The hand of a demon, frozen solid, crushed under the heel of my boot. My nose wrinkled in distaste, it was slow going to get all the bodies cleared from the hallways, I had expected many more of them to flee than actually did. The demon king had tried to hold the line against an unstoppable force and I gave him credit for his bravery, he had to have known that it would end up with him captured or dead.

“He’s just ahead, commander,” my subordinate said as he led me towards the throne room where the king had taken his final stand.

“Were there any casualties?” I enquired.

“One,” the man said with a sniffled laugh from beneath his helmet, “Gerard fell for a child’s trick when one of the demons pretended to be incapacitated by the stairs and tripped him as he descended.”

“I see,” I said with a shake of my head, “he is to be ordered to be my personal servant for mealtimes until I say otherwise.”

The man nodded his head as he stopped to incline his head towards the soldiers guarding the entrance to the besieged throne room. The door to the room looked like it might have once been ornate with delicate carvings into the stone, but now it was cracked into several pieces on the floor, little bits of broken stone strewn across the entryway like freshly fallen snow. The hinges were still bright white from the thick layer of frost that had made them deeply frozen and brittle. It seemed strange to me that the last bastion for the king had relied solely on physical means to keep us out, surely they must have known that we would come for them eventually. A human kingdom might be dense enough to ignore the need to prepare, but demons should have recoiled and been fearful at the idea of a fae invasion. They were not particularly bright creatures overall, but certainly bright enough to know the danger they were in and know that strong magical barriers would be the only thing effective enough to slow us down.

“There he is,” my guide said, pointing towards the back wall.

Before the throne was an impressively tall, dark skinned demon with his face a mask of rage as it was frozen in a roar. It looked like he was in the middle of getting ready to charge for his last stand when he was incapaticated and left for me to deal with personally. Several soldiers retreated from staring and exchanging laughter as they inspected the creature. Most of them had likely not encountered demons before in their tenure as soldiers, generally their politics stayed far away from the fae and their lands were subpar at best, there was little need to ever send military might against them. Approaching the beast, I couldn’t help but find a bit of humor in his appearance as well, he was the opposite of everything a fae would call beautiful or graceful. He was a hulking beast that stood a head over my height, but he probably had a good two or three hundred pounds of muscle on me with massive shoulders and thigh muscles. These creatures seemed so obviously built for hard physical labor, yet they lofted themselves up as potent and regal magical creatures. The fact they sported long, curled horns much like our cattle only added to the ridiculousness of the idea that they thought they could sustain complex societies.

“You are dismissed,” I said to my soldier as I approached the king. The other soldiers in the room rightly took that to apply to them as well and they marched to the door, though several lingered just outside so they would be able to hear what was happening in the room.

Casting a glance around the room, I found that only a few people had retreated with him, several hulking brutes in armor holding long, serrated blades were variously frozen near the door, having been placed strategically where they could collapse on us when it was breached. They never got the chance, it has been incredibly simple for one of my battle mages to simply send tendrils of magical frost under the door to immobilize them all right before the final hinge had been broken. A particularly colorful demon stood out from the rest, her face calm and resolute next to the king. I approached her first, I thought perhaps it could have been a daughter or other family member, but her dark lavender skin seemed unlikely to be a heritable trait given everyone else in the castle, and while the other demons were hulking, she was thinner and more sinuous, even her horns were more diminutive and regal looking. I vaguely recalled from my studies long ago that demonic houses sometimes had very different breeds and suspected she originally hailed from a house far away from this kingdom. Perhaps a lover or foreign ambassador, perhaps more likely the latter, I couldn’t imagine a more delicate creature like herself being willing to be crushed by the mammoth beside her.

Curiously, when I turned my head away to turn my attention to the king, I snapped my attention back to her as I was certain I had seen her blink. Reacting to my double take, the frozen woman blinked again and through the icy layer I could make out that she was trying to move her lips. I was intrigued that any demon could push back against our magic and wondered if perhaps I was making a mistake with who I should be interrogating first. I had never heard of any demon with magical ability that mattered.

“Do not make me regret this,” I warned, then lifted my hand and waved towards her face, instantly melting the ice from around her head.

She took in a deep breath and licked her lips, seeming to feel much better now that she could breathe freely. “I will not make that mistake, madam commander.”

I inclined my head to the side, impressed that she had addressed me appropriately. “I am assuming you are some kind of royal?”

