A Demon's Kiss ✔️

FORTY TWO

Word Count: 1704

~Aspen

There is no more conversation for mother and I to have, and she knows it.

Someone comes to collect me, taking me upstairs to my old bedroom. The feeling in my legs is taking it's time to come back, so escaping isn't an option right now.

I'm laid down on the bed before being left to myself, the door closing behind the guards.

I stare up at the roof, gritting my teeth. Beneath me is my old bed. I spent many nights like this, staring up at the ceiling, wishing I were elsewhere.

Turning my head, I examine my room.

It hasn't changed much, which is a surprise. I would have thought mother would have stripped everything that resembled me away, using the space for her own interests. But nothing has been touched.

I screw my nose up at all the dust. This is terrible...I wish I could rip this entire room to shreds, along with all the dark, cruel memories.

It takes a few hours of laying on the bed before the feeling in my legs fully returns. I sit up, wincing at the sharp pain in my back.

That bitch...I can't believe she stabbed me.

Shaking my head, I look out the window at Territory One city. I wonder where Kastriv is. I imagine he's woken from whatever my mother put in his body and has no idea where I am.

The door suddenly opens, my mother appearing in view.

I stare her down, trying not to let my anger overwhelm me. "You never loved me, did you?"

"Define love." She picks at her fingernails like she's bored. She clearly only came up here to try manipulate me into giving her my power.

Has she always intended on farming my power? Even when I was a child?

"You should have given me away to a family that could care for me," I growl, looking around at the sad state of my room.

I was never allowed anything on my walls. No toys, no decorations. Nothing. Even the furniture is sad and soulless.

"It never crossed my mind," she says with a shrug, a little smirk playing at her lips.

"Of course not. You only ever thought about yourself," I snap. I've called her vain and narcissistic before, and true to herself, she gets offended every time. It's probably because she knows I'm right.

Finally, mother gives me her full attention, scowling in a way that she would hate to learn makes her look far more unattractive.

"I did the right thing by giving you away to Oliver," she seethes.

"I'm not your property. You can't just give me away," I remind her coldly. Back then I was nothing more than a pawn in her sick game of spreading her power across Territory One.

"Now you're with a Noble...an Angel-blood," she grits out, like it hurts to say. No doubt she believes what others do, that an Angel-blood is not capable of loving a Demon.

Even though my mother isn't an Angel-blood, she reveres them like many others in this Territory.

"And I'm happy," I say carefully.

I don't want her to risk ruining my fragile happiness right now...

"But for how long? How long until he realises he cannot be with a Demon?" She asks lightly, her smile taunting me, trying to rise a reaction out of me, to dig into an insecurity she knows I'm experiencing.