“Stop!” I growl out at that threatening statement.
She’s not dead.
She’s not.
I’d know if Izara Castillo’s heart stopped beating. I’d know, because pain would rip through my soul somewhere much deeper than where love and lust and sadness resides. It’d tear through my will to live.
And I don’t know if I’d be left standing.
My body folds in on itself in a child’s type of pose, my forehead meeting the stone cold ground as I try to listen to the sound of my breath filling my lungs. I listen to my body rather than my mind.
And my body—my nerves, my breath, my warm, steady heartbeat—it’s her. The bond I share with her, is deeper than an emotion. I haven’t told her that. Partly because it’s terrifying to me and partly because I think it’d terrify her.
But she’s in the very blood that pulses through my body, the solid beating of this thumping heart, the breath that sustains my very life.
And the moment I see her again, I’m going to tell her that.
Eight
Izara
I land on solid ground, a curse springing from my lips and pain slicing down my every nerve ending.
I’m surrounded by darkness and a black and red sky with storm clouds above me. Please, god, tell me I’m not in the seventh circle again. I groan as I lift myself up on my palms.
My wings hang uselessly behind me. Bleeding. Broken. Shredded. I can barely move them, but Icanmove my legs. I push myself up onto shaking knees and slowly turn around.
The heat is smoldering in this fur jumpsuit I’m wearing, so I strip down carefully as I study my surroundings.
There’s nothing here I notice as the suit pools at my feet and I’m in my tattered golden dress once again.
I’m most definitely not at the fucking Academy.
That asshole demon threw me into the wrong portal. Probably her twisted idea of revenge for barbecuing her ass.
The bitch.
A few feet away a small building rests. Well, I wouldn’t call it a building. More like a small shack in the middle of fucking nowhere and I'm getting major Courage the Cowardly Dog vibes just looking at it.
Its ceiling is literally falling apart; its windows are shuttered, and even stranger still is the neon sign blinking across the side of it like a cheap bar.
The Twin Demons.
Sounds promising.
I wait a breath. Light shines through the shutters but everything is silent. If I go in, will there be a demon waiting to rip me over a cauldron like Hansel and Gretel?
Wouldn’t surprise me at this point.
I know this is the second circle of hell, only because that bitch said so. But I don’t want to linger. I’ve had enough encounters with these things to last me a lifetime.
I take a breath and center myself, feeling for the power of my Prod—mypower—inside. All I get is a dull thud. My veins warm with the trickle of magic, but even attempting to use it makes pain spiral through my spine, over my wings.
My shredded wings.
They’re still hanging uselessly against my back, like ripped scraps of cloth. My clothes and skin are soaked with blood. I feel the pain like a sudden eruption. It throbs and spreads, and I wonder if the claws that got me were poisonous.
I shudder and try to gauge any other effects coursing through me. I can’t tell… the pain…
