The landscape here was a little more hospitable than the desert, but there could be no denying that this was still the Kingdom of Azure. The flat, dry, dusty blue plain had little to offer the eye, but for the crater of an empty lake and odd clusters of gnarled indigo trees. I reached out with my senses to look for nearby life... but found only a family of small thirsty lizards basking completely camouflaged against the stones. I despaired for them, living in the horror of such an unnatural seeming setting. I turned my gaze back to the garden, my eyes greedy for any colour that was not that unbroken blue.I leant over the balcony, looking up and down to try and get a sense of what sort of building it was -- but the effort was fruitless, the overhang of the balcony prevented me from seeing the walls below, while what seemed to be another balcony directly above obscured the line of sight looking up.I sighed as I ventured back into the cool of the indoors; at least if th

Camilla’s POVThe introduction to the King was a perplexing but wholly necessary engagement. It required a low bow, a simpering tone and the wearing of a ceremonial gold chain about my waist that marked me out as an incubus's property. In principle, I objected to all of these things, but Maya's advice was prescriptive."If you do not allow Lazuren to introduce you in this way, then the King will consider you available to... fulfil his own needs."And while I had idly considered the prospect of indulging myself with one of the many incubus soldiers that lived in the castle barracks, the hurt that I knew this might inflict upon Lazuren had always prevented me from entertaining the idea for too long. A tryst with his father was altogether out of the question. (Although, if I had had any ideas of this sort, they would surely have evaporated upon meeting him!)The feast to welcome the King had already begun as Maya and I followed Lazuren to the banquet h

Percival sat at the bar, sipping a beer that he bought twenty minutes ago, it wasn't his tipple, what he wanted to drink sat two metres away.A group of women giggled away, chatting about their, hair, nails, and boyfriends. He grew bored very quickly.It was the blonde who caught his interest. He knew her name was Darla because he heard one of her friends ask what she wanted to drink. She appeared to be sitting back, taking in everything around her, which was what he did.Her blue eyes even landed on him a few times, her pupils enlarging liking what she saw.Percival knew he was good looking. When he entered a room, heads would turn to find his dark chocolate brown eyes staring back. He would often flip his raven flowing hair off his shoulders, then lift his chiselled chin giving off an air of authority.In the human world, he was just a man to them. However, in his world, he held a place at his sire's side who ruled the only coven in the city.

Camilla’s POVI had told you the reason that I had interrupted you with that human girl. Despite the fact that I was hot and burning with jealousy after being taken care of in such a way by you and then how easily you could leave me and go into the arms of another human. I knew that you required sustenance.But I could not. The Priestess had finally told me that what was going to break the hold of the demon on my soul. Why was Laruzen being able to bring me back to the hellscape that I so desperately wanted to get away from and the reason was simple. I had nothing to stop me here. I had nothing too pull me back to earth. The only way that I was coming back was by sheer will power and that was also not going to stop me from being demon fodder for a long.“You think that this is going to work?” Percival had asked me and I had nodded and said yes. And then the slow torture had begun.I take a minute to think about it this time, bent over th

Myrtle turned over again on her straw mattress. Sleep was not coming to her tonight. The stifling air of midsummer was compressing her little cellar room, a suffocating force from outside. She felt she was sleeping less lately than some of her friends who had husbands, and who wryly complained to her over laundry baskets of their nocturnal duties.Something always had held her back from marriage; not any kind of disdain toward the life of a wife and mother per se, but more something as yet unrealised, palpable, that often bristled within her as she lay in her cot at night. A difference. An affinity with something she could not yet identify. Her suspicion as to what this was both terrified and exhilarated her. Certain others around her seemed to perceive this simmering force. Always women, always unspoken. The owner of the apothecary, Freida, always seemed to hold her gaze a little too firmly each time she went to pick up father's salve. Daisy, who brushed and mucked out the h