The Demon of the House of Hua: Those Who Break Chains

By Maria Ying

The sixth warlock of Hua sacrificed herself in a treacherous bargain, leaving behind her daughter to be raised by a demon... and her wife to deal with a household that has one infernal butler too many.

 

Madhuri, now mistress of the Hua estate, grieves for her lost warlock and grimly avoids the creature that's keeping her daughter alive. But they are full of surprises—they want to serve her in her lonely widowhood… and perhaps, slowly, court her for their own.

 

The Demon of the House of Hua is an F/NB gothic novelette (15,000 words) that explores the history of the Hua warlock line, and can be read as a standalone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hua Publishing
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215318775

Book preview

The Demon of the House of Hua

Maria Ying

Hua Publishing

Contents

Title Page

The Demon of the House of Hua

About the Author

Other Works by the Author

Copyright @ 2022 Devi Lacroix

Copyright @ 2022 Benjanun Sriduangkaew

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

The characters and events depicted in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The Demon of the House of Hua

In my long hours in the archives, I have become something very like a thief. There is the knowledge that you are prying private lives open as you peruse the diaries, the family annals, even the ticket stubs marking long and frequent journeys. The people in these journals are long dead—save one—and eventually these papers must be returned to the descendants. Their owners never did surrender them to any collection. That they are here is by happenstance more than intent.

For now, I take pleasure in the yellowed papers—fine penmanship, excellent binding—whose memories are too removed from my time to coalesce. Such recordings in objects have a mayfly lifespan, fragile and transient; my psychometry reaches only so far back into the past. This collection is a rare find, at that, and holds the secrets of a notorious lineage: the Hua warlocks, from the sixth and seventh generations. A family whose fortune has, over time, risen and fallen and again and again—never a straight line toward ascent or descent, often destabilized.

To the sixth Hua of her line was born a sickly child, pallid of flesh and brittle of bone, destined to die before her first sunrise. From the dark of the woods came a demon of great cunning, who sought a deal: the life of a Hua, in return for raising an heir of intelligence and puissance. The demon assumed the sixth Hua would let the newborn expire—use its thimbles of blood to ink the contract—and start anew, develop and decant another infant. Instead, the Hua sacrificed herself, and in her death bound the demon to the task of bringing her child to greatness. A treacherous choice, from the demon’s perspective; a tragic one, from that of the sixth Hua’s widow.

And yet, in the black soil of that bargain, something took root and came to flower.

Every life must end. But the words left behind will last. In this way we hear the voices of those who are long gone, and we commemorate: to remember is the most human act.

- Professor Lussadh al-Kattan, Department of Theory and Epistemology, Shenzhen University

♦

Madhuri, wife of the sixth Hua warlock and mother of the seventh, does not care for her child’s nurse.

To call the creature a nurse stretches the definition; it suggests nurturing, a maternal aspect. It suggests a contractual agreement between the parent and the nurse. In this case the contract is with Madhuri’s late wife, whom the infernal being murdered.

I didn’t murder your wife, says the demon, for perhaps the tenth time, as they emerge from the nursery in which the little Hua sleeps. You do realize that.

The demon, today, has chosen to manifest as a figure of lean angles in a layered crimson dress. Madhuri spends several seconds examining their form, seeking in the details any hint of mockery, any resemblance to the sixth warlock. Finding none, she says, "Had you not been there to offer your bargain, she would still be here."

But your daughter wouldn’t be, the demon counters, tactless in the way of all infernal breeds.

Madhuri has studied some of her wife’s annals. She is no warlock, but she is developing an idea of rites and spells with which to banish a demon. As of yet she has not had an opportunity to put them into practice. We could have found another way. My wife and I were women of resources. This, too, she has said before.

Ah. The abundance of time left in the infant girl, that must have been why she leaped off the cliff. Surely your child could wait a few months while the two of you composed a solution.

Fury comes easily. Until now, she has never been an angry woman; she was always the still lake to her wife’s raging river. Fuck you.

The demon widens their crimson eyes. So vulgar, from the mistress of the house. Nor am I seeking companionship at this time, I fear. Good night, my lady. They curtsy, as though they are a maid of the house in