behind her. She waited, and when no one came back in to lock up, she pulled herself up and walked out the doors.

Freedom, that one step, gave her an adrenaline rush. Never again would she ever be in that dungeon.

She needed to deal with a whole load of workers. But first things first, she needed a very hot bath.

….

Penelope found her lips drawing into an involuntary smile.

At first, the maids pointed it out and asked questions when she would stare in reverie. She would try to fight the blush as the heat flushed through her, the memories pulling out of her like her best dreams—slow caresses, lingering kisses, pleasured gasps, whispered endearments. Azriel was like the best of liquor, and she was drunk on him.

And she found herself wanting more of him.

But she held herself back every time, reminded herself that it was a onetime thing, something she needed at that moment, like a drug to cure her of a sadness that had come over her, and Azriel removed every trace of it.

“Pen is smiling again,” one of the maids, a middle-aged woman, said as she walked past her. Penelope looked at the basket of laundry at her feet, and she wondered how long she had forgotten herself while going down memory lane again.

“My bet tells me it is a man,” another maid, a young one the age of Pen, said with a coy smile. She pulled a bed sheet off the line and winked at Pen. Another blush betrayed Pen as it fired through her.

“It is not a man. Not just having one is capable of making me smile.” Pen argued weakly as she counted the clothes in her basket.

“Oh, like we have anything interesting going on in our lives.”

“Other than waiting for the Master to bring in his latest conquest,” the older one snickered.

Penelope could feel the corners of her lips droop and the blush extinguish by the reality of the kind of demon Azriel was and forever will be; a rake.

“It has been quite a while though,” the younger maid said. “Wasn’t it the one with red hair that came last?”

“No, it was the one with black hair. You know, the one that had this high hairstyle that stood like a small tree on her head!”

“Left with that hair running like a waterfall down her back the next day!” The older maid guffawed, a sound that pricked at Penelope with irritation.

“You know, I really don’t mind one night with the Master himself.” The younger maid said, her brows wiggling slyly.

“Hush!” the older maid said, scanning the area. “You don’t want to be saying that out loud.”

“What? You have thought of it, I have thought of it, Pen has thought of it,” she pointed toward Pen, who avoided their gazes as she folded her laundry for more space in her basket. “What brings these women here? What makes him the rake? We all want to know!”

“Well, a maid can only dream, isn’t that right, Pen?” The other one laughed, glancing over to Pen to join in. Pen managed a stiff smile, and that was that.

“Be ambitious enough and you might be a concubine, and then a Queen,” the younger maid said.

Pen shot to her feet. “Shut your trap hole!”

The two maids looked stunned, and they both looked at an angry Pen. Even Pen was stunned at her choice of words, but she didn’t back