The Duke’s Demon by Iris Foxglove

Chapter 3

How curious.

Sebastien could not remember the last time he’d heard music. Maybe there would have been some, at the party where he’d found Devon, if things hadn’t turned out as they had. Sebastien did not leave his estate often, and he had somehow forgotten there was any instrument capable of making music, here in his home.

The demon was awake fully now, pushing at the edges of him. The thing’s wings fluttered. It was the same thing it did, in the dark room, with the knife. It was excited. And it was pushing Sebastien back, like it did when it fed, but it wasn’t doing anything but listening.

It clicked, and hissed a little, and Sebastien realized it was trying to mimic the sounds it was hearing.

What is it, the demon asked, voice so clear that Sebastien startled to hear it.

“Music,” he said, softly, and heard Devon’s fingers skip on the keys. The demon didn’t seem to mind the discordant note, it just fluttered and hovered there, awake, curious.

How, the demon asked, fluttering, and Sebastien was moving into the room before he could quite stop himself. It wanted to see what Devon was doing. How he was making the sounds.

Devon went still and the fear came, and the demon, instead of being distracted, hissed.

Again.

“It would like to watch you play,” Sebastien said, oddly unsure how to explain this behavior, which was astounding simply because, in the years he’d been this creature’s host, it had never done anything like this before. “It lacks the knowledge of how it is done. Show it.”

Devon said, “You are standing too close to me.”

Sebastien waved a hand. The demon fluttered its wings, pushed him aside and then—it did something it only ever did in the dark room, and spoke through him. “No knife,” Sebastien said, in a voice gone atonal, flat, and not his own. His eyes went round, he could always feel that when it happened. For a moment his teeth felt strange, too long.

“Again,” it said, in a voice that was caught somewhere between Sebastien’s and its own.

“You are frightening him,” Sebastien tried to say, even as it felt a bit like speaking through water.

“No knife,” the demon said.

“Fuck, all right, I.” Devon drew in a shaky breath, but his hands were shaking and he slipped on the notes.

The demon didn’t mind. It fluttered like a bird, beat its wings, tried again to match the sounds and could not.

Hold again, the demon said, in his mind.

“I do not think that advisable,” Sebastien answered, out loud. “He needs his wrists to play. Go on, Devon. It likes the sound.”

Devon stared at him, closed his eyes, and started to play. Again, he missed some notes, fingers slipping, and something about the piano sounded off even when he did not falter. But the demon was as happy as it was when Sebastien made men scream. Almost more so, in fact, because this was new. It made a sound deep inside Sebastien’s awareness, the sort it only made after it fed. A rumble, like a purr.

“Extraordinary,” Sebastien murmured, then closed his eyes and sank back, let them both enjoy the sounds of the piano. “Don’t stop.”

Devon played, and Sebastien let the demon listen until it seemed to curl up again, as if it were content just to hear the sounds. “Did you like it, then?” Sebastien asked.

Hold again, the demon said, and then went quiet.

“I think it wishes me to thank you,” said Sebastien, when he came back to himself. He raised his eyebrows. Devon was pale and shaking, but there was a curiosity there, like the demon had for the music. “It said I should hold your wrists, as I did before.”

“No,” Devon whispered, but Sebastien didn’t need the demon to tell him that the tremble in his voice wasn’t entirely fear.

“Did you attend to yourself, then?” Sebastien narrowed his eyes when Devon simply stared at the keys and did not answer. He lifted his cane and pressed it under Devon’s chin, tilted his gaze up. “You will answer me when I ask you a question.”

“Yes,” Devon said, and the anger was back, a quick hot flare beneath the fear. And something else, something new. Shame, perhaps.

The demon stirred, but only just. It clicked softly, and again, Sebastien heard what it meant—hold, again.

He does not want it, Sebastien thought at it. And you are no longer hungry.

He does. Yes. Hold, again.

Sebastien was at a loss, and Devon was looking at him, again caught between fear and that same curiosity. Sebastien said, “It only knows the one thing you like. But you like this, too. The piano.”

“I—yes. I played as a child.”

Sebastien pressed the end of the cane against Devon’s jaw. “Would you like this room, my flame? To have as your own, while you are here with us.”

