But I’d thrown myself into the preparations for the ball with gusto. Because it kept me busy, and, at least during daylight hours, it kept me from my new favourite hobby.

Spying on Jemma Bliss. Or attempting, most unsuccessfully, to spy on her.

After I returned from the throne room, the day I’d walked in on Father and Alessio, I may have opened a teeny, tiny little portal into Jemma’s living room. Just so I could keep an eye on her comings and goings. I seemed to have always picked the worst times to check on her. Only once or twice had I caught a glimpse of vibrant pink hair or a flash of light glinting off her glasses.

More often than not, I just heard Luci-Fur’s frantic snuffling sounds. I suspected she knew the portal was there. But I refused to close it. It was the only somewhat tenuous link I had to Jemma. Aside from the Soul Token, but that particular artefact held too many negative connotations.

I rubbed at my aching forehead. This pretence of showing an interest in the social events of the kingdom was just delaying the inevitable. Once the ball was over, I had to finish what I’d started with Jemma. I had to have results to present to my father before the demons recovered from the ball and regained their ire.

I wanted to kick myself roundly in the testes for choosing her in the first place. I should have selected a wrinkly, old male human. One that there was not a chance in Home that I’d fall in … feelings with.

Except I knew, deep down, that from the moment I’d set eyes on her, skipping her way up the path from the hospital … that I needed her to be the one I trialled FiendPay on. Because I was drawn to her.

I’d tried to convince myself that I just found her soul intriguing. But it was more than that. It wasn’t her soul that had me waking up in the middle of every night, drenched in sweat, rutting frantically at my mattress, still caught in the dream of having Jemma’s curvy little body under me. It wasn’t her soul that had me conjuring up fantasies of drowning in her cobalt eyes, which weren’t shocked or pensive, the way they had been the morning we woke up together, but full of desire and …

No! I was not allowed to even think that next word in the vicinity of Jemma Bliss fantasies.

That word was more dangerous than any dirty little scenario I could picture.

I sighed. I’d come back to my rooms ostensibly to bathe and prepare for dinner with my Father to go over the final menu for the ball. The menu that consisted of goat, goat and more goat, because if there was anything demons loved to gorge themselves on, it was a lovely hunk of goat meat.