Chapter 470

• She stormed off with her three rods, and closed the big metal doors behind her, again leaving Mia alone with the giant four-armed dragon demon.
• "Okay," Mia said. "Okay. This time, I'm going to focus. I'm going to create this control aura, and... and..." Punish. Zel was going to punish her. She'd said it so matter-of-fact-ly, while her eyes had said a million things more, and images of evisceration ran through Mia's mind. Zel apparently had a fondness for stabbing people in the gut, where they were most vulnerable. Then again, she also had a thing for skewering people on spikes, up the crotch and out the mouth. And the better Mia got at understanding Zel, at understanding how her twisted, devious mind worked, the more Mia was convinced Zel enjoyed torture more than the demon queen let on.
• The dialog, the offer of reward, of a carrot, it'd been an act. She wanted to hurt Mia, and the only reason she hadn't was because Mia was useful to her, for now.