Introductions

She kept tripping over the robe, and if she stepped on the hem of the pure white garment one more time, she swore she would throw it over her head and run around like a banshee. The thought made her grin. What would the Elders say if they saw the future Empress of Light running around the foyer in nothing more than her stockings? If the action would shock them, she was sure as certain that she would not notice. The men and women who guarded the entrance to the Palace of Light were like ghostly apparitions, and more than once she had woken from a nightmare in which one of them was warning her that her wicked ways would send her to Hueres, the land of the Demons.

Ten-year-old Ariella had already decided that she must get used to warm weather. According to Elder Baruch, Hueres was a land of constant flames, and even the lakes and oceans were consumed with liquid fire. Sometimes Ariella would stand just a little too close to her hearth at night, preparing herself for the future everyone but her dear father felt certain would be hers.

Naughty children went to Hueres. Ariella was sweet-tempered and kind, but when it came to breaking rules she was ingenious in the act and negligent in the escape. She could always pull off her little capers, but she always got caught somehow – usually when her father gave her a look of staunch disapproval, forcing her to tell him the truth.

If there was one thing Ariella could not stand, it was the silent rejection of her father. She knew he did not mean it, that he could not know how the palace servants talked about his disappointment in not having a son, but sometimes she would catch the sadness in his eyes when he ruffled her blonde curls and she knew what he was thinking. If only she had been a boy…

She wanted to make him proud today. Ariella’s mother had died giving birth, so he was the only family member she had to impress. As for the people of Galatéa…well, they could go to Hueres for all Ariella cared.

“Your tiara is crooked.” Elderess Hadara bent over from her position in the very center of the half-ring of ancient men and women blessed with the powers of Light and pushed at the glittering diamond tiara that had practically been embedded into Ariella’s head. If one more person poked at the tiara…

“Elderess Hadara, why must I be presented to the people?” Ariella wondered. She tried to keep the whine out of her voice because she knew how much the old woman hated complaints. “Elder Baruch told me that I might not even be the Empress of Light. He said that the Holy Scepter can choose anyone to rule Galatéa, and that I am so wicked it will probably crumble at the mere sight of me.”

Elderess Hadara’s eyes narrowed as she searched the crowd of white-robed individuals in the main hallway for the middle-aged culprit. She cast him a vicious glare before turning to the young girl with a bright, encouraging smile. “The Empress or Emperor of Light has been selected from your family since the beginning of the Empire itself, Ariella. It is in your blood, even if it is not yet in your brain. You will be the next holy Empress.”

“But I do not even have any powers,” Ariella reminded her. She was clinging tightly to the woman’s gnarled old hand without even realizing it, and despair flashed in her sapphire eyes. It was Ariella’s greatest failure that she had not been gifted with powers at birth. Fifty men whose minds had reverted to child-like states because of accidents or age were miraculously cured on the day of her father’s birth. His gift involved minds, and he only used his powers to heal. People flocked from all over the Empire to receive even a morsel of his healing powers.

Elderess Hadara’s power was compassion. Even as Ariella clasped the older woman’s hand, she could feel her body flooding with warmth and assurance. “Your powers will come in time, little Ariella. Sometimes it is those things for which we wait an eternity that are the greatest.”

“Will papa be proud of me?”

She smiled down at the little girl and sent a wave of confidence through their linked hands. “Your father will be very proud.”

Ariella sighed and turned to face the grand, golden doors that would lead to the veranda overlooking the great courtyard of the palace. Three hundred steps led down from either side of the veranda to the cobblestone courtyard where her future subjects awaited the sight of their future ruler. All she had to do was walk out onto the veranda, smile, and wave.

It was customary in Galatéa to present the one selected from the family as the candidate for the position of Emperor or Empress on the child’s tenth year. The current Emperor or Empress would take the child out onto the veranda, one of two outdoor spaces the palace-bound ruler was allowed to occupy, and announce the name of the future head of the Galatéan Empire. The one selected was not always the eldest child—her own father was the youngest of three children but had been born with the greatest power. Unfortunately, he was not as virile as his own father and only produced one child, very late in life. Even less fortunate were the premature deaths of his elder brother and sister before either could produce children of their own.

