“Gravesend?” She tossed her head back and laughed. “You three hate that bitch as much as I do. Why would you be here for her?”
“We don’t fucking hate her!” I shouted, my magic quaking with rage, flying every which way.
The air grew hot and thick with my power, a manifestation of my demonic essence.
Dreadful’s gaze widened in fear.
Skel tossed his head back in a maniacal laugh. “Fates, you’re terrified of the three lowly demons you like to talk shit about around campus?”
“You went too far!” Bram shouted, pointing a finger inher direction.
She tilted her head, a smirk playing on her lips as she masked her fear. “How so?”
“Don’t play dumb!” My shadows writhed like serpents as they closed the distance to her. “You beat her,” I spat the words, each one laden with a venom that could rival the most lethal of poisons. Any basilisks would be proud of it.
Dreadful laughed, and her pheromones seeped through the air, choking me as disgust rippled through me. “And what does that matter to you, Shadowheart?”
“I want her!” I shouted, my shadows writhing around me, outstretching toward her. “And I want herunbroken.”
She flicked her gaze to Bram, directing her pheromones his way, and he visibly recoiled. “Since when does Hemlock care about a noble?”
“Since she found herself opposing nobility,” he sneered. “She can’t be as bad as you if you bitches hate her enough to jump her.”
She took a hesitant step back, glancing at Skel and pushing her pheromones at him. “And you?”
“Pandora’s different. I like it.” He shrugged off her magic like it literally didn’t bother him one way or another. “And you’ve hurt her, which means Dex is going to play with you.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, and her pheromones rolled over me thickly. “Play?”
“Oh, not that kind of play.” I let out a harshlaugh, and with a swift motion, I lashed out with a scorching sharp tendril and encircled her wrist. Yanking upwards, I dangled her in the air a few inches.
She kicked her feet and used her other hand to tug at the shadows. “Stop!”
“Stop?” I let out another dark chuckle and twisted my lips into a scowl. “Did you stop when you were hurting Pandora?”
She didn’t respond, but her pheromones had stopped completely.
“Her fear is filling the fucking room,” Skel murmured around his pipe.
“You’reallfucking her,” she whispered as if figuring something out.
“Answer the question, Dreadful,” Bram barked.
She cried out, tears slipping from her eyes as she shook her head.
I tightened the tendril, cutting into her flesh until I hit the tendon. “Did you stop when she was hurting, you fucking bitch?”
“No!” she sobbed, looking oddly like a cat trying to swim as she clawed at my tendrils to no avail. “No, I didn’t stop!”
My shadow tendril sliced through everything holding her hand to her arm with a sickening crack, and she dropped to her dorm floor—her hand landing just a footaway from her.
Her screams of agony echoed as her pain flooded my reserves and then some, but then her screams became more hysterical. “No! No! Don’t make me do it!”
“What is it?” Bram asked Skel, taking another swig of his bourbon.
“She’s seeing you force-feed her her own hand,” Skel replied, scrunching his nose up.
“Oh, is that all?” I felt a sardonic grin split my face, using my shadows to cut up her hand until it was in cubes of bone and flesh. “I can make your fear come true, little miss Annie Dreadful.”
