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option she was considering.
    “I’m not going to be your concubine.”
    A smirk. “Of course you are. What other option do you
have?”
    Smug bastard.
    “I’ll get another demon to do it.” Though any demon
she asked could just do what Cain had done. Before long she’d be
the demon slut with a death wish. Gross. And anyway, there were no
guarantees any given demon would be strong enough. Some might be
too young. Did she really want to risk starting a new cycle? Cain
was a sure thing.
    “They won’t do it. They’re afraid of me. You should
be, too. I can do a lot more interesting things than kill you.”
    He left before she could form a retort. She hated
that demon.
     

Chapter Two
     
    When Cain stepped outside the tent, a group had
gathered, murmuring and whispering. “That witch is mine. Anybody
who touches her will face imprisonment. And I’m not in the mood to
make it a light sentence.”
    A few throats cleared and a couple
of Yes sirs filled the air.
    “Good. Spread the word. Nobody touches her.” He
selected two demons from the group for the first guard duty and
left the city to go to the one place he always went to think: the
caves that served as the dimension’s prison.
    Each disobedient demon was in his own pod, the stone
sealed tightly around him, starving and going mad. But anyone
stumbling upon the caves wouldn’t know that.
    It was silent and peaceful in the dark, twisting
caves. It was a place Cain could wander to think without fear of
being disturbed. No demon in his right mind came near this place.
They all feared it. It was their one symbol of abject terror, much
like the humans feared Hell. No one walked in willingly, except the
man with the keys to the place.
    Cain sat on a large rock and put his head in his
hands. He shed the glamour he always wore to attract prey and ran
his fingers along the scar on his forehead. He was so good at
betraying and killing people, so why hadn’t he killed her?
    It wasn’t a simple motivation to untangle. Part of it
was jealousy—the fact that she could waltz in and demand freedom
when he had no such recourse. He was stuck in this form for
eternity, why shouldn’t someone else who’d made that bed lie in it?
Why should she get off so easily? The witch had actively chosen
this.
    Another, more subtle reason pushed from beneath the
surface like grass fighting through the cracks in concrete. It was
a reason he didn’t want to analyze too deeply. She was two thousand
years old. He might have six thousand years on her, but at some
point the years blended together. It wasn’t as if he wanted to make
her his mate, but if he ever wanted something like that with
someone, Tam represented the only woman who could be remotely
suitable. Killing her before he was sure he never wanted that
didn’t seem prudent.
    Human women now were such silly things. But he could
feel the age on the witch in big and small ways: her nonchalance at
the prospect of death, the deep wisdom in her eyes, her unconcern
with her own nudity in the presence of strangers. Most
women—without thrall—would have rushed to cover up if they weren’t
playing the role of seductress. They couldn’t have just been there
with him and the other demons and it not even occur to them that
they should cover up. Tam had stood there in all her naked glory,
too old to have sexual hang-ups.
    She’d also been strong enough that
she could fight his thrall—to some degree. That had never happened.
The fact that she could make a snide remark in the middle of
everything... it was hard not to respect that. How could he just
snuff that out? He sighed. Within a week,
I’ll be bored, then I’ll be able to do it. And if he couldn’t? He might as well seal himself in a magic
bottle. Getting involved with a witch was too dangerous.
    He wandered the caves, not ready to go back to town.
He didn’t want to look at her or deal with demon whisperings about
why he’d kept a powerful witch alive in their camp. They