An aura of darkness surroundedme, casting long blobs of obsidian that seemed to reach for her like long, grasping fingers.
I hated her.
Energy crackled in the cellar ominously as the air itself seemed to hum with malevolent power.
She disgusted me.
Icy chills coursed through my veins as I became a vessel for the cold embrace of death. The haunting whispers of darkness echoed in my mind as I opened my mouth andscreamedfor the first time in years.
My throat burned, but no sound escaped. Instead, inky black smoke billowed from my mouth and tumbled toward my mother, my torturer, and now, my murderer.
She stiffened as her eyes widened in horror. “No,” she whispered. She didn’t bother searching for any means of escape as she stumbled backward, her body trembling with fear.
Power coursed through me, electrifying every nerve and fiber of my being with a potent, otherworldly energy that took the form of this dark cloud of smoke.
“You’re like him,” she croaked as my smoke entered through her mouth, entering her body and devouring her soul.
Who?
I was like who?
The pungent aroma of sulfur filled the air asher body dropped to the stone floor, and her shadows dissipated for good.
Darkness ebbed at the sides of my vision, and I barely noticed the smoke leaving her corpse and returning to me.
Her soul slinked down my throat and hit like a bitter morsel in my stomach. Nausea coiled my gut, but an unfamiliar warm tingle spread through me as my magic finally awakened. My magical reserves filled for the very first time, and the magic inside of me regenerated my flesh and stitched my skin, muscles, and tendons back together.
I sucked in a sharp, plentiful gasp, filling my lungs with air and reaching up to curl a blood-soaked hand around my neck.
The gash was gone.
Everything my mother had just done to me healed, and I was betting that for the very first time, I didn’t scar.
I fed off her soul.
“Pandora,” Nebula’s voice hissed. “Someone’s coming.”
Shadows filled the room once again, but they weren’t my mother’s. They surrounded me and my mother’s body as I scrambled desperately toward the crack in the sandstone.
I reached my trembling hands into the opening, catching my wrist on the jagged edge asI scooped Nebula out. The warm tingling spread through my wrist as the tear in my skin healed, and I clutched his skull tightly to my chest.
A wave of queasiness washed over me. I leaned to the side and hurled a heavy goo-like substance from the depths of my body that reminded me of Nebula’s manifested soul.
Sweat and blood poured off me as I puked over and over again.
My head swam with dizziness as I glanced up, the sickness subsiding for a moment. Three demons stepped out of the shadows and into the cellar.
None of my thoughts could line up as my consciousness started to fade, but I recognized the horror on their faces.
The only words I could make out before I passed out were, “Captive…soul eater…didn’t know…Death.”
2
PANDORA
Iwoke up for the first time that I could remember without pain barreling through my body, and the familiar ache in my muscles was noticeably absent.
Magic thrummed through my veins in a way I’d heard my mother rant about and had read about, but it was the first time I’d felt it myself. My magical reserves weren’t empty anymore, but my stomach was in knots.
