My teeth chatter, and the word doesn’t leave my mouth at all. This demon means to kill my girl.
And I won’t fucking let her.
The striking blow comes toward me, and I know it’s with a force that’s meant to kill. I see the tip of those claws reaching for my heart. I wonder for a moment if she’ll try to feast on the organ that I thought never worked inside my body. It was always something that felt so foreign, like it wasn’t really there at all.
Turns out, I just needed the right woman to help breathe life into it.
And I won’t let this bitch anywhere near the most precious gift Izara could have ever given me.
My hands flash out and grab those claws. They dig into the skin of my palms, but I barely feel the pain.
Instead, I feel everything else swirling inside me in a torrent that makes me want to explode.
Anxiety. Fear. Happiness. Jealousy. Rage.
And love.
With a quick snap of my wrists, the demon’s hands break as easily as ice. It screeches, thrashing its body away from me as blood pools from the gaping wounds.
This second of distraction is all I need.
I throw my magic out with all its punishing force, hitting her square in the cold chest. She explodes, and ice and snow blast me back until my back slams against the trunk of a black tree.
I gasp for breath as the cold feeling leaves me. The ground is covered in the remnants of snow and ice, and I watch, unblinking, as it all melts away.
Twenty
Izara
I force myself not to look back as I run. Brush scrapes against my arms and wings, but I never pause once. Not until the thick branches turn to long, weeping vines that hang down from spindly trees.
And I just know that this is it.
Stepping back into the forest is as chilling as it is calming. A heavy fog drifts around my body, and it seems to shield the world around me. No longer are there screams of agony and cries of vengeance burning through the air. The academy is left behind, and then there’s just… cold, haunting remorse hanging in the chilled air.
Orbs of white glide through the Forest of Woe, and I must have blocked out how incredibly depressing this part of hell is. Chill after chill slithers down my spine, and I can't help but wonder if other unseen spirits are walking by me.Throughme.
For several seconds that stinging chill of the spirits pulses through me again and again like they’re lost or they’re looking for the exit their other demonic friends have already found. My eyes close to the feel of it, and I grit my teeth as it chills me to the bone. It hurts. It’s a deep-down pain that drills into me more and more with each passing second.
It steals my breath away.
It hurts my heart.
A scream tears from my throat.
Then it all stops.
“You have his eyes,” a voice says, like a warped megaphone streaming out to a flinching crowd.
My lashes open.
The ends of her transparent dress blow in the cold breeze. Her long white-blonde hair does the same, with thin strands flicking across her eternally youthful, translucent face.
There’s so much sadness in her eyes.
I hated her when I saw her last. She’s stuck here in this fucking prison my father owns and… I only made it worse when we met.
“Hello, Etheria,” I say slowly to the only mother I’ll ever have.
