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steel bars of the cell bent?
    Her demon escort opened the door to the man’s cell and shoved her inside. Rosalind looked around it, unable to believe her eyes. There were deep bloodstained grooves in the stone walls beside the bars. Her eyes darted to his fingers. His nails were gone, broken off, leaving scabbed tips behind.
    He had attacked the walls of his cell when they had taken her and during her punishment. Why?
    A soft noise reached her ears and she stared down at him. Not unconscious as she had thought. He muttered things in an unknown tongue.
    “You will stay until the moonrise. The king wants him lucid for questioning. Do not fail this time.” The guard slammed the cell door and stalked away.
    The moon in this realm was the weird light that emanated from the portal the elves used to bring sunshine into their kingdom. When that light shone in the seven demon realms, it meant it was daylight there, but the demons in this realm thought of it as the moon. It meant night to them.
    She had most of the day to heal him.
    Rosalind ran an assessing gaze over him. His injuries were extensive, and all self-inflicted, but she didn’t think they were the reason he was in this strange state of limbo between unconsciousness and consciousness. It wasn’t a physical problem. It was a mental one.
    He writhed on the slab, his muttering growing darker, vicious sounding snarls that barely resembled words. What language did he speak? It wasn’t the fae tongue.
    She ventured a step closer to him and he lost his restlessness, growing very still. Could he sense her?
    Was he lying in wait to attack her when she came close enough?
    She kept some distance between them as she rounded the slab, her gaze fixed on him the whole time, monitoring him for a sign he might attack her. He began writhing again, fitful jerking movements that rattled the chains that held him pinned to the slab with his arms above his head, stretched out like a piece of meat on a butcher’s block.
    Bastard demons.
    The male snarled low in his throat, as if he knew her thoughts and seconded them. He looked so savage coated in dried blood and dirt, and felt more dangerous than ever. She flicked a glance at the bent steel bar and the grooves in the solid stone. More dangerous than she had thought possible.
    Rosalind kneeled beside him on the stone flags.
    He snarled again, his eyes rolling back in his head as he sniffed, inhaling deeply. He rocked his hips and her cheeks heated. He was growing hard in his wrecked black trousers. She averted her eyes, pretending she hadn’t noticed, and diligently kept her eyes away from that area of his anatomy, not wanting to ponder why he had reacted in such a way to her scent.
    She reached out to touch his bloodstained hands. He growled and grew more restless, twisting on the stone slab and pulling at his restraints.
    “Shh,” she whispered, unsure whether he could hear her and whether speaking to him was wise when he was in this condition.
    Would her presence and the sound of her voice make him better, or worse?
    He hated witches. He had looked at her with murder in his eyes.
    She couldn’t leave him though or let him continue to suffer, and it wasn’t because she was a captive in this cell with him or the orders the demon had given her. The sight of him suffering, lost in whatever strange place had hold of him, caused an ache in her chest that compelled her to help him.
    “I won’t hurt you. I swear it.” She reached out to touch his hands and he hissed at her, flashing fangs. She barely dodged his attack, falling backwards as he launched his head forwards, his teeth clacking as they struck each other and not her flesh.
    He grew wild, bucking off the slab and yanking on the manacles that bound his wrists. She wanted to reach for him but instinct held her back, warned her to let him wear himself out. He had tried to bite her. Mother earth. She covered her mouth with her hand and stared at him, her heart developing a new ache.