Just hard enough that if she moved Lita would slice herself open.

She winced and bit both lips.

“You’re dead. Or tortured. Or raped.” Diana’s smile was twisted and unpleasant. “Or all three.”

Diana stood up.

Then moved so fast that Lita only had time to wince and gasp as the thrown knife embedded deep into the mat, only an inch from Lita’s ear. She shut her eyes tightly.

“Put the knife away, girl. We’ll do this again tomorrow.”

Lita fought tears as her Mistress calmly walked away without looking back.

It took a long time for her to convince her shaking limbs to move. And it took three tries, bracing her feet around the knife, to get it free of the mat and ground. Landing on her backside with the effort.

Once she’d hung it up she stood there, back to the rest of the training grounds.

Hiding her tears and grinding her jaw.

I’ll find that dork, Diana. Then I won’t be here for you to torture.

Lita looked up and down the weapons on the racks. Slowly she straightened as an idea moved from the back of her mind to the front.

All I have to do is look somewhere Aridon wouldn’t.

It wasn’t about where Diana would hide something. It was about where Aridon wouldn’t think to look. What he hated most and Diana tolerated.

Humans.

That gave Lita a couple ideas. And it took only a couple of seconds for her to settle on the most likely one.

Not because the others wouldn’t have been brilliant of Diana. But because Diana was a demon. And humans would notice if a demon went where only humans went.

And it would be too much for a demon to trust a human with something so important.

Lita smiled to herself and again glanced down the rack before turning to leave. She would wait for her chance.

***

The long days and the restless, sleepless nights were starting to weigh on her.

The day she’d finally figured out where to start looking was the first night she’d fallen into a deep sleep. And couldn’t wake herself. No matter how urgently she needed to wake up.

Diana snarled at her for being late for work. And, except for Lita’s session in the training hall, sent her to work with the regular staff as punishment,

It was a nightmare.

Clophas had returned the day before and had been on a restless prowl. No one seemed to know what had put the demon into such a foul mood. But everyone either told or heard the stories about being caught by him somewhere.

She’d, unfortunately, had been one of the tellers.

The demon had spotted her coming out of the training hall, exhausted from that day’s newest onslaught. He’d immediately dragged her over for a game of ‘toss the pebble.’

Since she’d been dismissed by Diana until supper she had no excuse to get out of it.

The idea behind the game was to have someone hold a small bowl, something just big enough for three currency pebbles to sit in if you get your accuracy right. The person holding the bowl was expected to change positions every time a pebble finally made it in. Usually wherever the player wanted it.

However, everyone knew that getting the pebble in the bowl wasn’t the real purpose of the game.

It wasn’t against Contract to accidently hit the bowl holder while playing an innocent game. As long as they were actually aiming for the bowl in some way.

It also wasn’t against Contract to exhaust their helpers with outlandish positions. Positions they had to hold until three pebbles made it into the bowl and stayed. Or until the player forfeited the round and the next player was allowed to choose the next position.

Today the three demons playing hadn’t tossed their pebbles. They threw them.

Hard.

Varying their distances for different effects, the pebble landed around and on her. Leaving growing bruises. Since they couldn’t aim directly at her this strategy allowed for lots of rochet that may, or may not, result in injury.

So, the second night she would’ve limped to bed with bruises the size of her hands if Diana hadn’t grabbed her wrist at dinner. The demoness had pushed up Lita’s sleeve to examine one of the bruises and rolled her eyes.

“How are you supposed to do your job if you hurt yourself like this?”

As though it were my fault!

Still, even with the bruises transferred to Diana’s faster healing body, Lita had gone to bed exhausted.

It was halfway through the night before she finally pried her eyes open and forced herself to get up. Creeping out of her room and into the silence of a darkened Palace. No-smell dabbed on her wrists, neck and ankles kept the demons from sniffing her out.

But, it was as though someone knew she, or someone else, would be out tonight. Because she nearly ran into three sets of enforcers as she went.

She knew she was being paranoid.

Human enforcers roaming around on a shift schedule wasn’t unusual. They even broke up their routine into random rounds every week or so. A pattern she’d tried to understand in the past only to realize there was no way to predict it because it wasn’t planned.

Though once you knew the basic routes of the routines, all you had to do was observe for a night and you knew the whole week’s routine.

That was something she’d managed to pass on to the Chief.

Not that she expected him to be able to do anything with it.

For her, getting around the human enforcers was easy once she connected their positions to the time of night. So, she got to the training hall unnoticed. Just as she’d done before.

As usual, one lamp had been left lit.

It was a courtesy for any sleepless demon who wanted to work off whatever was on their mind. That lamp would be both helpful and dangerous to her.

So, first things first.

She took a step back, giving her a wider view of the rack of weapons.

The tricky thing is that this dork can kill a demon. Diana won’t risk that. So it can’t be any weapons a demon would use.

Her heart thumped loudly and she jumped at every little noise as she concentrated on breathing and scanning. Stay calm, Lita. Stay calm. She glanced back at the benches once and then turned forward again.

So, it won’t look like a real weapon. The demons use those.

Used them so often, in fact, that there was usually a servant here all day. Whose sole job was to clean up the blood after every use.

So…

She worked her way down the rack, glazing over the real weapons and pondering over the fake and training ones.

