Excerpt: Daughter of the Demon Mask

I was too young the first time he took me.

Not young in body; in the villages I would have been considered a woman the moment my first blood flowed. It would have been a time for rejoicing and song and the entire village would have feasted. The tellers would have thrown the bones and the priest would already have been blessing our shared futa bed with prayers for fertility. As soon as the blood stopped I would have been dressed in red as all proper brides should, and that very night I would have satisfied the man arranged to be my husband.

No, I was no younger than any of those girls, and in fact I was older than many. But I had not grown up in the villages. At my birth my mother had left me at the ciatra, the prayer stone blessed by the priests that they also hoped would be blessed by the demon's benediction and so bring their town beneath the curtain of his protection. The demon Lord had found me there, nearly blue with cold though the evening was fair, crying weakly with the gray cord still attached to my belly. He could have killed me then, it was his right, and human blood has always made the demons stronger.

Though I had been left as so much trash by the villagers, to a demon I was treasure without price. My bones could make poultices and tonics, my blood could increase his power, my eyes could be used in scrying potions, my flesh prepared for tasty meals and my heart could be used to bind and tempt a mate. But he didn't kill me, this Lord of the Silvered Lands. Instead he had taken me in his arms, blood from my birthing still wet enough to mar his perfect skin and stain his clothing, and he took me home. I have been his ever since, his vassal, his ward, his child, his slave.

I was lucky. Had I been a child of the villages I would have been merely a daughter. I would have learned a woman's place early on, a woman's steadfastness and silence. I would have been taught to run a household, and as I got older I would not have rolled in lush grasses and traversed wide forests or run rampant through the halls of my Lord's palace. Instead I would have worked the fields, helped look after the younglings, and by the time I was only seven seasons I wouldn't have had time to play.

We followed him everywhere, Kiaka and I. Kiaka was another demon, another servant, and was the voice of my childhood, the laughter, the stories and pats on the heads and kisses good night. He teased me out of bad moods, played with me when I was bored, played tutor to most of my educational needs, teaching me things I learned later women were not supposed to know, and if I happened to stumble into danger or a battle found my Lord while I was nearby, he kept me safe. He was free spirited and silly and fey, everything a child would wish to romp with and laugh at, and it was in this way my Lord kept me happy and himself sane.

On the other hand, when my time finally came, my first blood's flow, I would have known what to expect. My mother and her women would have long since explained the darker aspects of flesh on flesh to me. Every day I would have been subjected to experiences both broad and subtle that would have prepared and groomed me for the day I would become an adult.

Instead, I appeared before him, not innocent, for innocence is not the lack of knowledge. Instead, I was woefully ignorant and my Lord, for all his power and knowledge, I believe was as well. He knew much of demons and much of humans, but many of our needs and much of our more intimate culture—the relationship between parent and child, between friends, between lover upon lover—remained mysterious to him. And, of course, he had never raised a child, and I was twice as mysterious for this aspect alone. I think it never even occurred to him there was a thing he had not attempted to teach me, something he had overlooked.

And I? Despite my blossoming body, despite the heated urges that took me nearly all the time, those urges were all I had, hunger without face or name and no knowledge of how to sate it. It had never even occurred to me to question this change in myself, it happened so naturally, so gradually, and was accepted just as naturally by those around me. And no nature's child is completely ignorant, I had seen the animals in the field, happened a time or two on trysts held by Kiaka or my Lord, and was no stranger to the way bodies fit together. In fact, emboldened by my new desires, I have no doubt that sooner or later I would have clumsily approached one or the other of my mentors, if only to see what would happen.

And that statement alone speaks for the dangerous depths of ignorance I wasn't even aware I had.