She let out a deep, breathy laugh. “No, not at all, just a magical trainer to royalty. I am accustomed to having to deduce the rank of people around me with no titles provided.”

Magical trainer, that made a bit of sense, trainers had to be powerful mages in their own right to be able to train the battle mages properly. That did bring up the question of if she was an anomaly who had been overlooked to take on a position as a seeress or whatever their equivalent was or if there was a demonic army out there with magical potential far beyond what our intelligence knew.

“Apologies for the resistance,” she continued in my silent contemplation, “I told Rafe that it was a bad idea to try to fight back and that you might show mercy if he complied instead, but he was his typical stubborn self instead.”

“Is it your doing that there were no battle mages?”

“Those are the battle mages,” she said with a snort as her eyes tracked over to the heavily armored men near the door.

I raised an eyebrow and cast a glance towards them again, looking them over carefully as I must have been missing something. “You must be joking,” I said flatly.

“It is true, Rafe has sent his other mages away recently to deal with another matter, quite foolishly. It was very obvious that it would not be long until you came here, it was only a matter of time, I’m surprised it took as long as it did.”

Interesting how articulate and sharp she seemed compared to everything I had learned and experienced so far with demons. Moreover, it was curious that she was still in the castle. If she was intelligent and knew that we would be arriving, there had to be a motive behind her risking her stay.

“Are you bound to this kingdom in some way?”

“Only through contract, I was training the queen I’m assuming you’re here to look for,” she replied.

“The queen? She is nothing, I am here for the fae blessed girl. Unless she is where the girl is, I do not care about the whereabouts of the queen.”

“She is not, she quite smartly seems to have secreted off with her consort shortly before you arrived. The girl was still here as far as I knew, she was held in the dungeon last I heard.”

I was impressed with how forthcoming she was, it was very much in her best interests to be, but thus far it seemed like everyone in the human and this realm enjoyed making everything a struggle. It made me wonder just how forthcoming she would be with even delicate information.

“You seem like a decently strong mage, what do you know about a strange creature in your ranks. I believe they came over with the girl. Not a human of course, but maybe one pretending to be a human.”

Her face curled up in frustration and a look of pain crossed her features. “I both feel like I know exactly what you’re talking about and not at the same time. Like I can almost see their face but it’s just a blank, black mass where it should be. It’s so strange, but I know exactly in theory who you’re referring to. I think… oh I know.”

I felt the expansion of her magic and it flared to a moderately impressive peak and she let out a soft cry of effort and her body shook like some tensioned string had been snapped inside of her. She leaned her head to the side of the ice that still covered most of her body to rest for a second, her eyes closed and breathing heavy.

“Sorry, he does this sometimes though he always leaves a failsafe so I won’t forget him forever,” she said quietly.

“So you know who I am talking about?”

Taking a deep breath in, she gathered her strength again and opened her eyes. “Yes, I know that bastard better than anyone,” she said with a clear note of bitterness. “I shared a bed with him for far too long.”

“You poor thing.” I said it without thinking. Perhaps I should have stopped myself to keep up the appearance of grace and power, but I sincerely did pity anyone who would let such a foul creature between their sheets.

“I agree,” she said with a heady laugh, “hindsight always has much more clarity. Trust me, I will tell you all you want to know about him.”

“You shared a bed with him and yet you are willing to tell all. Surely you know that we will not suffer him to live, he must have wronged you greatly.”

A smirk curled up onto her lips. “I hope you torture him before you kill him, make him suffer exactly as much as he has made me suffer. In fact, I hope to appease you enough to let me have a few lashes if possible.”

I raised my eyebrow and a genuine half-smile appeared on my lips. I liked this demon, she had potential. I did not know where I would utilize her just yet, but she thought like a fae and that was a rare gift in a creature such as herself.

“What is your name?”

“Ana,” she answered.

“Well Ana, if I release you fully, will you take a knee to serve me until I deem your service complete?”

“I would have taken the knee without being frozen,” she replied with a respectful bow of her head. “May I know your name so that I may properly address you in my promise of service?”

“Commander Isri Nommu,” I replied.

With another wave of my hand, the ice from her body melted away and without hesitation she dropped to her knee, looking up to me with an expression filled with serious intent.

“I lay my body and abilities in your command, Commander Nommu. I will do as you say and execute your commands as you please.”

For some reason her words and immediate compliance sent a shiver of thrill up my spine.