Daughter of the Devil

Chapter 16

Will hadn't missed the ring. Even as Audrey screamed at him, his eyes had been focused on her left hand, on the ring sitting not on her ring finger, but her smallest finger. She still wore the ring. It had to mean something.

Will had expected several things when arriving in Onia. He had expected heightened security. He had expected women to be training alongside men. He had expected Audrey to appear different. What he hadn't anticipated, though, was just how different she appeared. How she stood with her head up and shoulders back. How she wore pants. How she laughed with who Will could only assume were her friends. How, above all else, she seemed happy. Happy and confident.

Will had always been taught that demons couldn't feel normal human emotions. How they could only feel anger, and used that anger for evil. He had always been taught that Selten were just like that—using their anger to commit atrocities.

But how could that work? How could something that only felt anger be happy? It was, of course, possible that she could be faking it, along with all the other Selten, but that theory had wrinkles as well. Why then, when she first saw him, did Audrey's face change from happy, confident, and content to sadness and hurt before landing on anger?

Will would have been more comfortable if she had been impossible to reach. He would have preferred Audrey to be angry, bloodthirsty, and power hungry. After all, that was all the Devil felt. Right?

How could she be happy? It was the question that kept his mind occupied for the next few hours, having nothing to do in Onia's dark underground. How could she be happy without him? How? It wasn't as if he was happy without her.

Women are fragile things, meant to be protected, cherished, and hoarded. Children too, to some extent. Will had always assumed that much to be common sense. Why then, was Solon (for it hadn't taken Will long to figure out just who the man had been), so sure that Audrey would be fine? What made him so confident in her ability to protect herself?

Audrey, Birsha had told Will as the engagement had been finalized, now belonged to him. Audrey was now Will's property, and no one could take her from him. Why then, did he feel as though she was gone?

It was possible, Will considered, that Audrey was now no longer his property; that she now belonged to Solon. Barring all other obstacles including how he managed to acquire her in the first place, why would Solon be so relaxed with his property?

An indoor dog, Will reasoned, should be kept inside, or, if it did go outside, on a leash for its own protection. Yet Solon let his dog wander free, without giving a thought of the dangers lurking outside.

And the Selten! Why were they happy? How were they content? How could demons be comfortable? It didn't make sense, but Will knew his eyes hadn't been deceived.

It didn't occur to Will until much later, when Audrey and Solon were already asleep in each other's arms, that he might have been wrong. He had spent the last hours trying, desperately, to make his childhood beliefs come true. But everything he had been told had been disproved. At some point, he had to accept that his eyes, his ears, the logical part of his brain had been correct. At some point he had to accept the truth sitting right in front of him.

But even this had its wrinkles. How could an entire country be wrong about the nature of Selten? How could so many lies never be disproved? How could generations of monarchs and generals and soldiers be so mistaken? Moreover, how could God, in his infinite wisdom, be tricked?

Will came to a different conclusion than Audrey had. Perhaps his faith was simply stronger than hers. Perhaps he took comfort in a godly plan. Perhaps letting go of his religion along with everything else was too daunting of a task.

Whatever the reason, Will finally came to the conclusion that someone, somewhere along the line, had been mistaken. What if Selten power was actually a gift from God and not the Devil? What if it was simply a weapon, not good or bad by itself? What if everything was actually going according to God's plan? What if not just Will, but the entire country of Ridland was fighting on the wrong side? What if (for now Will had become so entrenched in his theories that he had lost all sense of the real world), the Devil itself had tricked Ridland? What if, in its revenge against God, the Devil had turned most of the world against God's holiest children?

The Devil and its demons deal in deception. That was, in Will's mind, at the very least, a fact. Whether that was convincing the world that God himself didn't exist, stealing souls, or making unfair bargains with Man, Hell was indeed a place where no one could be trusted.

It made sense, then, that the Devil's greatest deception was to make everyone believe that sacred warriors sent by God were, in fact, demons sent by Hell.

Will hadn't turned Audrey in to hurt her. He hadn't done it to boost his own military career. He'd done it because he had seen the scars. He'd seen the scars Birsha brought back from battle, the sorrow of people who'd lost family members in the war, the damage that Selten brought just from existing. In eighteen years, he'd seen only a fraction of the scars. He'd turned Audrey in not just because it was his duty, but because he couldn't bear to see her have the scars. He couldn't bear to watch as she brought pandemonium onto the world and, bit by bit, her soul was destroyed. She was his responsibility. He turned her in because he thought it would be the best way to help her. And he was wrong.

It wasn't the kind of error that could be undone. How could you take away trauma? How could you erase memories? How could you tell the one person you cared most about in the world that you hadn't meant to hurt them? There was, of course, nothing Will could say or do that would help Audrey now. He'd destroyed her, and this place, these people, had somehow, miraculously, put her back together.

He thought back again to the glimpse he got of her in the courtyard. How happy she looked! How alive! She had trusted him and he had betrayed her, and now, over a year later, she had found new friends, a new life. How could she trust anyone after what he'd done?

But she still wore the ring. It had to mean something.

Will remembered that night in Birsha's house when he revealed the truth about Audrey. When he'd run and told on Audrey like a child on the playground. Not giving a second thought to the consequences. After the soldiers had come, after Audrey had been knocked unconscious.

"She's so powerful," he'd said. "She might not be a Mindbender, but she's all of the others. Somehow she's all of them at once. It's like she's the Daughter of the Devil itself."