That left only Ariella.

The sound of boots clicking against cold marble made the child’s back stiffen and her fidgeting hands drop instantly to her sides. She would recognize the sound of those boots anywhere. Shiny black boots that reached mid-calf and were so clean she could eat off of them adorned the feet of her father. Even in his fifties he was a handsome man, with a lean physique and a noble face. His pale blonde hair and sapphire eyes were the same as his daughter’s, though in every other way she took after her deceased mother.

Her father wore the ornamental white and gold robes of the Emperor, and atop his head rested a silly hat that resembled an upside-down triangle. Diamonds swayed from the thin brim, colliding with one another in a riot that sounded like tinkling bells. The smile of greeting he offered his daughter was somewhat rigid, but she did not even notice.

Ariella’s gaze was fixated on the beautiful golden staff in her father’s right hand. It had no inlays, no embossing. The Scepter of Light was nothing but a solid staff of pure gold, an object with the power to accept or deny the future ruler of Galatéa. If the person were accepted, then the Scepter would proceed to glow so brightly that the entire country would be engulfed in light. If not…well, no one had ever been denied by the Scepter, so Ariella had never been told what would happen. She was afraid that some time in the next eight years, the people would know what to expect when the Scepter rejected a candidate.

Ariella took her father’s free hand and used her other to imperceptibly lift the hem of her robe so she would not trip over the excess fabric. Two grandly dressed servants opened the great golden doors with a flourish, and with a heart pounding in anticipation, Ariella stepped out onto the veranda and into her destiny.

***

“Riyka! You sorry little girl, get in here this instant before I find my switch!”

Lady Saffron, the owner of Lady Saffron’s Tea House, expected to hear a scurry of feet followed by the breathy pleas of a terrified girl. Riyka, however, was not a child anymore and the threat of a switch did little to horrify someone who had felt it for so long that her body could barely feel pain anymore. Years of abuse and negligence had left Lady Saffron with only one threat that worked with any degree of certainty on the insolent brat, and she had learned to use it sparingly to retain its effectiveness. As this was not an incident that required such a threat, the corpulent woman ignored the girl’s rebellious streak and waited impatiently for her to arrive in the small back room that served as both storage room and kitchen to the Tea House.

In more polite regions of Galatéa, such as the prudish country of Ranglen further north, tea houses were places where women gathered to gossip and giggle over steaming hot cups of gourmet tea. In the case of Lady Saffron, however, a tea house was a polite name for a brothel. Having established her business in the middle of Gorma, a large country that bordered the fiery pits of Hueres but was also a part of the holy Galatéan Empire, Lady Saffron tried her best to placate those who came from both ends of the spectrum. She adopted the title of Lady to soothe her more noble-minded clients, and she called her establishment a Tea House to trick them into entering. Even the most righteous of folk could often be tempted to stay and have a drink, especially those whose brains were located in a more southern region.

For those devils that sometimes traveled up from Hueres, she offered a fine selection of women who danced around in scanty clothes that came off for a price. Normally the clothes stayed on in the main room of the Tea House and came off on the second floor, but the Tea House was not without its minor indiscretions. Lady Saffron tried to deal with them accordingly, but for some of her wealthier customers, she was always willing to make exceptions to the rule.

Riyka was the biggest exception that Lady Saffron had ever made. She was the only girl working at the Tea House who was not required to sell her body for cash and deliver a hefty percentage to her patroness. Having discovered early on in the girl’s life that she was not blessed with the natural rhythm necessary for sensual dancing, Lady Saffron had juggled with various ideas for how to use her. Everyone had a use, after all, and Lady Saffron had enough whores to please her customers without adding another. Whores tended to have little time for precious else but their primary profession. Relatives, however…

Her friends – a loose term for a woman who cherished money above human companionship – often asked her what had possessed her to take in her sister’s bastard daughter. They only saw that the rich, gluttonous woman who wouldn’t spare a copper coin to save a man’s life had charitably taken in an orphaned girl. Lady Saffron would just smile a secretive little smile and explain that Riyka was not a charity – she was a workhorse. When her friends wondered why Lady Saffron hadn’t just bought a slave to work for her, that devious smile would only widen as she explained her motives. Slaves worked because they had to and only did what was necessary for survival. Orphaned relatives worked because they felt they owed their caretaker and often worked much harder.

