“You don’t deserve it, Esta,” Carys says, wobbling to her feet. “You don’t deserve happiness.” She picks up her skirt and runs toward her daughter. The little knife she’s holding has no hope of piercing Esta’s serpentine skin, but Carys drives it toward her daughter’s neck anyway.
Esta bats the blade away at lightning speed, as if it’s nothing more than an insect. Her golden energy wraps around her mother’s form and wrenches Carys’s soul from her body midair. Carys drops to the dirt, tumbling to an awkward stop, her lifeless eyes staring upward and her soul floating toward Esta’s chest.
Koda’s shouts stop and I whirl to him. His fist is pressed to his heart, his soul is a shadow nearly fully pulled from his body, but he’s horribly silent as he stares at his mother.
He never had a good relationship with her, but she tried to defend him in the end.
Dark shadows fall across his face. It’s so sudden, and brings with it such an icy chill, that I flinch.
Esta’s focus snaps back to him and her eyes grow wide. “No.” It’s a single exhaled denial and she follows it with a shout of effort as she tries to wrench Koda’s soul the final distance from his body.
It doesn’t budge. Sticks for a beat before Esta lets it go with a shriek, staring at her hands as if the contact with Koda’s soul suddenly burned her.
She backs away a step as Koda transforms.
His height builds, his shoulders broaden even more, and the shadows grow so dark around his face and silhouette that I can no longer make out his features.
He attacked me multiple times in this form.
His true demon form.
With it comes the worst emptiness I’ve ever felt. When I first encountered him, I thought this was fear, but it’s worse than that. It’s the absence of hope. It is the draining of all my happiness, and it’s like a fucking shot going off.
Icy pain spears through me from my head to my toes, and my body reacts. My footsteps become heavier, as if my body mass is increasing along with my height. Black claws extend from my fingertips; my armor stretches against my skin but grows with me; and a violet light tints the air.
My own demon form.
I maintained this shape for mere seconds in the cavern at the eagles’ territory, but now it sticks with me, fueled by the emptiness that Koda is creating—the dark void that threatens to suck whole worlds into it and destroy them.
Esta stumbles back another step as we descend on her, Koda at a slow prowl and me at a quicker, angrier pace.
She rallies, but her bravado sounds fake. “What are you going to do, Koda? Use your bliss power to kill me with happiness? You’re useless without Nova. Fucking useless!”
There was a time when Koda might have reacted badly to such torments, but he continues calmly toward her, remaining shrouded in shadow so I can’t see his expression.
Trying to use my power on her before proved to me that this fight is now one of physical strength, a war of fists, not magic.
I reach Esta and she tries to hit me, but I block her punch, landing a blow to her face and another to her torso. She falls to the ground, and it’s so shockingly easy that I pause, astonished at my strength in my demon form. Even though she’s also in demon form, hitting her was like swatting a fly.
It occurs to me then that while I’ve never fully taken this form before, I’ve been honing my demon’s strength all of my life. With every fight in the dark alleys of Las Vegas, every verbal taunt and moment of rejection, every hard practice session, all the relentless training, and every time I took my wolf’s form and fought with her ferocity, I’ve built up to this moment.
Koda steps in, wrenching Esta off the ground.
As soon as he touches her, her face drains pale. “No… Please…”
He holds her high enough to dangle her above the dirt.
Like me, he has fought for survival his whole life, and it has come to this moment.
“I figured it out,” he says, his shadows wafting around Esta and draining the gold from her face, and it’s as if he’s draining her blood and her life force from her body. “I can either choose to cause happiness. Or I can take it away.”
“You can’t kill me.” Esta’s eyes widen. “You can’t.You can’t!”
With a twist of his big fists, he breaks her neck. “Yes, we can.”
CHAPTERFORTY-SIX
Koda doesn’t drop Esta, placing her slowly on the dirt instead.
