crowned king, then you should be crowned queen at the same time. But for that we must be married. I mean really married. If that is what you wish, I would be honored for you to be my wife and my queen. But I need to know, Catherine. And soon.”
TASH
DEMON TUNNELS
IT WAS still black, silent, and stone-cold. Tash had just enough space to turn over to lie on her front or her back, her shoulders and hips scraping the roof of her space. And she had to move regularly, as her legs kept cramping and her back was aching.
At first she’d been afraid of running out of air, but somehow air was coming to her. And water was trickling in through a fine crack near her head. She could lick at the water like a dog.
There wasn’t much else she could do, though.
Except think—she could do a whole lot of thinking. She’d done more thinking here than in her whole life, it seemed. She’d gone right back to her earliest memories—of sitting in the rain in a muddy puddle, her brothers stomping around her so that the water splashed her face. She had other memories too—mostly miserable—of her father beating her brothers or her, of his shouting and cursing.
Her memories of Gravell were different, though. Those felt real—they warmed her and made her smile and cry (why did thinking of Gravell always make her cry?). Yes, he’d shouted at her, but somehow even his angriest words never filled her with dread like her father’s footsteps had. Tash remembered the first night after Gravell had taken her from her family. He’d given her shoes and food, and an extra blanket when she’d begun to shiver and cry. Over the following weeks she’d cried lots more, not with fear or cold but with a mix of relief and sorrow—sorrow for her old self that had suffered and hadn’t known any different. Gravell was always a wonder to her. He was big and shouty on the outside, but inside he cared for her, and she knew that from the first day. No one had ever done that before and it had changed her world.
Tash wished she’d hugged Gravell more and wished she could hug him again.
Well, perhaps she’d see him again soon, if there was a life after this one. Gravell had never believed in that sort of thing, and perhaps it was wishful thinking, but she smiled at the thought of it.
“But we won’t hunt no demons,” she muttered.
And in her head, she wagged her finger at Gravell, stand-ing in front of him on the most beautiful part of the Northern Plateau, snow heavy on the branches of the conifer trees. “We can hunt for food, but nothing else. Not to sell stuff for money, not so you can have your women and your pruka.”
And Gravell belched and said, “You just don’t appreciate the finer things in life. What is life without women and pruka . . . and pies?”
“We can swap some meat and skins for a pie in Pravont.”
Gravell grinned. “They have the best pies, the best food in the whole world.”
“I’m not sure we’re in the world anymore, but I think we can have the pies.”
Gravell picked up his harpoons and said, “Let’s go hunting, then.”
And Tash was happy to imagine being with Gravell. Happy to have lived her life knowing a man who’d cared for her.
She squirmed round to lie on her stomach, and wiped the tears from her face as she did. She carried on her daydream, imagining the hunt: running through the forest, finding deer tracks, and then closing in on the prey. Gravell sending her round to the right, to scare the deer toward him. She knew by instinct where to go and made her way forward, but to her surprise she didn’t see a deer. There was something else ahead of her.
It was a demon. A huge red demon sitting on his haunches.
Tash dropped to the ground.
What was it doing?
The demon was using his hand—no, his finger—to make marks in the earth.
Tash crept closer, to get a better look.
The demon glanced up. Tash expected it to be Twist, the demon she’d freed from the Brigantines, but it wasn’t him. It was another demon she recognized—the one that had at-tacked the group led by Princess Catherine. This was the de-mon that had tried to kill Geratan before Tash had intervened and stabbed the demon, which had then fallen on her. The red smoke that had