“Where the hell are those soldiers?” I mutter, unease in my belly.
“Maybe something happened,” Thorne says, “maybe they didn’t get the order.”
I shake my head, plunging my hands into my pockets as the dragon nears.
“No,” I say, “they’re not coming.”
“Why?”
“Something must have happened. Another demon attack perhaps,” I say, feeling the blood plunge to my feet and for the first time I consider that Fly and Dray’s mother might be correct.
Without that team of soldiers, this mission is a death trap.
One we’re going to have to walk right into because there is no way Briony is going to agree to wait any longer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fox
It’s been three days since I’ve eaten and my hollow stomach moans in agony, desperate for the tiniest drop of blood. My fangs tingle desperately with the need to sink them into warm flesh. And my mouth is bone dry, my lips beginning to chap as I slide my rough tongue over them.
My arms are numb with pain, my back sore, the ground bitterly cold beneath me and the wounds slicing over my battered body still raw and weeping.
Above me, Veronica leans against the far wall, silently surveying me, neither of us talking.
We’re out somewhere in the lands inhabited by the demons, beyond the safety of our realm’s border. No human could survive out here – they’d be ripped to pieces by the hordes of demons that haunt here – and I wonder how Veronica is feeding. She must be because her cheeks are rosy, her stomach ever so slightly rounded and clearly full.
I close my eyes, trying to think of anything but how desperate I am to eat.
“Remember the first time we hunted together, darling?” she says above the ghoulish squawks from above us, as if she’s seen inside my mind. She laughs. “You were so eager. So ravenous. We stalked that man together, remember? Through the shadows. He didn’t see us coming. He put up a good enough fight, though, gave us our evening’s entertainment, and when I offered you up his throat, you ripped it out completely.” She laughs again and the memory of that evening floats hauntingly into my mind.
Blood, so much blood. Veronica’s chin caked in it, our fingers sticky with it, our mouths full of it. She’d smeared it over her skin and I’d licked it off her ravenously.
We were monsters.
Veronica still is.
“What do you hope to achieve by keeping me here, Veronica?” I say, my throat as dry as my mouth and my voice cracking as I speak.
“For you to realize the error of your ways, darling, and come back to me.”
“Even if I did, it would never be the same. I am no longer the boy you fooled, that you seduced, that you abused.”
“Abused you, darling? How did I abuse you? I saved you from that slum Quarter. I gave you powers and opportunities. Stars, Fox, I gave you immortality. I gave you everything anyone could wish for.”
“You took advantage of me,” I say. “You showed me a glimpse of what you were, but never the full picture. You never said how lonely it would be, how cold and how cruel.”
“After a decade or two, you get used to it.”
“I never will. I will never be like you. And I don’t want to live forever.” I couldn’t bear to be without Briony. I’d rather die.
Veronica steps closer to me. “You know, Fox darling, you never once asked me how I was turned. Do you realize that? Not once! Did you just assume I was born like this?”
My gaze flicks up to hers and her eyes glow in the gloom.
“How were you turned, Veronica?” I ask her.
“By a man who promised me the world. Who promised me everything. He took advantage of me, Fox. And then when he grew bored, he left me. Just like that. As if everything that had passed between us, meant nothing at all. I won’t leave you, Fox, and I won’t let you leave me.”
