The Demonic Cult Took the Wrong Disciple novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Disowned
Si-hyeon's master answers the ransom call by calling him a disciple of no rank, and the hall laughs; that night he makes the Demon pay for the laughter on his knees.
The Demon broke the blue seal with his thumbnail and handed Si-hyeon the letter.
"Read it," he said. "Aloud. The hall will want to hear."
Si-hyeon stood in the Red Lantern Hall in a borrowed robe over his wet clothes, with a chain on his ankle again.
Three hundred cult members were waiting for him to cry.
He knew the handwriting.
He had copied it for ten years, because the master of the Azure Cloud Sect did not like to write his own letters.
He read the first line, and his voice stayed steady.
"To the Heavenly Demon of the heretical cult, greetings from the Righteous Alliance."
Somebody sniggered.
"Our sect regrets the night's disturbance. Our prodigy, Tak Ha-neul, is safe and well and will not be exchanged."
He read the next line and the one after, and he made his face a wall.
"The man you hold, one Ryu Si-hyeon, is a disciple of no rank, who has been a charity case of this sect since the age of nine."
He held his breath through the long sentence.
"He is slow, plain, and of no use to our sect. We offer nothing for him. Keep him or kill him as you please."
The hall exploded.
The Left Protector laughed hardest, rocking on his heels with his sleeves in his hands.
Three hundred black robes laughed with him, because laughing at a man in front of his captor is cheap and easy.
Someone on the gallery unrolled a long strip of red paper over the rail and let it hang above the dais.
It said THE WRONG DISCIPLE in fat black brush strokes, and the hall roared again.
The Demon looked up at it and did not order it taken down.
Si-hyeon looked at the letter.
The signature at the bottom had a looped G, and he knew it.
"It's a good letter," he said.
His voice carried, and they stopped laughing to hear what he would say.
"It's very well organized. Three paragraphs, and not one adjective I'd call a lie."
He folded it neatly.
"I was slow," he said. "And plain, and of no use. I carried the prodigy's tea, I broke my nose on the training yard door, and my master could never remember my name without being told."
He bowed a small bow to the hall.
"I'd like to thank the Cult for being the first people in ten years to check."
Nobody laughed.
The Left Protector's smile slipped, and Si-hyeon smiled back at him as warmly as he could.
He looked up.
The Demon was watching him from the throne with his chin in his hand, and he wasn't laughing either.
"The Alliance is careless with its good swords," the Demon said mildly.
That was all.
Si-hyeon did not let the words reach him.
He went back to the chamber with his head up, sat down on the mat, and put his face in his hands.
It wasn't tears.
It was something drier and uglier.
For ten years he had told himself that the old man was hard on him because he cared.
He had been very good at telling himself things.
The door opened.
He knew that tread by now, the slow heavy step of a man who never needed to hurry.
The Demon set a tray on the low table and sat on the floor across from him.
Even sitting on the floor, he was taller than the table.
"Eat," he said.
"No."
"Drink, then."
He poured a cup of plum wine and pushed it across.
Si-hyeon drank it in one swallow.
The Demon poured another.
"I don't want your pity," Si-hyeon said.
"I don't have any. I have an appetite."
"For what?"
The Demon didn't answer.
He just looked at Si-hyeon over the rim of his cup, slow and steady, and the wine went to Si-hyeon's head faster than it should have.
"You think he loved me," Si-hyeon said. "Master Gye. You think I was a pet."
"I think he handed you over for a favor and called it a donation."
"That's the same thing."
"It is, a little."
Si-hyeon laughed, and it came out cracked.
He put the cup down.
His hand was shaking, and he wanted to put it somewhere that wasn't empty.
He wanted something to hit, and something to hold.
He crawled around the table.
"What are you doing?" the Demon asked, very softly.
"Nothing you didn't order."
"I didn't order anything."
"Then be quiet."
Si-hyeon put his hands on the Demon's knees and felt him go still all over.
It was not stiffness.
It was stillness.
Si-hyeon pushed the robe open.
The Demon was already hard.
Si-hyeon had felt him in the pond, but he had not seen him, and now he stared.
The Demon was huge.
His cock was longer than Si-hyeon's hand and thicker than his wrist, dark at the head and already wet.
Si-hyeon made a small, stupid noise.
"Swordsman Ryu," the Demon said, rough, "you don't have to."
"Tell me to stop."
"No."
"Then shut up and watch."
Si-hyeon wrapped both hands around him, and the Demon hissed through his teeth.
His fingers would not close around it.
He licked a slow stripe from the base to the tip, and the Demon's hips jerked off the floor.
Then Si-hyeon took the head into his mouth.
It stretched his jaw at once.
The Demon tasted of salt and heat, and he was so hot that Si-hyeon thought it would burn.
Si-hyeon sucked, and the Demon swore under his breath in a language Si-hyeon didn't know.
A big hand came down into Si-hyeon's hair.
It did not push.
It rested there, huge and unsteady.
"Don't be careful," Si-hyeon said around him.
"You're not ready."
"I'm very ready."
He took more.
He took half, and his throat fought, and his eyes watered.
He kept going until the head hit the back of his mouth and he gagged.
He pulled off, coughing.
"Slow," the Demon said.
"I said don't."
"I said slow."
The Demon's voice had gone deep and dangerous.
Si-hyeon looked up.
The Demon was staring down at him with his lips parted and his hair falling around his face, looking at Si-hyeon's wet mouth.
Si-hyeon's stomach turned over.
He took the Demon into his mouth again and went slow.
He used his tongue, and his hands on the part he couldn't fit, and the small sounds he made in his throat.
The Demon's thighs began to shake against his shoulders.
"Si-hyeon," the Demon said.
It was his name, the whole of it, said for the first time in that low rough voice.
Si-hyeon moaned around him.
The Demon swore and tightened his fist in Si-hyeon's hair, and Si-hyeon felt him swell on his tongue.
"I'm going to come," the Demon said. "Get off."
Si-hyeon didn't.
The Demon came with a groan, hot and thick down Si-hyeon's throat, and Si-hyeon swallowed what he could and choked on the rest, and it ran down his chin.
The Demon pulled him up by the arms into his lap and kissed him, wet and deep, tasting himself in Si-hyeon's mouth.
"Fool," he said into Si-hyeon's hair. "Beautiful, stubborn fool."
Si-hyeon's heart was beating so hard that he felt it in his ears.
Nobody had ever called him beautiful.
He should have taken it back, and he let the Demon keep the word instead.
The Demon wiped his chin with a thumb.
He was smiling again, but there was a roughness in it, and his hand was not entirely steady.
"Eat something," he said. "Please."
Si-hyeon did.
He ate the whole tray, because it was good and he was starving, and because he would not give the Demon the satisfaction of watching him wonder why that hand had shaken.
When the tray was empty, he reached for the tea tin to refill his cup.
A tiny folded paper was stuck under the lid.
He opened it with his back to the Demon.
He knew the handwriting.
It was the careless scrawl of a boy who had never learned to write small, and it said:
"Senior brother. I'm coming. Hold on."
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