Exiled as Useless, I Healed the Demon General Who Fell at My Feet novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Price

She refuses gold and names her price in front of the whole Legion: the General kneels and swears; that night he takes his payment from her with his mouth.

In the morning Ishkra handed Kanae her ledger and told her to name a price in numbers.

"Gold, grain, land," she said. "The General says you'll have it. I'd like to see how large the number is before he regrets it."

Kanae took the book to be polite.

The page was a list of the Legion's grain stores, written in a tidy slanting hand.

She ran her finger down the column once.

"Your third total is wrong," she said. "You carried a nine and forgot the ten. You're eight hundred sacks short on paper, and you have them in the cellar."

Ishkra snatched the ledger back.

She went down the column with her lips moving.

She went very still.

"Eight hundred," she said, quietly.

"It happens."

"I have been starving the east wall for three weeks over that number."

"Then you'll want to open the cellar before lunch."

Ishkra looked at her over the top of her round spectacles for a long moment.

"That is the first useful thing a human has ever done for this fortress," she said, and she walked away fast, with her coat flapping.

Kanae decided she liked her.

At noon the horns blew, and four hundred demons of the Ashen Legion filled the courtyard in ranks.

Kanae stood on the stone steps of the keep in her white robe.

She'd borrowed a hair cord from someone's quartermaster pouch, and her hands were folded in front of her so they wouldn't shake.

The General came down the steps beside her.

In daylight he was even larger than she remembered.

He wore his black plate again, with the breastplate mended, and the Brand had pulled back from his throat and shoulder.

He looked like a mountain that had learned to walk.

Four hundred demons saw their General, alive and standing, and the roar they let out rattled the torch brackets.

He raised one hand, and it stopped.

"The healer has asked for her price," Vorhaan said, in the slow voice that carried across the whole yard. "I will pay it before you all."

Kanae stepped forward.

She was five foot two in her boots, and her heart was a drum.

"I don't want your gold," she said. "I want your word."

Ishkra, standing at the foot of the steps, closed her eyes.

"For a year and a day," Kanae said, "your sword is mine."

"Healer..."

"Your Legion answers to me when I speak, and your life belongs to my hands. You will not lie to me. Not once. You will never send me away, even when you think it's for my good."

The courtyard had gone dead silent.

She thought about fourteen months of kind smiles.

She thought about a copper coin, and the wind, and a hero who had never looked back.

"I've spent a long time being useful to people who valued me at one coin," she said. "I won't take gold. I'll take a promise made on your knees."

Nobody breathed.

Vorhaan looked down at her.

His gold eyes were unreadable, and then, very slowly, the corner of his mouth lifted.

He turned to face the courtyard.

He took off his helm, and his horns rose black and curved against the sky.

Then the Demon General of the Ashen Legion went down on one knee on the stone, with the whole of his army watching, and laid his hand against his left horn.

"By this horn," he said, "I swear it."

His voice rolled out across the yard.

"A year and a day. My sword. My Legion. My life. I will not lie to her, and I will not leave her side, and I will not send her away while I live."

He looked up at Kanae, and for a moment she forgot the audience.

"Does the Lady accept my oath?"

"Yes," she said, and it came out as a croak.

"Say it louder."

"I accept."

Four hundred demons struck their spears against the stones, once, all together, and the sound went through her bones.

"The Lady of the Legion," someone shouted, and it spread down the ranks.

Kanae stood on those steps with her hands shaking and her face burning, and the General of the Emberwaste knelt at her feet.

It was the first time in her life that anybody had given her exactly what she'd asked for.

That night he came to her door, and he didn't kneel.

She had been given a room in the tower, with a wide bed and a window onto the dark.

He shut the door behind him and stood against it, filling it, and the candle flames bent toward him.

"You gave me orders all day," he said. "Four hundred witnesses. I enjoyed every one."

"I noticed."

"You have your price." He crossed the room without hurrying. "Now I'd like mine."

Her pulse jumped into her throat.

"I thought the oath was the price."

"The oath is what I owe you. This is what I want." He stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to tip her head all the way back. "You commanded me in the sun. Tonight you give me the dark."

She should have laughed.

She should have said no, she was the one in charge.

Instead Kanae heard herself whisper, "Yes."

"Good." He lifted the cord out of her hair, and it fell around her shoulders. "Take off the robe."

She did.

She stood naked in front of him in candlelight, with her arms at her sides.

He walked around her once, slowly, and she felt his eyes.

"Beautiful," he said. "Lie down on the bed. On your back. Put your hands above your head and hold the bar."

The bed had a carved iron headboard.

She climbed on, and lay back, and stretched her arms up until her fingers curled around the cold metal.

Her breasts lifted.

Her whole body was on display, and she had never been so aware of her own skin.

"You will not let go," he said. "Whatever I do. If you let go, I stop."

"I won't."

"Good girl."

Warmth flooded between her legs at the words.

He knelt on the floor beside the bed and took hold of her knees.

He spread them wide, easily, and he looked at what he'd uncovered.

"Look at you," Vorhaan said quietly. "Already glistening. I haven't touched you."

"Then touch me."

"Say please."

"Please."

He dragged her to the edge of the mattress by the hips, set her thighs over his shoulders, and lowered his head.

The first stroke of his tongue ran from the bottom of her to the top, long and slow and wet.

Kanae cried out and her hands clamped on the bar.

He did it again.

His tongue was hot and broad, and he used it the way he did everything, without hurrying, as if she were something to be learned.

He circled her clit once, lazily, and her hips bucked into his mouth.

"Hold still," he said against her, and his voice vibrated through her whole body. "Or I'll stop."

"Don't stop."

"Then hold still."

She tried.

She gripped the iron until her knuckles ached, and he licked her in long steady strokes, and every time she got close, he slowed down.

"Vorhaan."

"Mm."

"Please, I need..."

"What do you need?"

"I need to come."

"Say who you want to come for."

"You." It tore out of her. "You, I want to come for you."

His mouth closed over her clit and sucked.

She screamed.

He held her hips down with both hands as she came, and his tongue worked through every wave, and the light from her body poured out across the ceiling and turned the shadows white.

He didn't stop.

The first orgasm hadn't finished rolling when he pushed two thick fingers into her, slow, and curled them forward.

"Oh, God."

"Again."

"I can't, I just..."

"You can. You will." He pressed up inside her, found the place, and rubbed it in time with his tongue. "Come for me again, Kanae."

She did.

The second one broke her open, and she came with her back arched off the bed and her heels digging into his shoulders, and she did not let go of that bar.

Not once.

He lifted his head only when she'd gone limp and boneless on the sheets.

His mouth and chin were wet.

He wiped his lip with his thumb and sucked it clean while he looked at her.

"Good girl," he said again, rough with satisfaction. "You held on."

She could barely lift her eyelids.

"The Brand?" she said.

He glanced down at his own chest, where the candlelight caught his bare skin.

She'd been so busy she hadn't seen him unbuckle his shirt.

The black stain was gone from his ribs.

It lay now only across the left side of his chest, small and dark, like a handprint.

"Another handspan," he said.

"It's working."

"It is." He rested his forehead against her hip, his horns rising on either side of her belly, and breathed in. "Gods. I could do this until the Brand ate the whole world."

Kanae laughed, helpless, with her arms still above her head.

He turned his face and kissed the inside of her thigh.

She had just opened her mouth to say something stupid and tender when the great horn on the wall began to blow.

Three long notes.

He was on his feet before the third.

"Greywater," Vorhaan said, and his face changed.

Ishkra pounded on the door.

"General! A human banner on the ford. They're crossing at dawn, and they carry the Dawnblade."

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