The Demonic Cult Took the Wrong Disciple novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Hairpin
Locked in the Demon's chamber, Si-hyeon picks the lock and runs, and the Demon is already sitting on the wall waiting for him.
The Demon set Si-hyeon down in the Red Lantern Hall.
The Demonic Cult of Black Banner Keep stood along both walls in black robes, three hundred of them, and every one was trying not to laugh.
Hundreds of red lanterns hung from the beams.
Si-hyeon's jaw still held the print of the Demon's hand.
"Lord," said a thin, sour voice on the left. "This is not the prodigy."
"No," the Heavenly Demon agreed.
He sat on a black throne, and his knees rose higher than its arms.
His name was Yeom Gwi-han, but nobody in that hall said it aloud.
"Lord, this is a lowly senior brother of the Azure Cloud Sect. He is worth nothing."
"Nothing," the Demon said. "And he cut me."
He held up his forearm with the thin red line across it.
The hall went quiet.
Si-hyeon did not yet understand why that quiet sounded like fear.
The man who had spoken looked at Si-hyeon.
Si-hyeon would soon learn to call him the Left Protector, the elder who ran the cult's discipline.
"Put him in the cells," said the Left Protector.
"No," said the Demon. "He sleeps in my chamber."
Si-hyeon choked on his own spit.
"On the floor," the Demon added. "There's a mat. Don't be indecent."
Three hundred cult members found something interesting about their shoes.
"I'd rather have the cell," Si-hyeon said.
"I know."
The Demon leaned down from the throne and fastened an iron cuff around Si-hyeon's ankle with his own hands.
The chain ran back to a ring in the stone beside his chair.
His fingers were warm and careful, and the lock clicked shut.
"Eat first," he said. "You're too thin, and it makes me nervous."
That was the first night, and Si-hyeon did not eat.
He lay on the mat in the Demon's chamber, which smelled of cedar and cold incense and dried persimmon, and he listened to the Demon breathe in the big bed three steps away.
The Demon breathed.
Si-hyeon waited until the lanterns outside burned low.
Then he took the bone pin out of his hair, the only thing he had left that wasn't a sword.
He had picked locks since he was fifteen, when his master locked him in the sect woodshed for a week for correcting him at dinner.
The cuff opened in under a minute.
He laid the chain down softly so it wouldn't ring, and he went to the window.
The courtyard was empty.
The wall was twelve feet high.
He did not stop to wonder why the courtyard was so empty.
He crossed it on the balls of his feet, jumped, caught the top of the wall with both hands, and heaved himself up.
Somebody said, "Good form."
Si-hyeon looked up.
The Heavenly Demon was sitting on the wall, eating a dried persimmon.
He had changed into a loose robe, open at the chest, and his hair hung over one shoulder.
"You're slow," he said with his mouth full.
"How long have you been up here?"
"Since you put your pin in the lock."
"That was a very good lock."
"It was a terrible lock," the Demon said kindly. "I chose it."
Si-hyeon did the only reasonable thing, which was kick him in the face.
The Demon caught his ankle, and Si-hyeon went over backward off the wall and took him down too.
They landed in the carp pond.
The water was freezing, the carp were furious, and the Demon came up laughing with a koi flapping against his chest.
Si-hyeon hit him, and the Demon let him.
Si-hyeon hit him again in the ribs, and it was like punching a door.
The Demon wrapped an arm around his back, and the whole front of Si-hyeon's body pressed flat against him.
"Stop that," the Demon said, still laughing, "or I'll have to carry you."
"Put me down."
"You're standing."
He was.
He stood in thigh-deep water with his wet robe plastered to every inch of him, and his toes barely touched the pond floor.
The top of his head came only to the Demon's collarbone.
He had spent his whole life as the plain one in the room, and he had never once noticed that he was small.
The Demon saw him noticing.
"Your pulse is loud," the Demon said.
"I'm angry."
"That's not what that is."
The Demon's hand slid down Si-hyeon's back and settled at his waist, and the long fingers met over his spine, all the way around.
Si-hyeon made a noise he did not intend to describe.
"Tell me to stop," the Demon said.
His eyes were very black and perfectly serious.
"I'd rather hit you."
"Then hit me."
Si-hyeon hit his chest, and the Demon took it, and then Si-hyeon had two fistfuls of the open robe and was pulling the Demon down.
He kissed him furiously, with teeth.
The Demon made a low sound in his chest and picked Si-hyeon up out of the water with one arm.
Si-hyeon's legs wrapped around him because there was nothing else for them to do.
The Demon carried him to the pond wall and pressed him against the cold, wet stone.
There was nothing then but heat and the Demon's mouth and the whole huge weight of him between Si-hyeon's knees.
Si-hyeon felt him through two soaked layers of cloth, hard and long against his thigh.
He wanted to see it so badly his head swam.
"Fuck," Si-hyeon said.
"That's the idea."
The Demon ground against him, slow, and Si-hyeon's head knocked the stone.
Si-hyeon rolled his hips up to meet him.
The Demon groaned, and the sound went through Si-hyeon's whole body.
"You're so small," the Demon said into his neck, rough.
"Shut up."
"I could hold both your wrists in one hand."
"Then do it."
The Demon did.
He pinned Si-hyeon's wrists above his head in one fist and kept grinding, his cock sliding thick and heavy against Si-hyeon's through the wet cloth.
Si-hyeon was shaking.
He bit the Demon's shoulder, and the Demon swore.
"Harder," Si-hyeon said.
"Say please, Swordsman Ryu."
"Go to hell."
"Say it."
The Demon changed the angle, and Si-hyeon saw white.
"Please," he choked.
"Good."
The Demon rutted against him faster, and Si-hyeon came with his face in the Demon's throat, shuddering, ashamed and furious and so weak in the knees that he would have fallen if he had been let go.
The Demon followed a moment later.
He went rigid, and Si-hyeon heard a single rough word against his ear, "Ryu", said like something the Demon had practiced.
For a few breaths neither of them moved.
The carp circled and sulked.
"That," Si-hyeon said into the Demon's shoulder, "does not count as not escaping."
"No."
The Demon was smiling.
Si-hyeon could feel it against his hair.
The Demon set him on his feet and wrapped his own outer robe around him, and Si-hyeon was too tired to push it off.
"Tomorrow you'll try the kitchen wall," the Demon said.
"Don't tell me what I'm going to do."
"It has a loose brick, and the guard at the east gate sleeps. I'll put a chair there for you."
Si-hyeon stared up at him.
A sound came from the courtyard gate.
A courier in black stood there, bowing so low his forehead almost touched his knees, holding a rolled letter with a blue seal.
Si-hyeon knew that seal.
"Lord," the courier said, "the Azure Cloud Sect has answered."
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