Her symphony of tendrils jerked away messily, and more of my blood splashed onto the stone.
Theonlyreason I knew I was a demon lacking magic and not a human was because I hadn’t died yet. A human would’ve perished after a minute with my mother, but I’d survived over two decades.
“You may be of my blood, but you are not of my shadows!” She ran a hand through her dull, frayed blonde hair with an exasperated sigh. Darkness slid around her like a serpent as blackness dripped onto the ground with audible plops. “Dark Veil is going to kill me foryourshortcomings!”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!” I croaked as I pushed against the floor, trying to gain some distance between my face and my blood. My hands slipped on the vicious liquid,and my chin smacked against the floor with deafening force, rattling my teeth.
“You’re a shadow demon, but you can’t feed on the one thing we thrive on—pain!” Her shadows enshrouded her tall frame, slinking around the cellar, touching every surface but me.
I planted my forearms on the bloodied stone and forced my head up to stare her directly in her eyes, trying and failing to ignore the agonizing pain funneling through every nerve ending. “I can’t?—”
“You can’t do anything,” she cut me off.
That was when I got a good look at her for the first time in months. As she spoke, her teeth were black, rotting, and falling out. Her usual bright red eyes were bloodshot and sunken in, and her normally flawless complexion had black veins scattered across it. She looked like she was dying.
Was it karma?
“I’m done keeping you alive only for you to be a constant reminder of the failure of our mission,” she said cryptically.
One tendril struck out of the darkness and across my throat in one fell swoop.
Searing pain bloomed from the deep gash in my neck as the tendril sliced through skin, tendon, and muscle, sending shockwaves of agony through my mutilated body.
Static filled my head, and time slowed.
Warm, sticky blood pooled around my neck, trickling down my chest and onto the ground in rivulets. I reached a trembling hand up, trying in vain to stop the flow as the hot blood rolled over my hand. A ragged gasp for air pulled from my lungs before they filled with something heavy, and my eyes widened.
She’d done it.
She’d finally killed me.
There was no way I could survive this with my slow healing abilities. Not with how deep the shadow had cut.
My entire world spanned the size of this cellar, and my only friend was the sealed soul of a kitten. Now, it was all over.
The metallic scent of blood thickened the air as my pulse weakened, growing fainter with each beat of my heart.
I was dying in this Fates-damned cellar. The freezing touch of death crept into my limbs, numbing the core of my soul in a way captivity hadn’t done yet.
Would my soul become attached to my skeleton the way Nebula’s had fused to his skull? Or would I just…cease to exist?
The bitter tang of death mingled with the coppery flavor of blood on my tongue as if I could taste the rapid decay of my soul. That was my answer. I would be lost to death. I knew Iwouldn’t be fused to my skeleton, but what would happen to Nebula without me?
What happened after death? I knew dying was inevitable, and I knew I would die long before my lifespan was up because of my living conditions, but I’d never truly contemplated what would happen when my time living was up.
There was an outstretched void of nothing but numbness and despair as I spiraled toward the end.
My blurry eyes locked on my mother in my last moments.
I’d been a good daughter to her. I did everything I could, and Fates; I tried to do everything she wanted me to do. But my inability to access shadow magic wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have it like she did—even if I was a shadow demon.
It didn’t matter how much I tried, shadow magic was unattainable for me.
An eerie silence fell over us as I bled out, and I matched her cold gaze with one of my own. For once, I allowed my loathing and animosity for the woman who brought me into this world to pour out.
It should’ve been her to die here, not me.
Her red eyes widened in shock.