“Yes,” Devon said, though his hands were fisted on it, and he was breathing hard, again.

“The paintings, you uncovered them—”

“I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed,” Devon said, too quickly, tense again.

“Do not interrupt me.” Sebastien pressed the tip of the cane against Devon’s slightly-parted mouth. “Keep your head up. Cowering bores me.”

“You. Are. Fucking. Terrifying.”

“Yes, I know. I did tell you. But the room, the paintings, the piano. It’s yours if you’d like it.”

Devon’s gold eyes flew to his. “Just like that.”

“No one else is using it,” Sebastien said. “So, yes. The piano, does it need to be tuned? I have little ear for music, I would not know.”

“Yes.” Devon was breathing easier, now, but his hands were fluttering, fingers unclenching and clenching, glancing over the piano keys. “It. Yes, it does need to be tuned.”

“Then I shall have it tuned for you. This room will be cleaned, the sheets taken out, the windows polished. Fresh linens. Would you like that?”

“A gilded cage before the slaughter, is it,” Devon muttered.

Sebastien smiled and stroked Devon’s cheek briefly, with the knob of his cane. “There is no reason you should be miserable until I decide I want you to be. I have told you the one place you may not go. The house is open to you, there are no secrets here. You know the only one that matters.”

“My demon will want to hear the music again. I will send Clara to the village for the tuner. And if you wish, there are books of music in the library, I think. The schoolroom may have some, it is in the attic, which is found atop the stairs at the end of the hall. It is very dusty there, you will want to be careful. The beams are old, and may break.”

“Wouldn’t want me to die before you and your hellspawn creature eat me,” Devon said.

“No,” Sebastien said. “We wouldn’t.”

He was nearly out of the room when Devon’s voice stopped him. “You meant it, I can have this room?”

“I did, yes. It is yours if you want it.”

“Will you.” A pause, a sharp breath. “Will you ask before you enter it, if I’m here.”

A strange request, but Sebastien saw no reason not to grant it. “Of course. It’s only polite.”

There was a half second before Devon said, in a strange voice, “...thank you.”

“You are quite welcome.” With that, Sebastien left him there, in a room he hadn’t been in for so many years, he’d forgotten it was there.

His old bedroom, wasn’t it? Or was it Etienne’s? Hard to remember.

As Sebastien headed to find Clara, he stopped on the second floor. The doors to the octagon room were flung wide open, the darkness waiting, gaping, endless. He would have to wait to speak to Clara, but that was all right.

Sebastien walked inside, and the endless dark breathed like a living thing and settled, cold and familiar, around him.

“All right, demon,” Sebastien said, into the nothing that was this room. “I am here.”

And the doors closed behind him, shutting out the light.

* * *

When Sebastien waseight or about that age, he asked his mother why the doors to the ballroom wouldn’t open.

And his mother gave him a distracted, worried little smile—the kind she gave when Sebastien and Etienne fenced in the living room, and knocked things over accidentally, Mother, not on purpose, or when the man from the capital city came, the one who went into a room with their father the duke, and there was all the yelling.

“That isn’t a ballroom,” his mother said, brows drawn. “What on earth makes you think that it is?”

“Then what is it?” Sebastien asked, but his mother said he should ask his father, but not now, because he was in his study, going over the books.

His father did that a lot, going over the books. He used to fence with Sebastien and Etienne, but now he picked up his sword less and less, and his fingers were spotted with ink.

Their estate was far up north near the sea, but not the kind of sea you could swim in; sometimes, if you went up on the highest point of the hill near the old ruins outside of the village, you could see great bits of ice, jagged and white-tipped, glowing blue in the afternoon that never seemed to be warm despite the sun. Across the strait of the Cheimon Sea was the island where the wolf-people of Lukos lived in their shacks, fighting snow and spending the dark winter in cabins made of wood.

Or so Etienne said, and he did know everything, so Sebastien believed him.

So when Sebastien finally did ask about the black double-doors framed in stone that did not open, he didn’t ask his father, but his older brother, who would one day be the duke. Hopefully, Sebastien thought, he would not be in the study all the time, going over the books, or drinking the thing that made his words slur and his mother tight-lipped.

