But also, does it matter? I can’t go back on my promise. I can’t escape him. I have created this situation for myself and have no choice but to see it through no matter what.
Yet, I know I need to see him.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But I would like to see.”
Something in my statement seems to amuse him. The corner of Marcus’s mouth quirks a notch before he inclines his head.
“As you wish.”
I hold my breath as I watch him pour out of Marcus. The black mist swirls and pools in a writhing blur of shadows.
Marcus gasps and staggers back. The momentum of the extraction sends him into the dais. Dazed and slightly pale.
Gingerly, I climb down off the tendrils. A tricky task when I can’t see where they end. I guide my feet across what’s solid before finding the lip. Or maybe, Veyn let me down. It’s impossible to tell, but my feet touch the cool stone and I stand.
“Lenora.”
Unsteady, Marcus heaves himself up. His knuckles blaze white around the blood and char-stained table. The slight green tinge around his pale complexion has me hurrying down to him.
“Are you okay?”
I grip his elbow and do my best to support him, knowing that if he faints, he will take me down with him.
Marcus releases his grip on the dais and uses the forearm to wipe at the beads of sweat dotting his brow.
“I’m fine. Feels like getting off a roller-coaster.” His soft, pale eyes sweep down to my face. “Are you okay?”
I start to nod when I feel him stiffen. His hand finds my arm with solid firmness that digs into the soft tissues. I’m dragged back and away. His bulk moves to cover me and I have to physically shake him off to see around him.
The dark tendrils that had been no more than a glittery mist congeal, becoming a solid, black mass that extends in a column.From amongst the heavy shroud, a figure unfolds. A blurry outline that comes gradually into focus and my breath catches.
Black eyes the color of beetle shells gleam from the center of a face sliced from shadows. Hard, commanding lines that cut along his jaw and square at his chin. Thick, ebony locks fall in waves to the solid lines of his wide shoulders. That is where his humanity seems to end.
He’s darkness unbound. A hulking demon with serrated fangs and jagged claws tipped with silver. His flesh writhes around pieces of hidden slivers that glint faintly in the light. Tiny barbs that extend from his very skin in shards.
From the waist up, his torso is a masterpiece of hard, toned muscles bound together by thick tubers that cross around and through the muscles. An intricate mazework of vines that make him appear even larger.
But, from the waist down, there are no legs. None that I can make out from amongst a storm of wriggling shadows and shimmering slivers of metal. I think I catch a faint hint of hooves, but the swirl is too thick to be certain.
All that aside, my gaze is captivated by the wide expanse of darkness that fans out behind him. A breathtaking span of steel and shadows that flicker like wings. Massive curves with the upper lines of a bat’s and the lower half of an eagle, but instead of feathers, long, arched blades.
He opens and closes his fingers and the blades along his fingertips clink that familiar sound I remember hearing through the mirrors.
“I was expecting worse,” Marcus announces, breaking the silence.
The muscle over Veyn’s left eye arches. “Sorry to disappoint.”
I am not disappointed.
I am also beginning to think I have a problem. There is something definitely wrong with me for seeing thismonster standing before me, wings, hooves and fangs, and … appreciating the beauty of all of him. I’m fairly certain a normal person would find him horrifying, but I look at him and I’m mesmerized by the swirling colors that reflect in the light when he turns his head. The way the blades along his wings cling ever so softly against his back. I am wildly fascinated by all of him. More, I want to see him in the light. I want him under the sun so I can see the warm gold lance off all those pieces of metal.
I also have so many questions.
“How do you sleep?” I blurt, edging out further from behind Marcus to get a better look. “Do you ever cut yourself? Were you born with those?”
His poor mother…
Jagged teeth, as razor-sharp as the points of his talons, flash in a grin. “I was not born. I was created as all demons are.”