Riyka was proof positive. At first Lady Saffron had set her to work in the back room, cooking and cleaning like an average kitchen maid. Within a matter of years, the girl was practically running the Tea House on her own, as well as cooking and cleaning for her aunt in whatever spare time she had. Riyka could cook, tend the bar, serve the guests, and sometimes even act the role of a pimp when Lady Saffron was not around. And more often than not, the Tea House owner would spend her days and nights lounging in her plush, leather armchair in her opulently furnished home next door while she gorged herself on the fruits of Riyka’s labor. Only occasionally would she stop by to make sure that her business was running smoothly.

This just happened to be one such day.

Riyka was in the main room scrubbing the hardwood floors until they shone, knowing that in a matter of hours they would be covered with dirt and grime. She did not care. The cleanliness of the Tea House was a matter of pride for her, one of the few things about the place she could be proud of.

When she heard her aunt’s loud, grating voice from within the kitchen, she groaned softly and then said a quiet prayer for patience. As Riyka walked slowly, purposefully towards the kitchen, she continued to speak softly to herself. “Your aunt means well,” she murmured, making sure to drag her feet to give herself time to prepare for another beating. “She only has your well-being in mind. How can you ever be successful if you cannot properly run a business, Riyka? Yes, she just wants you to be successful. One day she will die and this Tea House will be yours, so just listen to what she has to say and do not consider the many ways in which you would like to bring about her untimely demise.”

She tried not to let herself smile over the fact that one day Hariette Birch, more commonly known as Lady Saffron, would die, in an untimely manner or no. Instead of envisioning gruesome, bloody murder, she tried to focus on being calm and genteel, and by the time she reached the kitchen she was smiling, but only for her aunt’s benefit.

“Is something wrong, aunt?” she asked sweetly. Her hands were folded primly against her stomach, and she stood tall and straight like a regal princess, knowing that any signs of superiority irritated her aunt to no end. No one should act more important than Lady Saffron, for in her beady little eyes, she was the most important woman in all of Gorma.

Her aunt’s heavily painted lips drew into a scowl. “Stop that,” she snapped, and with a sigh Riyka’s shoulders slumped and she stood lazily as her aunt preferred. So much for a small bit of rebellion. “Did you know about Leila?” When it came to business, Lady Saffron did not believe in delays, and with her blunt question, she dove right into the heart of the matter.

Riyka pursed her lips together and narrowed her eyes as she stared at a grease stain on the wall just behind her aunt’s head. She would need to clean that before the cook arrived…

“Riyka! Pay attention girl! It is your job to keep up with the wenches who work here, so why is it that the girl’s father showed up on my doorstep to tell me about her injury?” Lady Saffron demanded peevishly.

“Injury? Leila?” Riyka’s eyes widened as she fought to hide the smirk that threatened to spread across her lips. “However did it happen?”

“He says she tripped on her way out the door last night and sprained her ankle. And don’t you go looking sympathetic you little imp, because I know you do not like the girl.”

“Just because she called me a spoiled termagant does not mean I would purposefully bring harm to the poor dear,” Riyka argued vehemently. She honestly had not meant to trip Leila, though perhaps she had daydreamed of the silly chit falling and breaking her neck as she absentmindedly left her mop lying directly in the path of the front door. Ignoring a very small twinge of guilt, Riyka leaned towards Lady Saffron, her eyes wide with innocence. “Aunt, what is a termagant?”

“You are!” the woman shouted furiously. “That girl was one of my best whores, and you know it! If she had not upset me just last week by trying to shortchange me on my percentage, I would damn well make you take her place!”

Her furious threat stole away every last remnant of Riyka’s defiance. Ever since she’d turned sixteen, her aunt had been promising to sell her body if she refused to work or if she did anything imperfectly. She worked herself to death to make absolute certain she would never fall prey to such a wretched fate; for years Riyka had been in charge of the women who sold their bodies for money at the Tea House, and some of the things she had seen…some of the injuries she had tended…She shuddered at the memories. Men, apparently, had some very strange appetites, especially those who drifted up from Hueres.

