“Pandora,” she called out, her voice bouncing around the sandstone prison.
It boggled my mind that a mother—someone who was supposed to take care of me, if the books I’d been allowed to read could be trusted—could do what she did to me. Something was innately wrong with her. I sensed it deep in my soul. There was no way a normal demon—no, supernatural—could be as heartless as she was, regardless of what she claimed.
When I didn’t reply, a lash of her magic split open my back.
My throat seized as a strangled cry sprang from my lips. The onslaught of the first wave of pain tore through me. Hot blood poured over my back and down my sides, drenching the stone underneath.
She inhaled deeply as if my pain and the sight of my suffering fueled her, and I guess it literally did. “Such delicious pain, Pandora. Just fuckingeat it!”
I can’t!My protests stayed put in my head. Arguing with her only made it worse.
Another thrash of her shadows stung me, hacking and peeling the soft flesh from my bones in a frenzy. “You were supposed to be somethingmore. I went through hell to carry you and look at you.”
Sharp shadow magic, dripping with painful intent, stabbed into me with every breath. One thick, scalding tendril sank into my back andthrough my stomach, hitting the hard stone with a squishy thump.
Agony ripped me open, funneling through me so fast my lungs refused to pull in air.
“You’re a defective shadow demon that can’t even feed.” Her humorless laugh filled the small space, and a stronger scent of sulfur pierced the air.
Every flinch sent waves of searing pain through me as if I were on fire, and I might as well have been.
“You can’t even heal properly!”
A bundle of scorching hot tendrils wound around my upper thigh, and I knew what was coming before it happened. The shadows coiled all at once, slicing through my flesh with ease, down to the bone.
I let the tears fall as a pain-filled sob ripped from my throat.
Mother loved that singular form of torture because it was the one that got the most reaction.
Nauseating waves of agony crashed over me in relentless succession. All I could do was gasp for relief, and every inhale felt like I was swallowing glass shards.
“After everything I’ve done… After everythingtheyhave done!”
Tears soaked my face, and sobs shook mybody as I helplessly succumbed to the nightmare that was my mother.
Even under the blitz of her shadow tendrils, I could tell there was something different with her. She wasn’t as careful or meticulous with her shadows today. Chunks of my skin were chopped, hitting the stone underneath me with a sickening thud. The tendrils sank so deep they rattled my bones.
Sweat drenched my skin as I was wracked with tremors and convulsions. The metallic tang of blood and desperation filled my mouth.
“After all thatcarefulplanning, all for you to come out useless with no magic of your own!”
Another tendril hacked off flesh from my hip as my throat squeezed down on a scream.
“No special power.”
Another tendril stabbed deep into my back while I flattened myself against the sandstone floor, soaked once again with my blood. The old, dried blood was sticky again from the new, and I’d lost myself to the pain.
“Nonormalpower.”
Another tendril skinned my back, and excruciating agony stalled the air in my lungs as my eyes flew open to the faint glimmer of sand particles caught in the sunlight, drifting lazily through the air while I was butchered by the shadows.
“A demon, out of all supernaturals…defective!”
She was relentless this time. It was usually worse when she skipped a day, but this was unlike her usual precise methods.
I just needed it to stop. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Fates, please, stop it! Just stop!”The sound of my own voice, hoarse and broken, reverberated through the room in a broken, garbled mess.