“Oh, that,” Etienne said, tying back his hair, which was dark like their father’s, while Sebastien’s was snow-pale like their mother’s. “That’s the tower.”

“The what?” Sebastien narrowed his eyes at his brother. Sometimes Etienne had what his mother called fanciful ideas, like when Etienne swore there were pale figures of dancing ladies in the music room downstairs, or heard laughing that no one else heard, or swore once he saw a robed man singing in the atrium beyond the arches, so emphatically their father roused the household guards and they all had to traipse upstairs to the schoolroom for the duke to investigate. When no sign of intruders appeared, Etienne had to write I will not tell lies over and over on the chalkboard, even though he swore later to Sebastien that he didn’t lie, he just admitted he did because his fingers were sore and the chalk was all gone.

“The tower,” Etienne said, again. “It was here before they built the Abbey. Or they built it around it, I can’t remember. I saw the blueprints, once. The architect came from Kallistos, you know, the place where they make things. That’s why they built it, why it’s called the Abbey.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Sebastien, with all the confidence of a boy who read books in the moonlight on the cushions in his bedroom, when he should have been sleeping like a Good Boy and a Proper Son. “An abbey is a place for monks to live, and we don’t have those anymore.”

“Not here, we don’t. But they came from somewhere else. And they built a tower, and then they built the Abbey. And the tower had to stay in the house, so they walled it up behind those doors.”

“But what’s in it,” Sebastien had asked, annoyed, because none of this was the answer he wanted.

“I don’t know, Bastien. But I don’t think we’re supposed to go in there, that’s why it’s shut up like it is. The old monks prolly put someone bad in there. Something.”

That only made Sebastien want to go in there more, though. “Why would you put doors and no way to open them, then?”

And Etienne had looked at him, there in the fading light as they neared the longest night, when the sun was weakest and the ribbons of light brightened up the sky over the sea—Sebastien’s favorite, because he liked when the days were short, and also, the longest night meant double the gifts, because it was his birthday.

“What do you mean, doors?” Etienne asked him. “It’s just a wall. Why do you think they’re doors?”

And Sebastien had not been able to say how he knew, he just did. And that night he dreamed of the doors-that-were-not-doors standing open, nothing beyond but a night even darker than the longest night, something inside beckoning him, come here, come in.

He woke up standing in front of them with his hands pressed on the black wood, but went back to bed, and never told anyone that he thought they were moving beneath his palms, like maybe they were breathing.

Breathing. Waiting.

* * *

The demon came forth,spilling out of his mouth.

It hurt—it always did, a bit, but Sebastien had long since grown used to the sensation of it climbing up and out of him, shaking him off like a cocoon it wore to sleep. It was too dark to see much but the thing’s red eyes, although as Sebastien’s eyes adjusted he could just see the shape it made in the shadows.

It was connected to Sebastien by thin wisps that ran from his mouth, his eyes, the back of his neck, and his heart. Like ropes, or tethers holding a kite, but these felt like nothing and looked as insubstantial as smoke. The shape of the demon was smaller than a man, with lovely, slitted red eyes and horns, and wings that rustled, and a tail that speared things that shuffled around them in the dark of the room-that-wasn’t.

It would spear the little wriggling things and eat them. When it did, Sebastien would feel it tear the things apart with its teeth and jaws, and shiver in pleasure. As the demon dined on what Sebastien assumed were smaller versions of itself, its shape grew more distinct. The wings were less like smoke stretched over paper, the head of the creature more pronounced, and it looked a bit like a large cat, maybe. Its tail speared something and Sebastien felt the thing wriggling as the demon ate it, and another, and was almost on his back writhing in pleasure by the time the demon regained enough strength to speak to him.

“Host,” it said, in its voice like a secret whispered over an ancient fire. “Come here.”

They were the first words it had even spoken to him, and the first ones it always spoke, in here.

Sebastien moved toward it, carefully—it did not like to be startled—and held out a hand. Sometimes it liked to be petted, and sometimes it did not.

