Listening to the noise outside, I frowned. A cold sense of dread settled in my chest.
Malachar guarded me and the child with obsessive devotion.
After the incident where someone had accidentally touched my belly, he had dismissed every last soul from the Forbidden Grounds.
Proud and untamable as he was, he came here himself each day to care for me.
Cadmus Freewild had once been an honored guest, on friendly terms with the Demon Sovereign.
Yet a single drunken misstep into the Forbidden Grounds was enough for Malachar to kill him without hesitation, igniting a war between immortals and demons.
Mountains of corpses. Seas of blood.
If those people outside made it in here, another massacre was all but certain.
I hauled myself out of bed and hurried into the courtyard, hoping to warn them away before it was too late.
But the moment I opened the door, a face stared back at me. A face that looked seven-tenths like my own.
Before I could utter a word, a hand cracked across my cheek.
"Where did this wretched little servant come from, wearing my face in the Demon Sovereign's Abyssal Palace? What, are you trying to steal his favor from me?"