"Cedric!" Nicole exclaims. "Are you alright?"
"Does it look like I'm alright?" the Lord asks. He clutches his eye patch, wincing in pain.
"What's wrong? Is there anything I can do?" Panic seeps into her voice.
"Just go get Aaron. He'll know what to do," he said, his face crumpling in pain.
"I don't know where he is," she said, bending down to him. "Maybe I can take a look at what's hurting you."
"No!" he yells. "Please, get Aaron. I need him." Blood leaks out of his eyepatch.
"Aaron isn't here. I can help you," she insists.
He inches away from her, writhing in pain. "Aaron! I need you!" She grits her teeth. Why was he still calling for his butler like he could hear him? Unless demons had super hearing or some special connection she was unaware of.
Fed up with the Lord's stubbornness, she holds him down. "Let me help you, dammit." She yanks off his eye patch and gasps.
She had expected to see a black pit where the Lord's eye should be after hearing the story of how he lost it in a duel. Instead, he had a normal eye. Well, as normal a Venetian red, bleeding eye could be. She instinctively covers it with her hands, unsettled by the blood.
"What are you doing? I told you to call Aaron," the Lord said, trying to shove her hands away.
"I'm sorry," she said. Just as she was about to get up, her hands began to glow, a blue light emanating from her fingertips. Heat gathers in her palms, the warmth spreading to the Lord's face. She yanks her hands away, watching the blue light heal the Lord's eye.
Cedric looks at her, mirroring her shock. "How-"
"I have no idea," she said, stepping away from him. "I'm not sure what I just did." She looks down at her hands and wiggles her fingers, expecting the blue light to come back. Her hands remain normal, free of that mysterious magic that had just graced it a few minutes ago.
"My Lord, you called?" Aaron asks, arriving on the scene. The butler held the head of a strange eyeless monster, his gloves soaked in black blood. He lets it hang from his hands like a fashionable bag, casually handling it as if it were an accessory.
"Everything is alright now," the Lord said, regaining his composure. He stands up, dusting off his clothes.
Aaron faces Nicole. "What happened here?" There was a dangerous edge to his voice. She keeps her eyes on his gloves. If she didn't say the right words, it would be her blood staining the fabric next.
She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Her eyes dart between Aaron and Cedric, and that's when it hits her. The Lord's eye, the one hidden beneath his eyepatch this whole time, looked exactly like Aaron's reddish-brown eye. That means that underneath Aaron's eyepatch there was a dark hole where his eye should be. The butler had sacrificed his eye for the sake of the Lord. Maybe it was related to the monster head he was holding in his hands?
"I had a bit of a mishap," the Lord explains to the butler, stepping in for her. "But Miss Walker here saved me from harm."
The butler regards Nicole with mild surprise. "You saved him?"
"Yes," she said. "Is that really so hard to believe?"
"You did try to kill him," he said, taking no care to hide the snark in his voice. He turns toward the Lord. "I apologize for not being here sooner. I was handling some of the Nefastus." He holds up the monster's head. Blood drips from the beast's severed neck and hits the carpet.
YOU ARE READING
Hand of the Goddess ✔️
FantasíaIf you had the choice to escape your life, would you? That was what Nicole was offered one night when a mysterious woman named Lillian appears in her room. Lillian gives her a deal: kill a demon and she would cure her cat's cancer and make her life...
