The guard caught up with me in the library. He put one warm hand on my shoulder and turned me. “Are you ok, Jume?”

He very rarely spoke to me. Mostly he just followed me everywhere, silent and strong. I had almost gotten used to his presence by now. He and the other two male warriors from Kierce’s force. I am just a job to them, of course. 

Talking is not a big job requirement for a guard, after all. I do think it was odd that the first several weeks I was here in the hotel I never noticed guards. I don’t know how long they’ve been following me around, not truly. 

I will ask Theo or Kierce that very question the next time I see them.

But I would like someone to talk to right now. I am not sure where the Boltier sisters are—something to do with the Taniss family and what is happening to them. I haven’t seen them in two days. 

“I…I am ok. It was just an accident.”

“Was it? Do not forget that there is a fifty-thousand-dollar price on your head. You cannot trust anyone you do not know in this hotel. Not yet.”

I looked closely at him; he reminded me of Mak. “I…I—how long do I have to live like this?”

“I do not know.”

Well, that was reassuring. “I…I need to look up some things in the library.”

Alaun had me a list of fifty-three types of demons. I am supposed to create her an index of those demons, so she can use them later. 

Alaun is a bit of a list maker. But it would serve a dual purpose. 

If I can find out what kind of demon had sent assassins after me, maybe I could find out why?

“If you will allow it, I will be happy to help.”

I allowed it. And I learned a great deal about him. He wasn’t as arrogant as Mak—but he also wasn’t an Adrastos. He was from the Thurgis line. His name is Juxtolos, but his family calls him Tol. 

He has hunted demons before. 

At first, he was hesitant about sharing that information with me, but when I told him that I was my sister’s research assistant, he was more willing. 

Apparently, Tol is a closet romantic. He’s read all of Alaun’s books. He does admit that she gets some of the demon details wrong, but he is willing to help me find the information she needs. 

It is nice to have made another friend.

Even if he was just paid to be there with me. 

He sees me. I’m not invisible at the moment.

There are werewolves everywhere. 

Even in the hotel. Most of the Dardaptoans that I pass are talking about of them. They are part of the Taniss pack. Theo’s brother-in-law Rand Taniss leads them. But they aren’t a hereditary pack. I learned all about Lupoiux last week helping Alaun with her next book. They are a more animalistic, instinctive Kind than Dardaptoans. 

Very scary, too.

I ran into a Lupoiux male on my way to the library yesterday.

I mean I literally ran into him. His arms wrapped around me and he almost sniffed my hair. When he looked down at me there was a decidedly wolfy grin on his face. A hungry predator had me in his arms. “Hello, little bloodsucker.”

My guard—who I had finally noticed following me, I can’t believe I’ve been so blind!—stepped closer. “Hands off, wolf.”

The wolf stepped back and bowed slightly. Arrogantly. I bit back a shiver. 

He was hungry; I felt like the wolf’s next meal. “Pardon me, miss. It won’t happen again.”

Pardon me, dear wolf. I’m getting away from you! 

I was still shivering when I got away from him. 

I didn’t hear what words the guard said, but I did hear slight growling when I rounded another corner. 

What were they thinking, letting a bunch of Lupoiux males run around the hotel as if they weren’t the Dardaptoan females’ greatest enemy? 

Maybe they were a part of the Taniss pack, but that didn’t mean they were safe for Dardaptoan females to be around.

Of course, it is probably just my wimpy Jume-ness sliding out again. It was a harmless accident.

Nothing said that wolf was out to get me or anything like that, right? 

I tracked down Tennig, the young healer who now lived in the hotel with her male. He is a higher-ranked Lycurgus warrior and scholar. And healer. 

I know they used demon blood on her as well. I want to know if it had caused some changes for her, too.

She was busy snuggling up to her male. She is so young to have found him. It seems like Rajnis are being found at younger and younger ages—for the females. Older and older for the males. That was something Kellis and I had discussed a few weeks ago. 

No one knows why this is happening.

I certainly don’t, but…I feel it may be important. 

The nightmares have gotten stronger over the past few weeks. I see more and more of him each time. Never enough to see his face.

Probably because he isn’t real. I know he isn’t. 

Logically, I think he is my subconscious manifestation of the male I do not have. My soul may be making a mate for me, just in my dreams.

That doesn’t explain why I wake up terrified each time, though.

I sat in my bed last night, just shivering. 

I could hear something outside the lone window of my suite. Tapping on the window, a voice saying to let them in.

I didn’t, of course. 

There are beings in this world that needed invitations to enter. Once you brought them into your home, they could kill you.

They can’t escape. They are another type of bloodsucking Kind. Bleschauma vampires, I think. Evil, evil creatures. 

