CHAPTER 28

"I'm sure you remember, sir," I said as I caught up, "that last week was the lull in demon creature activity. Tonight will have demon creature activity. You need to get something to eat and a little rest before you face the threat."

Glenarm Village was just up the way, the first village the master had visited to begin pulling shifters out of suppression. Through a lot of diligence, he'd knocked it out in two weeks and promptly moved on. He'd spent this last week attending to the second-most-powerful village. At this rate, if the prince didn't drop dead from exhaustion, we'd have the whole kingdom sorted in well under the time I'd mentally allotted for Fino to break out of her cage.

I sure fucking hoped Fino broke out of her cage. Her plan had sounded so promising when we were discussing it at the castle. She'd sounded so sure she'd come back. The problem was that we'd been sitting in the middle of a sex demon orgy, full of weird demon cocks and pussies with teeth and all sorts of other crap. It was possible our view of reality had been skewed. I was starting to get a little nervous about it now, to be honest.

A lot nervous, actually. So nervous, in fact, that I'd started grilling the master every morning about the demon creatures he'd killed the previous night—where he'd found them and if they'd been running around willy-nilly, heading in a straight line, or hanging around like gobshites. With the information he gave me, I was plotting a map and trying to trace them back to their point of origin. The gate that let the creatures into the kingdom was said to move around, but how many entry points could there be? Besides, this bullshit had gone on for so long that they were probably on some sort of schedule. All I had to do was brave my watery bowels, pepper the master for information, and eventually I'd have their access points. I knew I would. I was good at this silly shit.

Granted, I had no clue what I'd do with the information, but that could come later. Desperate measures always came later.

He didn't speak as he continued on, the village just up ahead and the sun lifting her skirts and stepping behind the horizon.

"Are you lost? Grunt once for yes, two for no…" I tilted my head and stuck out my ear, listening. Nothing.

Damn. He was in such a sullen snit that he didn't even want to berate me for being an idiot.

We broke the boundary line, and he didn't even flinch. The magic was deteriorating, and he was stronger now that the suppression had been lifted. Boundaries were mere suggestions to him at this point.

When we reached the village stables, the master swung his thick thigh over his stallion's back and hopped to the ground. I took a moment to admire the way his threadbare jeans molded perfectly to his high and tight ass. Goddess goose me, the man was a fucking vision. I couldn't even be jealous of his physique, he was that fine to look at.

I slid to the ground and followed the master as he handed off his stallion to a stable boy. I did the same.

"Sir, if you don't beg my minding— No." I scrunched up my face and tried again. The guy scrambled my wits. "If you don't mind me begging—asking! Fuck! If you don't mind me asking, what are we doing?"

His golden eyes flicked my way for the briefest of moments before he started walking toward the village green. A host of people had assembled there, standing in a cluster with another few groups looking on. When they noticed the master, they fanned out, and a man and two women stepped forward to greet him.

"Sire," said the middle-aged woman with gray streaks at her temple.

Everyone on the village green bowed, some more elegantly and practiced than others. The castle wasn't the only place where a bunch of mediocre assholes had been shuttled into top positions.

"I got your note." The master stopped before her, looking around at those assembled. "What's this about?"

"Well…it's better if we show you." The woman stepped back, her gaze becoming intense as it held his. She grabbed the edges of her shiny green robe-slash-gown, a hideous sort of garment embroidered with fake pearls and bright strings and a few ill-placed tassels, and peeled it off her shoulders. It dropped and pooled at her feet, leaving her nude in the dwindling light of evening.

A swell of magic had me taking a step back. I'd rather not be randomly attacked because she mistakenly thought I was challenging her. Her form morphed into a sleek gray wolf with slightly glowing hazel eyes.

The breath went out of me. I found myself taking a step forward, my eyes searching her for deformities.

"But…the curse," I said as the master walked around her, clearly searching for the same thing.

"After you freed our animals," said another woman, this one in her mid-thirties with tightly coiled black hair and sepia eyes that matched her skin tone, "a few people couldn't control their animals' need to regain their fur. They shifted."

She stepped out of a plain white robe, her swell of power making me step back again. Her form changed into that of a honey badger, a damn good animal to have on your side and a horrible opponent if one was your enemy. Very similar to dragons, actually. Less moody, though.

"As you see," piped up a red-faced man, his eyes a strange fawn color and his features a little too close together, "shifting within the curse hasn't affected them like it did you, sire. It hasn't affected any of us like that."

His swell of power wasn't so great as the others as he transformed into a hawk-type bird and flapped up into the air. He swung toward me, battering me with the tips of his wings.

"What the—" I waved my hand at him, then ducked when he persisted, losing my shit just a little. When he still didn't fly away, I did a quick panic run in a circle, slapping my hands above my head, trying to get the accursed thing to bugger off. "Get it off, get it off!"

Surprised laughter rose from the crowd.

"He's trying to find a perch." A woman in the crowd stepped forward and put out her arm.

"A perch, fine." I slowed down from my hunched jog and smoothed back my hair, attempting for a little decorum as I straightened up. "Just leave me out of it."

The master was looking at me like he didn't know whether to be angry, annoyed, or amused.

I used the pad of my index finger to wipe each side of my mustache along my upper lip. Mediocre butler, on duty.

The wolf shifted back, breathing heavily but not too taxed from quick shifts. She picked up her robe and pulled it back on.

"It seems the only issue with shifting right now," she said, "is a change in eye color pigmentation. For some of us, the color has changed to that of our animal's fur or coat or scales, and others have developed pigmentation similar to their human skin. We have no idea why. It has changed for everyone, though. Like yours."

"Scales?" the master asked.

She nodded, looking to the side. A woman in loose, flowing garments like the others stepped forward, dragging a tall boy with a gangly body. His back was bowed, like he knew he'd done something wrong, and he stared at his feet. I was no master at guessing ages, but he barely looked sixteen, just old enough to shift.

"My son, your highness." She offered a slight curtsey and addressed the master through tight lips. "He was told not to shift. I told him twice, and he heard it from our council, too. I told him that it might kill him. But did he listen? No."

"It seems the boy is a dragon, your highness," one of the others said. "His parents are both in the big cat family, as were their parents—"