My hackles rise. He wants to keep me caged in here, his to torture until the Messenger can find me. But I am not a slave, and my Prod doesn’t like this asshole one bit. “There’s only one problem with that, Osmodeus.” I stand up in one fluid movement, feeling power surge through me. I’m almost scared to wield it, to let my power have control, but this had all been an illusion. A figment of my imagination or his, threatening the foundations of my sanity. My men aren’t here, I can’t kill them.
And so I let her loose.
I smile as my wings tear from my back and spread wide. “I do notwantto stay here.”
And then I charge at him, hands outstretched, ready to tear his ass up into smoke or dust. I don’t give a fuck which.
A gaping hole for a mouth smiles widely and just as I reach him, power within my grasp, his form changes into one I’m familiar with.
“Will you really kill me?” Saint’s face looks at me, his voice questions me.
I freeze before those bright blue eyes, fear thrumming through me. I can remember the life leaving him as I kill him, over and over again. The memory is vivid enough to be raw and aching.
“Don’t kill me, Izzy,please.”
Tears stream down his face, and the heartbreaking sobs rising up his throat cleave me in two.
“Saint…” I take a staggering step back.
And then Saint smiles and the illusion cracks, but the heartbreak is still there.
“You are so easy.” Osmodeus’s voice echoes cruelly out of Saint’s lips. “You are weak and so, so easy to manipulate.”
A sob rises in my throat. An illusion, it was just an illusion. But the past few hours, days, however long it was, choke me with emotions. It all felt so real.Hefeels so real.
“You’re not real, you’re not real…” I take a staggering step back, clutching my arms around myself as if that can somehow steady me.
And Osmodeus looks at me with Saint’s face and I almost believe it’s my boyfriend standing in front of me with that cruel look in his eyes.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I want to sink to the ground and bury my head between my knees and sob. Instead, I try to remain strong in the face of this illusion, even if it threatens to cripple the very foundations of my mind.
“Isn’t it obvious?” His voice and his face contort into someone else’s. Into Malek’s. He takes a prowling step forward and when he speaks again, it’s in the accented, soothing tone of my wolf. “This is to make you stronger.” He changes again, into Syko this time, with white feathery wings bursting from his back and laced with trickles of blood. “Don’t you want to be stronger?” He takes another step until we are face to face and he assumes Phoenix’s skin.
The redhead incubus looks at me, cocking his head to the side. I almost ache to touch him, but this isn’t Phoenix at all.
The black of his pupils swallows the green of his eyes and spreads like ink spilling against a blank page. Veins spider web in dark cracks along his skin, and he looks every inch the soulless demon I let myself love.
“Or do you want to stay a useless feck all your life?” His fingers brush across my collarbone and up my neck. My pulse thrums against his touch and he smiles knowingly right before he wraps his fingers around my neck and chokes me.
I gasp for breath as he lifts me up. My legs dangle uselessly beneath me and I kick out at him, claw his hand with my nails, but he is strong. And trying to kill me while he wears Phoenix’s face.
But I imagine Phoenix here now. I imagine the way he invaded my dreams in confinement and chased away illusions and shadows. Chased away my fears.
“You want so badly to escape, but hell will always follow you. He will never stop hunting you. Stop trying to flee from your destiny, little princess.”
Since I arrived at the Academy I had people, teachers, everyone telling me left and right what my fate would be. Reform or death. I was feck. I was Prodless. I was uncontrollable. For so long, I’ve fought against what everyone says I am instead of embracing the wilder part of me.
I’m too afraid.
Too emotional.
And for that, I will always betoo weak.
But not any longer.
I’m sick of teachers, people, and mother-fucking demons telling me who I’m meant to be, or what my future will be.
It’s time I start forging my own path. My own future. Here and now.