Diana couldn’t just change the thing’s appearance with demon touch. That would ruin the spells on it at best. And at worst would do nothing but shout, ‘Bone weapon pretending to be harmless.’

Lita frowned. Maybe I’m wrong?

She imagined Aridon had done exactly the same thing she was doing. What could be more obvious than hiding a weapon among weapons?

It’s so obvious that Aridon might just dismiss it. Which makes it an even better choice. Also, too many humans come to this room and use these things. It’ll disgust him.

Her head hurt trying to think through this and she jumped at a clatter out in the entrance hall.

Holding very still she waited, listening to a sudden peel of laughter and a couple voices. Voices that eventually faded away.

Thank the Void!

She had to take a moment and lean on her knees, hands shaking while she gasped erratically. It took awhile to take a full breath.

As she started to stan, her eye caught on the wooden weapons in the far corner. The farthest corner from the lamp. And the hardest to see any details. For an instant she stayed slumped over on her knees as she locked eyes on it.

A moment later she was standing in front of the rack and running her eyes over the choices. Mostly staves of varying sizes but there were also wooden swords, knives, and clubs. She eyed a club.

That would hurt if one of those hit you.

She winced and took down the club she’d been looking at and swung it. It was surprisingly light. She tapped it and heard a small echo inside.

Hollow. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad like that? Are they all hollow?

Taking each club down one at a time, she felt its weight and swung it. On the third one she paused and swung it again. This one was heavier. Checking it she decided that it was probably an upgrade weapon.

The first two clubs were most likely for a child just entering training. The third, to get used to the weight of a real weapon.

There were only seven more and she kept going.

The fourth one from there, seventh down, was a bit longer than the others. And definitely heavier than the hollowed out ones. But, upon tapping it, it also sounded hollow.

Heart beginning to thump with excitement, she glanced back at the doorway to the entrance hall. Then went back to the lamp to get a better look.

It took her some time to find the thin crack down the side of the club. Biting her lip to hide her triumphant grin she stuck her fingernails into the crack and pulled. On silent, demon made hinges, the club opened to reveal a cozy space inside.

She pulled out the dork, hand shaking and unable to hide a grin.

I found it.

“Now, what do we have here?”

Her first impulse was a strong desire to throw up. That didn’t happen but her whole body froze in terror as someone grabbed her arm and spun her around.

“M-Master Clophas.” She sputtered wildly. “You-I. I was just, just getting something for Mistress Diana-”

He laughed and leaned down toward her neck. She winced as he took a deep sniff through his nose.

“You’re lying, my pretty Lita.” He tightened his grip on her arm until she yelped. “Do you know that no-smell is illegal? Grounds for any demon to declare your Contract void?”

Voided Contract.

A breach of Contract.

I’m going to die.

She did throw up then and Clophas, far from being disgusted, laughed and yanked her away from the mess. Next thing she knew she was being slammed into one of the supporting pillars, the same one as the lit lamp, and her breath was knocked right out of her.

The dork fell from her hand with a thud to the mat.

He forcefully kissed her and at this close range she could do nothing but try to pound him off her.

“I can hurt you now, pretty Lita.” He held one half morphed hand over her neck and stroked her face with the other. “And there’s nothing to stop me.”

Tears of terror fell down her cheeks as she gasped and squirmed and fought.

And the only thing she could think was, Lita you’re such an idiot. If you’d just stayed with Sheldon this wouldn’t be happening.

The worst part was there was no use in calling out. No one could stop this.

No one would stop it.

Abruptly, so suddenly she didn’t have time to process until it was over, he threw her on the ground. Thoughts of what he intended crossed her mind almost as soon as she realized she was on the ground.

She grabbed blindly at a dagger and rolled into a crouch, using one of the positions she’d been practicing for days.

Clophas laughed. “Ah, my pretty Lita! You amuse me. Come on. I saw Diana teaching you a few tricks. Why not try it on me.” His smile was full of fangs and he held out his arms wide. “Tasting my blood on you will only make you sweeter.”

Her hands shook and desperation shot away all thoughts. Including ones of how moronic it was to try and beat an immortal monster. She readied and launched herself at him.

Unlike Diana, Clophas was not a well edged warrior. And he wasn’t really trying to dodge her attack even if he was.

He smiled confidently, grabbing her wrist as the black blade sank into his shoulder. All his thoughts were on what he wanted to do to her. Planning to start once he’d disarmed her and got her to a more private place.

So it was with some disorientation and surprise when he blinked and stepped into darkness.

The layers and layers of his being, created from countless summonings and spell castings, fell away in what felt like both an eternity and at an instant. It was even hard to keep hold of his shape.

Hard to want to.

The darkness was so soothing, so familiar. So comforting. Making it hard to remember what was falling away from him and why he had wanted it to stay. Why he wanted to keep form.

“Welcome back.”

It took some time for Lita to get her wrist free from the blacked statue. Finally, and awkwardly, she pulled the dork free first and used it to break the statue’s hand. The hand splintered and collapsed into dust at her feet, freeing her wrist, and she staggered away with one hand over her mouth.

The rest of her stomach contents came up in a rush.

Dropping to her knees she heaved over and over again. Until all she was doing was heaving and her stomach and throat burned with the effort.

I have to think. I have to, I have to-

She looked around wildly, eyes landing on the statue.

My Contract is broken. I have to leave. Now. Right now.