The Saintess and the Demon King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Kneel
Isabeau walks into the Demon King's tent and offers her life to stop the slaughter; he wants her to beg instead, and the High Priest's letter says that if he touches her, the Temple will abandon Corvane.
Isabeau knelt on the dirt floor of the Demon King's tent with her hands open on her knees.
Outside, the camp was so quiet that her teeth hurt.
Corvane's walls stood a mile behind her, and every bell in the city was ringing for the dead.
The Demon King had taken the lower town at dusk.
By morning he would take the rest, and the rest was forty thousand people who could not run.
She had walked out of the north gate alone at midnight, in her white robes, with no lantern.
Nobody stopped her.
The demon soldiers watched her pass between their fires, and not one of them lifted a hand.
She had been told all her life that they ate saints.
The tent flap was black canvas stitched with red thread.
Inside, a bone throne sat on a dais made of stacked shields, and a man sat on it with one boot propped on the step.
He was huge.
His armor was black plate, scratched silver at the edges, and his horns swept back from his brow.
His skin was the grey of a cold hearth, and his eyes were dark red.
He wore black gloves, and he had not taken them off for her.
"You're the Saintess of Corvane," he said.
His voice was low and unhurried.
"Yes."
"Isabeau Verrane. Twenty-three. Raised by the Temple from the age of nine."
"You know a great deal."
"I read what my spies write." He tilted his head. "You are smaller than the ballads."
She lifted her chin.
"My name is not what matters. Stop the assault, and take me instead."
"Instead."
"As your hostage. As your prisoner. As whatever you need."
Her voice shook on the last word, and she hated it.
"The Temple will pay to get me back, or it won't. But your army stays outside the walls, and the people of Corvane live."
He said nothing.
She kept going, because silence was worse.
"I heal. I have healed eleven thousand people since I was fifteen. You can have every healing I have left in me."
He leaned forward.
The throne creaked under him.
"And the rest of you?"
"My life is yours," Isabeau said. "Do what you want with it."
She had practiced those words on the road, and they came out sounding like a prayer.
She knew what she was offering, and she knew what it was worth.
The Pale Flame, the god she served, gave its power only to the untouched.
That was the first law of the Temple, the one she had learned before she learned to read.
A saint who is touched by a lover loses her power.
Whatever this king wanted from her, he could not have the one thing she was good for.
That was why she was sure he would send her back.
He stood.
It took a while.
He came down the dais and stopped in front of her, close enough that his shadow covered her whole lap.
She stared at his boots and kept her hands open on her knees.
Then a gloved hand slid under her chin and lifted her face.
The leather was warm.
It smelled like smoke and iron, and it held her as lightly as it would hold something that could break.
Her pulse went wild under his thumb.
He felt it, and she watched him feel it.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
His thumb moved slowly along her lower lip, and every nerve she owned went to that one spot.
Nobody had ever touched her there.
Nobody had touched her anywhere that wasn't a blessing or a bandage.
"I don't want your life, Saintess," he said.
The thumb pressed once, gently, and her lip gave under it.
"I want you to beg."
Heat went through her from throat to knees.
She should have been afraid, and she was, but fear was only one of the things in her chest.
She made herself hold his stare.
"I will never beg you for anything."
"Then I'll wait."
He said it so calmly that it frightened her more than a threat.
"Your city is spared. My army pulls back at dawn. You stay in my keep as my guest, and no one touches you unless you ask."
"Unless I ask," she repeated.
"Unless you ask," said Veyron Hollowmere, King of the Umbral Court.
His thumb slid away from her lip.
She felt its absence.
"I'm a patient man, Isabeau. I'll wait as long as it takes you to find something you want."
It was the first time anyone had said her name without a title in front of it.
He turned and walked back to the throne.
Isabeau stayed on her knees because her legs wouldn't work, and she was ashamed of that, and ashamed of why.
A guard ducked through the flap with something small and white in his fist.
"A bird from the city, my king. It had the Temple's seal."
Veyron took the paper, read it, and held it out to her without a word.
She knew the handwriting.
It belonged to High Priest Maximin Ellistrand, who had raised her.
Isabeau. You were told what you are. If the demon touches you, you are fallen, your name is struck from the roll, and the Temple will withdraw its healers from Corvane. Keep yourself clean, daughter, and the city will be saved.
She read it three times.
The city would be saved if she stayed clean.
And the king had just promised that no one would touch her unless she begged.
She looked up and found him watching her, one boot on the step, his gloved hand curled on the arm of the throne.
He had read it too.
He smiled, very slightly, at the edge of his mouth.
"It seems," he said, "that you have a great deal to lose."
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