“It really was an accident,” Riyka insisted. “Please, aunt, I will find someone else to cover for her, I promise!”

“There is no time for that! We open in an hour, Riyka, and the slave market is already closed for the day. It takes weeks to negotiate deals with freewomen, which leaves us with nothing.”

She sighed. There was no helping it, then. “I will work for her tonight,” she allowed, “but only as a serving maid.” There was absolutely no way she would agree to whore herself because of some silly accident.

Lady Saffron nodded her head in satisfaction, causing the thick rolls about her neck to jiggle. “That will have to be acceptable for the time being. If something like this happens again, however…”

“It will not,” Riyka assured her quickly, trying to force away a niggling sense of impending doom. “I swear it will not,” she added, if only to convince herself. Trouble, it seemed, had a habit of following her around like a terrible specter. She knew her time was running out; very soon Lady Saffron would realize that if she kept threatening Riyka’s virginity without following through on that threat, it would lose its potency. Thus Riyka resolved to do her best to control her rebellious impulses, praying to the invisible powers of Light that she could survive another night of endless pawing in order to salvage the tattered remains of her innocence.

Riyka could not even count how many times over the years she had been forced, by some unfortunate mishap, to work in the main room at night. Normally she kept to the kitchens, only drifting into the main room if someone needed her help or if the bar got too swamped with orders. Most likely her aunt had expected to find her in the kitchen this close to opening, else she wouldn’t have wasted precious effort entering through the back door of the establishment to find her niece. That her aunt hadn’t known Riyka spent the hour before opening time cleaning the main room was only a testament to how infrequently she visited her own establishment.

Now Riyka found herself delegating the cleaning chores to Lorg, the bartender. He was a burly man with the personality of a log, but he had a soft spot for Riyka and had started mopping before she even reached the back door that led up to the second level of the Tea House.

Even at this hour, Riyka could hear the sounds of money being earned by the Tea House whores. Most of them were slaves, but a few freewomen lived at the actual Tea House for lack of cheaper lodging. They could sleep in one of the upstairs rooms so long as they gave Lady Saffron a higher percentage of their earnings. Riyka tried to ignore the fact that some of the girls had left their doors cracked as she sauntered down the hall to her own bedroom.

When Riyka first came to live with her aunt, she’d slept on the couch in the old woman’s lavish one-bedroom cottage. Once she took over the Tea House, her aunt insisted that she move into the building because of the odd hours she kept. Apparently, Riyka’s late nights and early mornings were disturbing her aunt’s ‘beauty’ sleep. As if anything, even the great powers of Light, could make that woman beautiful.

On nights Riyka was forced to serve the rowdy men who frequented the Tea House, she would brush black dye into her hair so she looked more like a Gorman woman. Her aunt had warned her that the men from these parts went crazy over beauties from Galatéa, though not to protect Riyka’s virtue. She simply didn’t want her niece to be distracted from her duty of running the Tea House by the unwanted advances of man or demon. Not that Riyka believed any man would approach her, even without the dye. She wasn’t exactly a beauty.

She decided to wear a cape for this next foray into the pit of iniquity commonly known as the main room of the Tea House. Sometimes she would wear a shawl to cover the sparse upper portion of the serving outfit, which barely managed to contain the ample bosoms of the serving wenches. On Riyka, the top looked absolutely ridiculous because she did not have, and was quite convinced that she never would have, breasts. The dark leather folded in three different places, as if searching inward for something to fill it out. Thus Riyka did not seek to cover her bosom to hide her endowments, but to conceal her lack thereof.

Riyka generally chose something different every time she worked in the main room…a loose-fitting shirt, a robe…whatever worked. Tonight she chose a cape of pale blue that picked up the color of her eyes. It draped lightly over her shoulders and created enough of a shadow beneath the jeweled clasp that held it together that all attention was forced upwards. Men would be staring at her eyes tonight, not her flat chest.

