But my feet would not move. It was everything I could do to breathe against the fear, to break the rust off my lungs and inhale.
“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”
His voice was soft. That’s what I noticed first this time, and every time I’d heard him. Because I had heard him before. Hadn’t I?
Yes.
A nightmare, a dream, a forgotten darkness right behind me, unflinching in the sunlight.
“You can speak,” he said. It was what he always said, I realized.
And just like the other times—
—how many? One? Three? Ten?—
—I did not speak. There was power in words. I didn’t want him to steal my power away.
Correction: I didn’t want him to steal anymoreof it away. Because he had taken something from me. I knew he had.
The dragon pig in my arms shifted a little. Maybe looking up at me. Maybe restless to go home so it could eat a bench.
It did not hear the voice. I knew that too.
Which meant he was not a demon. Which meant he was not real.
That was so much worse.
“Still so silent,” he said, this voice in my head, this aberration, this manifestation of my creeping insanity, of the injury to my soul that hadn’t healed properly.
That manifestation walked around me, I could hear his footsteps, the heavy heel as if he needed weighted boots to keep him in contact with the ground. As if it took some effort for him to move in this reality, this state of my mind, my madness.
Not real, I told myself.He is not real.
“What’s this now?” He was beside me, somehow moving while all the rest of the world stood still. “Are you ignoring me? Because, Delaney…”
…he was at the edge of my vision.Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look…
“…we both know that’s not going to work, don’t we?”
Then he was there. Right in front of me.
My height, which made it worse because his eyes—gold with deep umber flecks—were level with mine. His lips were thin and disapproving. His shoulders were wide, made even broader by the severe uniform he wore. It was not from any military I’d seen in the mortal world.
The gray, tailored jacket and slacks with slashes of red stitching made me think of cooled coal, lava cracking, burning.
At each shoulder, a hard black stone held back the flow of a cape that was also gray and black, licks of red flame shooting up from the hem. There were medals on his chest, made of the same black stone.
“Still shy?” he asked. “How cute.”
I scowled and lifted my gaze to his eyes. Met them straight on.
Not real. This is not real. He is not real.
“There, was that so hard?” His smile slid over his lips like oil. His gaze calculated every emotion on my face.
I made sure there wasn’t enough for him to add zero to one.
“You have been doing so well, Delaney. We’re almost there.”
