Page 95 of Sent To A Fantasy World and Now All the Men Want Me 7

“Stay back,” Lake told me, his purple eyes on the demon lord. “I sense… something stirring in him. A deep-seated rage.”

Onyx released a dry laugh before looking at me over his shoulder. I didn’t see anger though. His eyes held so much pain that I could practically see his heart breaking right in front of us.

“Your wolf isn’t wrong,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’d burn the world in this very moment if I could. Rage against the fateful hand I’ve been dealt. One that will never allow you and I to have the same happiness you have with your other mates.”

“Why not?” Briar asked. He placed a hand on Maddox’s shoulder, as though in an attempt to keep him in place.

“Allow me to tell you a story.” Onyx turned from the balcony, his once agonized expression smoothing into one of indifference as he looked at me. “And after you hear it, you’ll finally understand why there’s never been a happy place for us.”

Chapter Seventeen

Crouching Muffin, Hidden Doom Flag

“War makes monsters of us all.” Onyx retrieved his goblet of wine and stood behind his armchair, resting one hand on the back of it. “Even those who never had the stomach for violence become something unrecognizable when facing down an enemy army. Kill or be killed.”

A somber expression crossed Maddox’s face as he regarded the demon lord. Listened to words I suspected he understood all too well.

“But to truly understand a monster, you must know what made them that way,” Onyx continued. “In my youth, I had little desire for anything that didn’t involve magic or books. Drove my father mad. He wanted me to be a warrior, to take after himself as he took after his father, and ordered Koga to begin sparring lessons with me. Lessons I skipped. I’d run off somewhere to read, work on my magical studies, or draw instead. I had a passion for life and didn’t wish to take it from anyone else.”

I smiled at that, remembering Koga telling me a similar story.

“Then my mother was killed.” Onyx’s expression hardened as he glanced toward the crackling fire. “The day I saw my father fall to his knees on the castle steps, guttural screams leaving his throat as he felt her soul leave this world, I felt a burning rage well up inside me, one that couldn’t be doused by burying my nose in books.”

“Thus began the human and demon war,” Maddox said, still with that somber air about him.

Onyx nodded. “I trained with Koga every day, letting my rage be my driving force. Having both the blood of a demon and dragon made me stronger. Made me more ferocious as well. Once my father felt I was ready, I joined him in battle. I became… well, you know the stories and the reputation I gained. How I was merciless on the battlefield, cutting down every enemy in my line of sight.”

“Is it true that you led an army to the fishing village south of the capital and killed innocents?” Briar asked, one hand resting at the side of his mouth as he intently listened.

“Yes,” Onyx answered, expression darkening. “The village supplied provisions for the human army. Eliminating them was a strategic maneuver to gain the advantage in the war. A successful one.”

My gut twisted. “You couldn’t have just destroyed the ships and supplies or whatever? You had to kill the people too?”

Sullen crimson eyes met mine. “Do you still think me sweet, little bird? Seems you were a bad judge of character after all. I killed all those humans and felt nothing. Their deaths were merely a means to an end.”

A lump wedged in my throat. “That was in the past. You’re not that same person now.”

“Whether I am or not is irrelevant.” He dropped his gaze to his wine. “My brutality during the war awoke the very power that eventually brought ruin to this realm.”

“Saint Vera?” Briar came to sit beside me on the couch, resting his hand on my thigh.

Onyx exhaled and returned a hand to his chest, tracing the outline of the mark from where it peeked from the top of his robes. “I killed her betrothed. He was a fisherman in the very village my army set fire to.”

A prickle of anxiety zapped through my belly. So did a smidgeon of shock.

“The grief over her lover awoke her powers,” Briar said, mirroring my thoughts.

“Her grief… but also her rage.” Onyx looked at me. “Much like your anger in the throne room awoke the same power in you.”

I felt sick. A type of sickness that clawed inside my stomach and slashed at my lungs, making it hard to breathe.

“What happened after that?” I asked, dreading the answer but needing it to. “How long did it take her to control her powers?”

“Within a week of my attack on the village, word reached our realm of a human woman with blue flames in her fingertips,” Onyx answered. “Vera’s anger and grief consumed her, and her powers reflected that instability. She struck down hordes of my warriors with a simple flick of her wrist.”

“That’s when Lord Malachi used dark miasma to taint the minds of the human army, yes?” Briar asked, pushing his glasses up his nose from where they’d slid down. “It turned the soldiers against each other in their maddened, confused state. Made them kill each other and drove some to take their own lives.”

“Yes,” Onyx confirmed. “My father in all his years had never seen anyone as powerful as Vera and feared the war would be lost, forcing him to resort to extreme measures and use the greatest weapon at our disposal. One he’d refused to use up to that point, believing it to be too dishonorable. But Vera dispelled the dark miasma and shattered the barrier around this realm before leading the humans to victory.”