The cape also served to hide her bottom, which fit quite well beneath the short skirts worn by the serving wenches. Those who worked regularly in the main room filled out the skirts more fully than Riyka, and sometimes she wondered how their behinds were not poking out the bottoms. Since Riyka had no behind whatsoever, the skirt fit her modestly. She still felt uncomfortable bending, something the other maids did often. Most of them were trying to sell more than just beer, after all.

Riyka took a deep breath to steady herself and wondered if this would ever get any easier. She was a nervous wreck at the thought of having to cater to those drunk, groping buffoons yet again.

“What’d you do this time?”

As Riyka walked back down the stairs leading to the main room of the Tea House, she stopped and turned. Jillian, a woman with dirty blonde hair and dark eyes who had been working at the Tea House for longer than Riyka had been living there, was standing a few steps above her with a smile on her thick, red lips. The makeup she wore made her face look like melting wax, and Riyka wondered that the aging woman still had customers every night. Of course, she supposed that experience outranked looks in the eyes of some men.

“She blames me for Leila’s accident,” Riyka explained.

Jillian snickered. “If I was Lady Saffron, I’d promote you for it. That girl was a cheat.”

Riyka smiled. She liked Jillian. Most of the whores were just like Leila—contemptuous and full of themselves. Jillian treated Riyka like a little sister, however, and had been more like family to her than her own aunt. “Yes, but what is bad for business is bad for me,” Riyka reminded the woman.

Jillian sneered at that. “One day that woman’ll realize what a treasure you are, and I hope to goodness it’s after you’re gone.”

“What makes you think I will ever leave?”

The woman laughed heartily. “You weren’t made for a place like this Riyka. You were made for bigger, grander things.”

“I used to dream that I was,” Riyka admitted, “but then I wake up and I am here. There is nowhere else for me to go, Jillian, and even if there were I would not know what to do with myself anywhere else. It took me long enough to learn the ropes around here.”

“Don’t you worry, girlie. You’ll find your destiny soon enough.” Jillian patted her on the back as she pushed her towards the door. “Try and keep to the corners tonight. We’ve had some wild ones come in lately, but they usually commence around the center. The quiet ones stay in the dark.”

“Thanks, Jillian.”

As her friend had suggested, Riyka kept to the corners and for the most part was left alone. Every now and then she would feel a hand snake up her skirt to pinch her bottom, but she had become very skilled at scooting away before the fingers met their target. About halfway through the night, however, disaster struck.

It was all the daimon’s fault.

Riyka had been keeping her eye on all of the corner tables, making sure to jump on them before any of the other girls so she had an excuse to stay away from those in the center. When she saw the tall man wearing the long, hooded robe walk in and take a seat in the back left corner, she immediately walked over and asked what he wanted to drink.

The man did not look at her. He was staring at the flickering flame of the single candle that lighted his table when he replied, “Just a beer,” in a gravelly voice.

Another table of three Gorman factory workers entered shortly afterwards and seated themselves at the table next to the hooded man, along the back wall. Riyka could hear their shouts for beer before she even turned to approach the table, so she decided to fill both orders at once. She went to the long bar running along the right side of the building and called out to Lorg for four beers.

“Busy night,” he commented as he filled the mugs. “Any trouble so far?”

Riyka shook her head, though she wouldn’t tell Lorg even if there were someone giving her trouble. He’d end up getting violent and losing his job, and Riyka respected him too much to lose his bartending services.

As she walked back towards her customers, she could see that the three factory workers were busy ogling one of the more experienced, bustier whores. So she opted to serve the hooded man first. Just before she reached his table, however, she stopped and found herself staring curiously as he cupped one of his hands over the flame of the candle in the center of his table. He kept waving it back and forth with gentle motions, and Riyka found herself mesmerized by the slow, tantalizing movements of his work-worn hand. As the flame responded, changing shape, distorted images appeared within the fire, shapes unrecognizable to her unfocused eyes. Suddenly uncomfortable with the strange, almost snake-like visions emerging from the candle flame, she forced herself to approach the man and interrupt his fire-play.

“You are going to burn yourself,” she warned, forcing her voice into a semblance of nonchalance as she slammed a mug of beer down in front of him.

“I don’t even feel the heat,” he said quietly. His head turned slightly, but the hood of the robe concealed his face completely from sight. A flash of warm gold revealed his eye color, but nothing else stood out from the darkness. “Why do you wear the cape?”

