55 Scheming

Morral had to try. She just had to. She knew the two demons were not feeling very sympathetic towards her, especially not Sheeda, but there was no chance she would ever escape if she didn't try something.

As it was, there was no way for her to overpower her two captors. They never slept or turned their eyes away from her for too long, and they certainly never approached any sources of water.

Her only chance was to find out if she had the special power they had been whispering about in secret.

The two demons hadn't seemed to know what it was, so she had no idea either. All she knew was that it was related to fire, so she had to spend some time around a campfire in order to discover it. She had thought about the flames on the demons' hands and hair, but there was no way she would be able to experiment with those without drawing any attention. There was just no chance.

Morral's plan was simple. She would pretend she was starting to get sick.

She began feigning some shivering at night, when the demons thought she was fast asleep, and then followed this up with some discreet coughs that she pretend to try to hide. The demons seemed slightly concerned, but they didn't suggest anything.

Eventually, Morral was forced to tell them outright, "I'm cold!"

Sheeda acted like she had not heard her, but Bremig looked at her with a worried expression.

"Can you light a fire?" she pressed when neither of them said anything.

Sheeda turned to her with a sly expression and stretched her burning hand out in invitation. "Why don't you use this one?" she asked mockingly.

Morral backed away dramatically, hoping it wouldn't seem like an overreaction. "I don't want your hands on me!" she yelled.

"Tough luck then!" the female demon snapped back at her.

Morral was not looking at her though. Her eyes were fixed on Bremig, who looked hesitant, yet not completely unwilling to grant her wish.

"What's the harm?" he asked, his question aimed at Sheeda. "It's not like she can burn us alive. We already are burning alive!" he joked, chuckling to himself a little.

Sheeda glared at him humorlessly. "If you start granting her every wish, she will think she is the boss here!"

"Well, if we take her to the Demon King and he does want to keep her for his son, she will be the boss someday. Do you want her to remember that you wouldn't even let her light a fire?"

Sheeda considered this for a few moments. "Fine," she said at last through gritted teeth.

Morral could tell that she didn't like the idea that her captive could become a more powerful demon than her one day, but she didn't care. She needed that fire so that she would not become a demon at all.

Bremig told her to gather a few sticks of wood, and Morral obeyed slowly, trying to act like she felt too weak to be doing this. She had to give the two demons some small satisfaction. Otherwise, they would consider this a victory for her and be more suspicious around her.

Now that she would get that fire, she needed them to be more careless and distracted.

Morral tried to fight a smile as Bremig touched the pile of sticks with his hand and set it on fire.