The Mayaware's reign has to end.
In a world of demonic beings with a hunger for human flesh, and thirst for blood, Hesi Renen knows it well. When her siblings are taken to the harvesting farms, she must do everything she can to get them out, even if...
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"Don't move," a voice hissed in her ear. Deep. Masculine.
Instead of following the order, Hesi grunted, squirming against the grip snaked around her body. "Let go," she hissed. But with a hand plastered over her mouth, it came out as "Mff pho."
The grip tightened, enough to crush her ribs. "How did you end up here?" the voice asked more to himself rather than Hesi. Then, he cursed—a whole creative string of them—and began dragging her back into the cloak of the corridor's darkness.
Hesi growled and drove her head back, hitting the man's nose. She heard a strangled grunt. The grip around her loosened. She whipped backwards, swinging her arm and catching a sturdy lump of flesh. Another grunt. Finally, she rammed her elbow to what she assumed was a stomach. Something slapped the stone floor in a heavy thud.
"Don't touch me," she gritted her teeth at the tone coming out of her mouth. The only thing left was the forked tongue and she could have passed off as a Mayaware.
As her eyes adjusted, she glimpsed of a silhouette of a lean man with a curly mop atop his head. He coughed and shuffled up. In the faint light of the moon streaming from the windows somewhere, she traced wavy locks, dark skin, and passive, hooded eyes now scanning her from head to toe. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that," he dusted his clothes—which were oddly composed of a knee-length shirt belted at the waist with braided twine—and massaged his sore abdomen. "You're not supposed to be here. They could sense you at any time."
Hesi narrowed her eyes. "As are you," she looked at him the same way he was studying her. He's not Mayaware—that much she was sure of. Which meant he was the only other option. He was human. "What are you doing in this palace, in Berheqt?"
Instead of answering, the man lunged and snatched her wrist. He started pulling her along. "Stop that," she slapped and clawed at the hand around her arm but it wouldn't budge. Was this man made up of Mayaware skin? How come he's so strong? "Let me go."
"How stupid can you be?" the man chided, the darkness making his voice more acidic than it probably was. "Your scent is all over the palace now! I don't know how I would explain this come morning."
Slowly, the walls of the royal palace began registering when Hesi's eyes got used to the dark. They passed columns taller than the ones in the trading courtyard. More statues of hissing and frowning Demon King lined the dim corridor, their gazes following Hesi and the man dragging her along the smoothed stone floor. Hesi stuck her tongue out at one.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked the man whose grip hadn't loosened at all.
The man turned a corner and didn't bother telling Hesi, causing her to bump her shoulder against the stone. A hiss flitted out of her lips. Darpeh, that hurt. Her bare feet skittered against the floor but the man, even half-hurrying, was walking so quietly he could have been walking on a pool of feathers. How come he wasn't afraid of being sniffed out by the guards? And well...how did he know where to go even in the darkness?