It seemed to be in the mood for it, as the creature shifted and moved like liquid smoke, and the shape of its head beneath Sebastien’s hand had long since stopped being strange. He stroked the head of it, wondering what it looked like in the full light.

Its tail swished. “No.”

“I know,” Sebastien said, indulgent, carefully petting its horns. “I would not. It is only that I am curious, as you know.”

“Cur-ee-ous,” the thing repeated, tilting its head. “What is this.”

“It means I would like to know things, of you. About you. As you felt about the music Devon played, today.”

The demon made a noise, the tail swished—it was distinct enough that Sebastien saw it was tipped like a spade on the end—and something squealed in the dark. There was a flash of teeth, too many, silver-tipped. The demon took its time eating this one, whatever it was.

Sebastien’s cock hardened and he shuddered as it ate. He swayed, struggling to stay upright.

“I have things I will know.”

“All right,” Sebastien managed, dizzy. “I, ah. When you eat things, it.”

“Yes.” The demon made a noise like a sigh. “The one with the sounds. Why.”

It was manifesting strong enough to speak, but it did not know how to make a sentence sound like a question. “That is Devon. He was the bright flame of anger you showed me in the snow, with the hunt, do you remember?”

“The sounds,” the demon repeated, wings fluttering. “The ones he made at the box.”

“That is music, and Devon made the sounds on the instrument—the, ah, box—called a piano. Did you like it, the music?”

“Yes.” It bumped into his hand like a cat. “More.”

“Do you want the music more than screams, or his fear?” Sebastien asked, stroking fingers down its nape. There were rippling things there, like scales, but soft, like fur.

“The same.” It shook its head, and flared its wings.

“Ah. I see.” Sebastien did not think Devon would mind playing the piano, given the alternative.

“You are. Warm, when that one is breathing against you.”

Sebastien blinked. “I am sorry, I do not understand.”

The demon was purring, but it stopped to make a noise like a growl. It was easily frustrated when Sebastien did not understand it, like a young child. “You held that one. That one was warm for you. Afraid, but warm. Angry, but warm. Host was warm, too. Like now, here, when I eat the things and you shiver.”

Oh, yes. “You are saying Devon wished for me to touch him. Yes, well. That one is very...tangled up, inside.”

“Yes,” the demon sighed. “I saw that one’s soul.” It seemed to care little for proper names. “The sounds, they tasted like the screams, but different.”

“How so?” Sebastien could tell that even now, the creature was starting to fade a bit. It took energy for it to manifest, and for it to speak, and Sebastien had asked it once if there were things it could eat that would give it more power to stay visible, to which it had said, somewhere, but over the cold dark that drowns, which he assumed meant the sea.

“Do you want me to bring him in here, to scream for you?”

The demon’s wings fluttered again, and its red eyes gleamed. “No, Host. Because you do not.”

Sebastien said, “Don’t I?”

The demon made the sighing noise again, pushing at him, like an overlarge cat trying to climb up someone, or a hound too large for a lap trying to get into one anyway. It was seeking to return to him, he imagined.

“Feel more things with that one,” the demon demanded, and Sebastien felt chills race up his spine as spectral talons dug into his chest, his shoulders. The demon was still corporeal enough that it made Sebastien stagger a bit under its weight, so he went to the floor on his back and let the creature perch on him.

“You want more of his anger, then? I thought you might,” Sebastien said, indulgent, petting it as best he could on its head as it nuzzled him.

“The sounds. The warmth. Hold again. Then maybe the knife. Maybe more sounds.”

“All right,” Sebastien said. “If that’s what you wish.”

The demon lifted its head, blinked its endless red eyes at him. Staring into them made Sebastien feel as if he were falling, and he recalled that he never did know if there was really a floor upon which he could lay, here, or if he was just drifting on the endless dark within.

“Yes. Host. Open.”

Sebastien opened his mouth. The creature went back inside him, and Sebastien writhed on the floor, choking once as it pushed its way back to curl up within him.

When it was back inside, Sebastien lay gasping in the dark, shuddering all over, sticky and wet from coming as he always did, there in the strange place that wasn’t, alone as he always was.

When he stood, the doors flew open and the light was there, waiting.