Alaun found mentions of them in her research a few years ago. I’d asked Theo if they were real the next day.

He had been hesitant, but then he had told me all about them. And to never, ever let them in. 

He made me promise if something ever tapped on my window to never, ever open it.

Well, I’m not stupid.

I wasn’t about to let it in.

NOTE FROM CJ: Jume is referencing the events that take place in The Healer’s Find, the story of healers Tennig Thurgis and her male Jouk Lycurgus. Get a free copy here: The Healer’s Find

Blaire visited again. I was there to see her reunite with her sisters. Her demon guards followed closely behind. They still frightened her, but Blaire wasn’t letting that show.

They frighten me, too. Rall, he’s the taller brother, wanted me to sit with him on the balcony behind the Boltiers’ suite. 

Just to talk, he said. To talk, he promised.

I’m not sure what his definition of talk is, though. 

I almost fell for it, almost went with him. 

I probably would have been his lunch—if Aida hadn’t pulled me aside and told me I had been speaking to him in a demon language known only to the royal family, for a good five minutes. 

I certainly hadn’t realized. 

I’d tried to learn human Spanish my first go-round in college. It hadn’t gone well. Neither had my high school attempts at French and Latin. Apparently, according to the poor instructor who had taught me both at the high school and at Dardanos University and had gotten stuck with me each—I have no ability for foreign languages at all. 

Had my parents not spoken English to us as children, that instructor had said almost spitefully, I would most likely not have learned that language either.

He wasn’t a very nice professor. At least not to me. Especially to me—he’d wince every time my stutter emerged. Which made it come out all the more frequently.

He certainly liked those females of the Jareth and Dardaptos and Lycurgus Houses, though. Probably because they had vestis in the latest, lower-cut fashions. Something we Woalds most definitely do not.

I don’t know why I can speak demon. 

I don’t even realize I am doing it until someone points it out. 

Perhaps it has something to do with the demon blood they used on me in the Healers’ Hall? 

That makes the most sense. Next time I see Iahanna, the sister of my Equa, I will ask her. She’s a wonderful healer—one of the few we Woalds have—and she’ll tell me straight. 

Demon blood has to have left some kind of mark on me, right?

I kept flipping until I came to an entry of one paragraph. That was it. One measly paragraph.

“D-dardaptoans. Found in the realm of Gaia, they are descendants of an Evalanedean goddess of mysterious past. Dardaptoan females are exceedingly weak compared to demon females, and most cannot s-stand up to the rigors of mating with demons. It is best to avoid, to prevent damaging such frail beings. It is believed that the Three Queens of the Three Hells are possibly of Dardaptoan origin. Then it references Epic of the Three Hells.”

With some more flipping, I found that listing.

“It’s a ballad.” I handed it to my sister. 

Kellis began to read aloud, her voice soft, beautiful, and lilting. She had a hauntingly beautiful voice. I loved listening to her sing.

I listened closely as she spoke, reading over her shoulder for myself. 

Epic of the Three Hells

Also known as the Story of the Queens…

Great Palos, Beskre, and Phrymos,

Eighteen thousand and one years, 

Three hells these brothers once ruled,

And all creatures small or vast

would go to the hells upon their rest.

To take the Three Hells of the kings for his own,

Adril—the envious, greedy, and uncrowned—

Twin kings Paleos and Phrymos,

Adril locked within the ground.

Eighteen thousand and one years, Beskre,

Their younger brother, searched, relentless and loyal. 

The twins of the hells, Beskre said, will be found.

But eighteen thousand and one, they decreed,

Those Four Fates of whom we rarely tell—

Half sisters of the brother kings—

So envious, spiteful, and cruel,

Declared their honorable half brothers will never rule

Prophecy, declaration of fate, 

Or the product of jealousies, cruelties, and hates

The Fates confined their brothers 

—until they were to meet their mates.

In Relaklonos, land of demons all,

Adril—the Weak and Cruel—

locked them in the ground.

It is in Relaklonos where the kings of hells

Will soon each by their queen be found.

For after eighteen thousand and one.

Their incarceration in earthen graves now done,

The time to find their queens has finally come.

The earth will quake on the first resting place—

First Phrymos, eldest, bravest, and the great king,

Phrymos, the strongest, will rise—to claim his queen.

The queen of the Phrymos demons will be kind.

Young and fair and more than humble,

All will follow this former servant and never once stumble.                                                                   

Next Paleos, younger twin to the first,

From the earth—he will soon burst.

His soul of empathy guides him still.

Yet for his queen, Paleos will gladly

and mercilessly and swiftly kill.

