The only sound around us.
Until we reach the edge of the copse of trees. Her feet pick up the pace until she’s practically running, and I curse as I follow her to the edge.
We stop, breathing heavily. I hear new noises now. The forest resounds with them—sounds of wails, heartbreak, sorrow, and regret. They’re sounds ripped straight from sorrowful souls, rising one over the other in a sound that’s all too haunting.
A sweep of cold chills my body. The hairs on my arms rise, and I feel a terrible prickling sensation at the back of my neck. Whatever happiness I have in my body begins to seep away. I can feel it draining from me, trying to drown me with despair.
All. These. Fucking. Feelings.
I snap my magic out, erecting walls around myself, and the despair snaps in half, fleeing from me like shadows and lesser demons.
I take a breath.
“I’m going in.” Izara starts to take a step.
Nothing about this feels right. I grab her wrist. “Wait.”
She stops for a second, but I can feel the energy coursing through her body, ready to burst. She wants to get going. The faster she does this, the sooner we can get back to war.
“This doesn’t feel right.” My thumb presses against the pulse at her wrist. It’s a steady beat against her skin, and it somehow does nothing to ease my anxiety.
“I have to do this, Phoenix. I have to go in.”
I open my mouth to reply when a new chill creeps along the ground. Ice appears near my feet and cracks into little fragments. A cloud of breath puffs in front of my lips, and Izara’s eyes widen as she whirls.
I sense a presence behind me and slam my magic up just in time to block a blast of ice that shoots toward us.
A cloud of cold mist and snow swirls like a storm before us, and through the cloud scuttles a long figure. Limbs crackle with every step the creature takes. It appears to be made entirely of ice, with a thorned crown of icicles against its head.
A mouth with bleeding black and blue teeth opens and cries out. “You little bitch!” The voice is very obviously female, and the words are slung angrily in Izzy’s direction. “I will kill you!”
Izzy sighs. “You hell demons can’t let anything the fuck go.”
Her answer is a roar just before she lunges.
My palms push against Izzy’s body. “Go!” I urge.
She stumbles, looking at me with wide eyes before nodding with determination. Her gaze lingers for half a second like she just wants more time here with me. But there is no time. She turns and runs away, her body disappearing between the dark trees.
The demon slams into my back, dropping me to the ground. Claws rake through my body and try to tear through my flesh. With a cry, I let my own magic explode out with choking force. It blasts the demon backwards, and her body hits the ground with a sound like glass shattering.
I jump up. My rage pulses through my whole body in slivers of ravaging power. I don’t let the demon get up.
I am an incubus, and my magic is an endless well of desire. But next to it, there’s a demon’s destructive force. It’s what makes so many fear me, run from me. It’s what I unleash now.
The demon jumps up before the strength of my magic hits her. She lunges, scraping talons down my arm. I fall forward, pain zapping through my body with the blow. It feels cold, like she’s digging ice straight through my flesh and shooting it into my veins.
I force away the tremble that wracks through my body, but it feels like she’s gripped her ice-cold fist around the heart I always believed I never had.
The heavy beating of it thumps against my chest.
A curse springs from my mouth as I try to shake the sensation off. I feel like I’m coated in snow from head to toe, and her laughter echoing in my ears sounds like the whistling of a freezing wind.
I don’t realize when I’ve dropped to my knees except when the slamming pain radiates up my legs and nearly shatters me. The cold envelops me in a tight fist, demanding my life.
“I’ll kill you.” The beast looms over me and laughs. “And then I’ll find her, and she will regret not making a deal with me when she had the chance.”
Izara…
