The Demon's fake bride

POV: Pasha

A sense of danger came on the wind, and I turned.

It was the end of autumn. The wheat had been stored in the barns, and the grass had been cut and laid out to dry for winter feed.

I tightened my grip on the pitchfork as the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

Then I saw them. Two skinny legs with bony knees. I heard her trying not to giggle. But I didn’t have time for games. Not ever. Especially not today.

“Vida?”

She snorted. The sound was barely audible, but I would have recognized that snort among a thousand others. She made it whenever I did something that annoyed her—which was more often than not.

Vida was a pain in the neck, but she was my pain. I had known she was mine since the day I turned ten and she was only eight.

Her father came to speak to my Mum. I was in bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I turned onto my side and watched Mum’s silhouette as she nodded.

Vida hadn’t known her father was dying or that he had come to secure a home for his daughter. She hadn’t understood death then. She was too young.

I knew it better after I lost my father to war. He went to battle and never returned; it became my duty to protect Vasil and Mum, and now Vida was mine to keep safe too.

Vasil, my brother, was older than me, but when he was born, God gave him a child's mind while letting his body grow strong and big. Vida understood that. She understood that Vasil was pure love. She grew up beside us. The little land we had survived only because we leaned on one another.

One day, Vida and I would marry and bind our lives and land together.

She cleared her throat.

She didn’t like my silence.

“What’s wrong?”

I didn’t answer.

My ears caught the ugly, heavy beat of hooves belonging to well-fed, well-kept horses.

The kind that didn't exist in our village anymore.

Then the black riders came into view. The riders of damnation. They had started coming every Friday to take healthy young boys for the new king's army.

They would raise them as their own soldiers. Teach them to bow to one ruler and erase everything that had come before—their homes, their families, their blood.

I shivered.

One day, those boys would raise their swords against their own flesh without even knowing it.

“Go.” I stepped toward Vida.

“No.” She looked past my shoulder as a pale cloud of dust rose, wrapping itself around the evil coming toward us.

“I can’t watch over you while hiding from them. Go home, Vida. Lock the door and keep quiet.”

There was no time. I dropped the pitchfork and ran toward the hut at the far end of the yard. Months ago, I had dug a hole beneath its floor and covered it with boards and straw. It had worked. I was still here to take care of my family. The king’s killers had been coming all summer, but they had never found me. It was eerie how no healthy man or strong boy remained in the village.

Today, I was distracted by Vida and hadn’t heard the riders coming. They had crept up on me.

I shoved open the hut door. It struck the wall with a thud, and the hinges screamed. Dropping to my knees, I felt around for the holes where I could hook my fingers beneath the boards. Too late. I heard the riders approaching. Hooves tore into the earth outside before coming to a sudden stop. My fingers refused to move. I looked around as cold, gripping panic swept through me. It was over.

My little game of hide-and-seek was over.

A freshly sharpened axe hung on the wall, its blade gleaming in the dim light. My heart seemed to stop as I reached for it. The handle slipped against my sweaty palms.

“Pasha.” Vida dropped to her knees beside me.

“Get the hell out.” I raised my face. The only bright things in the darkness were her eyes. The eyes of a child who had grown up too fast. I pressed my palm against the ground. There was no point in hiding anymore. If they didn’t find me today, they would come tomorrow. And the day after that. They would keep coming until no one was left to take.

“Cut it.” The words left my mouth in a graveyard whisper as I watched the axe.

“Just raise it and let it fall.”

Vida became as still as the mountains surrounding us.

“I can’t.” Her lips trembled as she reached for the handle. But even as she spoke, she raised the axe with all the strength in her thin, wiry arms.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, letting it fall. The heavy blade proved her words false as the metal bit violently through flesh and bone.

The pain exploded.

The door opened.

Two soldiers came in.

“What do we have here?” One of the devils tore down the black cloth I had hung over the window to keep out the light and prying eyes. The sun struck my pupils and I blinked. All I could see were Vida’s tear-glazed eyes and her ghost-white face. She had done it. With those fragile bird bones. Too young even to understand something like this.

“Damn man, look at this little cocky bastard.’’ The soldier’s face twisted into an ugly smile. “He thinks he’s smarter than us.”

A small, broken sound escaped Vida and ripped my heart open. What had I done to her?

“He crippled himself because he thought we wouldn’t take cripples.”

Vida dropped the axe to the ground. It fell between us. Her pupils became dark pools of pain and terror as numbness rushed through me.

The other soldier—the one dressed in a finer coat of blue and red—grabbed me by the collar. My feet scraped across the floor as he ordered the ugly one to examine my hand. For one strange moment, there was no blood. My body had frozen from the shock. My hand had turned an unnatural gray against the soldier’s dark, ruddy skin. Then the soldier’s rough grip twisted my wrist, and a blinding, white-hot agony tore up my arm, stealing the breath from my lungs.

“You did a lousy job.” He bared his teeth at Vida. “Only half the thumb.”

His hand dropped between my legs and squeezed.

I growled at him.

“But the little devil has balls. Big balls.” He tied my wrists together. “If he survives the infection, he’ll be worth far more than the ones with all their fingers.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight him. I wanted to bite off his tongue. He couldn’t take me. Without me, Mum and Vasil were doomed. But I was twelve, and he weighed four times as much as I did.

''Put him with the others.” He dragged me toward the cage wagon waiting at the rear of their column. It was filled with boys who hadn’t yet grown enough facial hair to show off. Boys torn from their homes and packed together like animals. I twisted around and sank my teeth into the big soldier’s shoulder, biting as hard as I could through his stinking clothes.

It was a mistake.

A terrible mistake.

His fist struck the back of my head, bringing silence and darkness in an instant.

Somewhere far away, I heard the cage door open. The other bodies shifted as the soldiers forced me inside. My vision returned as the wagon started moving.

Vida was running behind us. She fell to her knees, pushed herself up, and ran again. My lungs burned. I grabbed the bars and shook them with strength I hadn’t known I possessed. The animal inside me fought for freedom.

“Keep them safe, Vida.” My voice no longer sounded like mine. “Promise me!”

She fell again. Blood from her palms and knees painted her thin skin red. This time, she couldn’t get up. She sat in the middle of the road and cried.

“I promise!” Her voice—strangely strong for such a small body—reached me through the noise.

“This one’s lively.” I heard another voice behind me. ''I’ll shut you up.”

Something struck the back of my head.

The light went out completely.

***

Dear friends, I am posting seven chapters of a new story. I wanted to wait with this one because I never write more than one story at a time, but it was impossible. The characters' situation and everything just pulled me in. You know how we say that all stories are like our children and we love them the same. It is not true; some we like better. And this story is one of those :) Please let me know your thoughts or leave a heart if you like it.