Demon Forged

with you.”
    The words stabbed her chest. Reflexively, her hands fisted. Irena held them at her sides, struggling against the fury and hurt that urged her to batter them into his face. He stared down at her, and she thought, prayed, that he might take the words back.
    Olek shook his head and turned. “Your vampire friend has gone into the city.”
    He walked away. Irena watched, her heart hammering.
    I do not like the man I become with you.
    He should have hit her. She’d have known how to respond to that. But this pain, she did not.

CHAPTER 8
    The city sparkled below her. Sitting atop a building that rose into the night sky like a flaming spear, Irena looked toward the bay. The dark water was all she recognized from two centuries ago, toward the end of the two hundred years that she’d spent walking this part of the world. She smoothed her hand over her leggings. And she’d made friends during those two hundred years, even as she’d tried to escape the pain that had brought her here.
    Between then and now, you learned what a demon is.
    Yes. She had.
    She’d known from the beginning that there were three types of demons: one who relished pain and suffering and death; one who cared for nothing but his own ambitions; and one who delighted in shredding souls, ruining lives—who reveled in emotional anguish and despair. She’d known that in the same way she knew letters of the alphabet—she was able to name them, to know their sounds, but when they were put together they shifted around so that she had trouble pinning the words down and wrestling out meaning. But with demons, it was simple—it did not matter that there were three types. She killed them all, and it was a job done well. She didn’t need to know more than that.
    When she’d found Olek on his back, and the demon’s blade against his throat, she’d thought it was the first type of demon. She’d guessed wrong. But even if she’d known, she would’ve still made the bargain to save his life.
    Irena closed her eyes, but the image of Olek and that demon was still clear behind them.
    He’d been ready. Alejandro with his swords was magnificent to behold. Sleek and deadly. And so when she’d learned that a magistrate near the southern edge of her territory was a demon, she’d taken Olek with her to the demon’s residence. When they’d separated to flush out the creature, her worry had been a soft thing. When she’d come up on them in the gardens behind the house, fear had dug into her throat.
    She knew what had happened. The soft earth recorded the tracks of their battle; the fight was as clear to her as if she’d witnessed it. Olek had been on the offensive, the demon falling back. Its blood streaked Olek’s sword; drops, splatters, and streams ran over the soil.
    And in the dirt lay a rock, as big as her fist, freshly overturned. Olek had stumbled—enough to signal the end in most battles between Guardians and demons. But the demon hadn’t killed him. He’d cut off Olek’s hands as protection against his Gift, then straddled him after shape-shifting into a lush female body. The edge of the demon’s blade had been buried in Olek’s neck, blood sliding down the sides of his throat—but not so deep that Olek couldn’t talk.
    So that the demon could hear him beg, she’d thought. Olek wouldn’t. He’d die first.
    And Irena couldn’t allow that.
    The demon had been the one to suggest the bargain. And no wonder—Irena would have killed it. The demon had no way out; if it killed Olek, the demon would be dead a second later.
    The bargain had been simple: Irena would go into a room with the demon. She wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t try to kill him, wouldn’t use her Gift against him—and at no time would she use more strength than a human. In return, the demon wouldn’t kill either of them. And the bargain would be over when he grew bored.
    Irena had known what she’d be in for: pain, torture, rape.
    Alejandro had realized it, too. In a voice thick with horror, he’d told her, “You cannot do this.”
    She’d had no choice. She’d ordered him to silence.
    And again, he’d defied her. Argued with her. If he’d responded any other way, if he’d accepted her decision, she did not know if she’d have hated him. But he fought. She’d known then that she loved him as she had no other. Lovers had touched her heart before, but Olek had wrapped his hand around it and taken hold.
    But if he’d felt the same for Irena, it had been her