Riyka started at that question. No one had ever commented on her attire before, no matter how differently she dressed from the whores. “Why do you ask?” she wondered aloud.

“None of the other women wear capes. Does it signify that you are of some sort of elevated status in this whorehouse?” he wondered.

“This may be a whorehouse, but I am not a whore. I do not work to please others with my body, I simply deliver the beer,” Riyka snapped, irritated by the somewhat sarcastic tone in the man’s voice.

“In those clothes?” His expressive golden depths were filled with doubt.

“In case you haven’t noticed, these clothes do little but reveal what I do not have.”

Those oddly slanted eyes softened just a little, as if he found her remark humorous. “I do not think your body has anything to do with your lack of appeal,” he told her matter-of-factly. “You are too rigid. You should loosen up, like her,” he suggested, nodding his head at the busty redhead dancing for her table of factory workers. Damn girl was getting them good and rowdy, too.

“Dancing would only encourage men to treat me in a way I do not wish to be treated.” Riyka was looking at the girl with disapproval. It wasn’t good manners to seduce another woman’s table, whether or not that woman was willing to sell herself.

“Would you dance for me?”

“No,” she firmly replied without hesitation.

She glanced back at him. She still could not see his face, but for a moment the fire caught in his golden eyes, and she almost thought that they looked…sad. “It is probably best,” he murmured, and once again he started to play with the fire. “Your other customers are waiting, princess.”

From his mouth, the word princess rang sarcastically and smacked of an insult. She felt a violent urge to strangle him but buried the impulse as she watched his other hand reached out for the mug of beer. Red scars that looked like sunken channels marred his right hand, and in place of fingernails were short, gray claws.

Riyka had seen her share of daimons – half-human, half-demon creatures – during her time at the Tea House. Most daimons were slaves or hermits, but some precious few dared to show their grotesque faces in public. They were all different, just like all demons were different. She had seen one that only looked like his demon ancestor in the curled horns that protruded from his head, and yet others were barely even human in appearance. She understood now why the man chose to wear the hooded robe and could only imagine how hideous his face must look that he felt the need to conceal it from sight.

She was shaken by her encounter with the daimon and could not quite pinpoint if the feeling in her chest was fear or empathy. Shuddering at her own weakness over nothing more than a hand and a raspy voice, she reminded herself that daimons were known to be unstable. True, she had never been nervous about one of his kind before, but none had ever looked at her with such utter despondency before, either. Even though it was only a flash of emotion, she had never seen anyone, human or daimon, gripped by such total desolation.

Caught up in her contemplation of the odd daimon, Riyka was too slow to evade the pinch as she slammed the three mugs of beer down on the table belonging to the factory workers. The redhead, Lissa, was still dancing for them, so Riyka assumed they would be suitably distracted. Unfortunately, one of them noticed her slight interruption and decided to give her a thank-you pinch for the beer.

Riyka didn’t feel the pinch. Her rear end had received so much abuse from Lady Saffron that she probably wouldn’t have even noticed if her skirts hadn’t lifted slightly in response to the man’s movements. Still feeling flustered and a little bit angry after her conversation with the daimon, she did not think before reacting instinctually and slamming her tray into the man’s head. He went flying to the ground in a heap of moans, and when Riyka realized what she had done and that the entire main room of the Tea House went silent and still in response to her reaction, her eyes widened in horror.

Instantly regretting her rash attack on a paying customer, she knelt beside the man and offered her apologies. She truly had not meant to be so violent with him, but sometimes her natural reaction to aggression was to aggress right back.

The seedy-looking man stood up and backhanded her. She would have forgotten herself again and hit him right back if Lorg hadn’t suddenly stepped in front of her to guard her. The worker looked ready to take on the burly bartender, too, but one of his friends placed a hand of warning on his shoulder. It was not in Lorg’s direction he nodded with a grim look of warning, however, but at the dark corner where the daimon was seated.

Riyka couldn’t see the daimon from behind Lorg’s enormous back, but she did see the seedy man glance to the side, pale visibly, and then abruptly sit back down. “No use fightin’ over a stupid wench,” he muttered. “Not worth beddin’ anyway.”