Young and frail and weak, frightened and quite brave

—The great sword of hells this smallest queen with curls possesses.

She will find Paleos buried deeply in a cave,

And it will be the darkest crimes of evil this pair addresses.                                                                   

Last will be he who scoured the earth.

Resolute and loyal to his brothers, all will still say.

This one king who still rules the hells even today, 

He is known only from legend as the Beskre.

His queen is one so soft, and frail,

None know how this queen with golden curls he will meet,

But with her at his side—

kind, fair, almost silent, and sweet—

The king of Beskre demons prevails, 

This third brother who has always ruled the hells.

With their queens joined close,

Their swords they now possess.

And all demon worlds will reunite, 

True seers of their Kinds do foretell,

This is what the ancient bards with stories tell.

It is once the three queens are loved and well

It is the dark sorcerer, you three kings of hell—

Phrymos, Palos, and Beskre, it is Adril,

Who you will once and for all finally quell…

When she was finished reading, we just looked at each other. “H-how are we supposed to know what that means? Explains why that demon liked your h-hair, though. All curly and queen-like.”

“No clue.”

“It was weird.”

“No kidding. And we are the only Dardaptoan females I know who have these stupid curls. Other than some of the Tanisses. If they’ve not met many Dardaptoans, maybe we look magic to them or something.” Kellis shot me a wicked grin. “Who knows, maybe they’d be willing to let us do some research for Alaun? Field research? Find out what it’s like to feed a demon?”

“I’m more i-interested in the legend.” The last thing I would want was to feed a sex demon. Anywhere. “I don’t want my first affair to be with a sex demon.”

“I know what the three hells are. And I know that there are demon Kinds called Phrymos, Paleos, and Beskre. But Adril? Never heard of him. If he’s at war with a bunch of demons, I don’t think I want to.”

“M-me either. Still…this doesn’t explain why they were staring at us like that at all.”

“Maybe it does,” Kellis said slowly. “This line here, queen with golden curls and what it said about Dardaptoans, maybe they just thought one of us was this legendary queen. Here’s another about curls and a smallest queen. Maybe demons don’t have curly hair?”

“Maybe it’s us? D-demon queens. And Alaun is the third…She always has been obsessed with sex demons.”­­

Kellis and I just looked at each other.

Then we burst out laughing, like total loons.

The idea of one of us being legendary queens, well…

We were Woald. The very idea is preposterous. 

Before the night was through we thought we’d figured it out—the males we had met tonight were all part Incubi.

Sex demons had their reputations, after all. We were unattached females. We probably looked like we would make great snacks.

Alaun’s books made that very clear.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Alaun’s own sisters fed demons? Fun to think about, but it was never going to happen.

He kept looking between me and my sister. He looked almost confused—or like he recognized us. Finally, his expression cleared. Then, he dropped into an odd bow—first to me, and then to Kellis. 

I shared a look with my sister. 

This is a demon, and a very powerful, royal one—why would he be giving us the most profound gesture of respect?

Kellis shifted in front of me, just as I shifted in front of my human friends. Protective, of course.

Kindara was watching him, an odd look on her own face. But she said nothing.

It was the demon king who spoke. “My brothers have volunteered to guard. We just need to pick the ones who make you the most comfortable, Blaire.”

“It’s entirely up to me?” Blaire asked, almost whispering. I could feel her terror. Coty’s, too.

I wrapped my hand around Blaire’s. So young to be so frightened. If it was Julea…

My younger sister was quiet and shy and timid. She wouldn’t be able to face demons like this very well, either. I stepped closer to my new friend, just to let her know that I was there for her. No matter what.

I listened as Blaire interviewed the demons. When she was finished, there were two demon males left who I suspected would be perfect to guard a human in the demon world. Rall, and a fierce-looking demon who had told them he was a Beskre warrior. 

He’d said it so proudly.

Not that I knew what that meant.

His name was Akronos.

Rall and Akronos would be assigned to guard Blaire during her waking hours. When she slept, the demon forces controlled by Renekletos, the first brother of the demon king, would guard her. 

She wouldn’t be completely risk-free, but it was as safe as anywhere else, I think.

Of course…my cousin Bronwen had been carried off by a demon king from another region—right out of the Demon High King’s castle. 

Not exactly reassuring.

Coty wanted to go with her sister. After the demons and Kindara left, Coty and Blaire argued. Coty wanted to protect her sister—but Blaire wanted her sister protected. 

Blaire got her own way by pointing out that the rest of their sisters would need Coty more.

I totally understood that. I wouldn’t want my sisters accompanying me to the demon lands. The mere idea is enough to terrify any sane female with sisters, after all.