I Tamed the Demon Girl Who Killed Me

Chapter 6

THE FIRST COVENANT

The terms took ten minutes to explain and four seconds for Nyra to ruin.

“This is nonsense,” she said.

“It’s a mutual bond.”

“It’s a collar with a nicer name.”

“You can break it whenever you want.”

“Can I?”

Adrian opened his mouth, closed it, and checked the system. Words glowed obediently in front of him.

[Soul Covenant terms: Mutual. Either party may dissolve the bond. Forced obedience: Not permitted.]

“Yes,” he said. “You can. It says so right here.”

“Where?”

“In the air. You can’t see it.”

“How convenient.”

“Nyra.” He kept his voice level. “You’ve been lied to by every human who ever summoned you. I get it. I’d be suspicious too. But I’m not going to put a leash on someone who nearly burned a hole in the world to keep me alive. I’m asking for a partnership. If it goes wrong, you leave. That’s all.”

She looked at him for a long time. Then, abruptly, she held out her right hand, palm up.

“Show me what to do.”

The ritual was almost insultingly simple. There were no chants and no candles. The system only asked him to place his hand over hers and speak the truth of what he was offering. So Adrian did, feeling slightly foolish and extremely serious.

“I offer you freedom,” he said. “Not as a gift. As a promise. I’ll help you get what was taken from you, if you help me stay alive long enough to do it. And I won’t give you orders. Ever.”

A pause.

“And I,” Nyra said slowly, as though each word cost her something, “accept. For now.”

The air between their palms ignited.

It wasn’t fire. It was something older, a warm gold light that poured out of the space between their hands and wrapped around both of their wrists in two bright, coiling bands. Adrian felt it all the way down in his chest, as if something that had been broken in there had clicked into place. His pulse slowed and then raced. Nyra gasped.

[First Covenant established!] [Companion: Nyra] [Bond status: Newborn] [New ability unlocked: Demonic Sight]

The light flared once more and faded.

For a moment neither of them moved. Adrian looked down at his wrist and found nothing there, no mark, no glow. But when he lifted his eyes, the forest was different.

It had always been green. Now it was layered. Pale threads of colour ran through the air, rising from the trees like heat shimmer. He could see a faint blue glow beneath the roots of an oak, a nest of something small and sleeping. A dull orange smear in the distance that felt wrong, and he understood without being told that it was a monster, far away, moving slowly. Even the dirt had tiny traces in it, old footprints marked in gold.

“Oh,” Adrian said, softly. “That’s amazing.”

“What is?”

“I can see everything. Magic. Creatures. Weaknesses. There’s one in that tree over there, I think it’s a very small spirit, and it’s scared of you.”

Nyra didn’t answer.

He turned to look at her and stopped.

She was staring at her own right wrist. A faint mark had appeared there, a delicate curve of silver and gold, like a half-finished ring. As he watched, it pulsed once, and the colour in her face changed. The grey pallor that had dogged her since the cellar was gone. Her breathing had steadied. When she flexed her fingers, there was a flicker of red-gold light along the knuckles.

[Target: Nyra] [Demonic energy: Stabilising.] [Estimated combat capacity: 44%.]

“Forty-four,” Adrian murmured.

“What?”

“You’ve gone from thirty-one to forty-four. The covenant’s helping you heal.”

Her head snapped up. “You… measured me?”

“I’ve been doing it all day.”

“It’s disgusting.”

“It’s useful.”

“I did not agree to be measured.” But there was no real heat in it. She stared at the mark again, and then, suddenly, at him, and the expression on her face wasn’t anger. It was something much stranger.

“A human,” she said, very quietly. “A human did this. No one has formed a true covenant with one of my kind in a thousand years. They cannot. The old magic is dead.”

“Apparently not.”

“It is not supposed to be possible.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “I cannot decide whether to kill you or…”

“Or?”

“Or nothing.” She turned away. “Do not look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you are pleased with yourself.”

“I’m a little pleased with myself.”

“Insufferable.”

But when she turned back, her eyes were different. The contempt was gone, or at least reduced to a smoulder, and what lay beneath it was wary and curious and reluctantly intrigued. It was the way a person looks at a locked door they have just discovered is unlocked.

For the first time, Adrian thought, she’s looking at me like I might be worth something.

He decided not to say so.

They walked through the afternoon, following a game trail south. The system had given Adrian a handful of new tricks. He could feel Nyra’s power now, a distant warm pressure in the back of his mind, like the memory of a fire. When he reached for it, it slipped away, too hot and too fast for him to hold. But it was there.

“Don’t,” Nyra said without looking back.

“Don’t what?”

“Pull on it. You’re not strong enough. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“How did you know?”

“I felt it.” She clicked her tongue. “That is an unpleasant side effect.”

“It goes both ways, apparently.”

“I noticed.”

By dusk, they had found a road.

It was more of a track, really, two ruts through the grass, but it was a human road, and it bent toward a distant smudge of smoke on the horizon. A town. Maybe a village. Adrian felt something unclench in his chest at the sight. People. Food. Information. A place where I might find out who wants me dead.

“We need coin,” he said. “Supplies. A cloak, if we can find one. Something that doesn’t look like a murder scene.”

“I can steal.”

“Let’s try honest first.”

“Honest is slow.”

“Honest is also not punishable by hanging.”

“That’s a very human concern.”

They crested a low hill.

Below them, the road dipped through a hollow, and the hollow was on fire.

Three wagons stood in a ragged line along the track. One was overturned, and a second was burning. Dark shapes swarmed between them, squat things with too many legs, and Adrian’s new sight painted them in sickly orange. Shouts rose from the wreckage. A man was fighting with a pitchfork. Another was dragging a child toward the trees.

“Caravan,” Nyra said. “Merchants. Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters a little.”

“It doesn’t matter to us.”

“There are people down there.”

“There are always people down there.”

Adrian wanted to argue. Instead, he scanned the carnage with Demonic Sight, and his eyes caught on something that glowed.

Beneath the overturned carriage, half buried in splintered wood and spilled cargo, someone was moving. A young woman, pinned from the waist down, one hand clawing at the dirt. He could see the shape of her. And he could see something else, a deep, cool light wrapped around her like a cloak.

“There,” Nyra said, and her voice had changed. “Under the wagon. Someone’s alive.”

“I see her.”

“We should leave.”

“We should help.”

“Adrian.”

It was the first time she had said his name. He felt it land somewhere under his ribs.

“I’ll be quick,” he said, and ran.

He slid down the slope, dodged a snapping, many-legged thing that Nyra dispatched with a flick of flame behind him, and dropped to his knees at the edge of the wreck. The girl looked up. She had silver hair, pale as moonlight, and eyes the colour of old wine.

He reached for her wrist to pull her free, and Demonic Sight flickered.

[Target identified: Seraphine] [Race: Vampire]