Riyka breathed a mental sigh of relief. She had no idea what had frightened the men so much – when Lorg finally returned to his position behind the bar, the daimon was sitting peacefully at his table as if nothing had happened – but she was glad that her lack of a body seemed to be enough to deter the men from pushing the subject.

Riyka could only hope that her instantaneous reaction to the sneaky-handed man would not come back to haunt her.

***

Ipkus, Demon King of Hueres, sat on his throne of heated red iron with one grotesquely scarred elbow on his knee as his pointed chin rested on his clawed hand. To the fifteen high-class demons standing below the raised dais in the scorching-hot throne room, Ipkus looked lost in thought, an expression not common amongst those dwelling in the land of eternal flames. Like most demons, Ipkus hated having to think, but ever since the Galatéans conveniently disposed of his older brother nearly twenty-five years ago – Ipkus smiled pleasantly at the thought. Such a simple, expedient arrangement that had been – he had spent every waking hour trying to think of a way to rid the world of those detestable Light worshippers. If not for the constant interference of the Galatéans, the demons would be free to run rampant in the human world, killing and raping as they saw fit.

For most demons, there was no greater pleasure in life than hearing a woman scream or watching the life spill from a man’s body. Some demons were content to control their urges and live peacefully with the humans, but not Ipkus. His own cursed brother had been quite amiable with the Galatéan Empire, had even tainted himself with the body of a Galatéan woman, but not Ipkus. If he touched one of their kind, it would be to strangle the life out of him.

A few of his loyal retainers stepped hesitantly away from him. The look of sheer malice that had entered his eyes made him look crazed, and not one of them dared approach him or speak. The powerful demons were constantly in his attendance as protection, but nearly an hour ago he had announced that he wished to have a word with them. He spent the following hour lost in thought, but no one dared to ask why he had called a conference only to sit in silent reverie. To question the Demon King equaled a death sentence.

Unaware of the apprehension he was inspiring in his underlings, Ipkus contemplated how to approach a very delicate matter with the mighty demon accomplices standing silently before him. Demons were not above striking bargains with Galatéans to get their dirty work done in the Holy City, but if they knew the plot Ipkus was currently involved in, they might have a few protestations.

“The time draws near,” Ipkus finally announced in a calm, low voice. “In a matter of weeks the Galatéans will hold the ceremony to crown Princess Ariella the new Empress. We must stop this from happening.”

His retainers, all large and hideously scarred, nodded their agreement enthusiastically. “I still say we should hire someone to break into the palace and kill the little bitch,” a hunkered down demon with squinty red eyes snorted.

“We tried that already, Orses,” another demon snapped.

“What other option do we have?” someone else demanded. “The Princess is not permitted to leave the palace walls, let alone the confines of the Holy City. Even paying off Galatéans to do the job for us has not worked.”

“The old Emperor grows weaker every day,” Ipkus spoke up. “The man can barely even hold the Scepter on his own now, let alone rule his Empire. As his strength weakens, so does the strength of his people and their faith in the powers of Light. We must take advantage of this weakness. We must declare war on the Holy City.”

Fourteen of the fifteen demons looked startled by his revelation.

The fifteenth, Orses, was the first to voice his opinion. “I think it is an excellent plan, your highness. We should have done so years ago.”

“Shut up, Orses!” A large demon stepped forward, his thick horns belying his ability to hold his head straight and proud. “Your grace, even with the Emperor’s failing health, we cannot hope to amass an army and defeat the Holy City before the Princess has accepted the Scepter. With the barrier of Light protecting the city…” His voice trailed off.

“Then we shall just have to make certain that the Scepter Ceremony never occurs,” Ipkus easily replied.

There were confused murmurs among the demons. Finally, one with short, thick horns spoke up. “But sir, didn’t we just agree that it would be impossible to kill the Princess?”

“There are ways to destroy an enemy’s plan without having to kill the enemy.” He turned to Orses. “Begin gathering the troops. And you, Yuthus.” He pointed at the one with the long, thick horns. “You will stay behind and speak with me. There is much we have to discuss about the future of the Galatéan Empire.”