The demon was a colossal figure over seven feet tall. His limbs were abnormally long, more a skulking shadow than man. Massive horns protruded from his temples and curved like an ox. A black mantle hung loosely over his broad chest, revealing pangolin-like scales. The brightest thing about him was the amulet he wore around his neck, where a red light glowed just like the portal once did. The light that came from the opening had faded, the blood dried into a crusted border, until scabs peeled off limestone and withered to dust.
Talon flew over and landed at the demon’s feet. Head bowed, the raven croaked,“It has been too long, Master. I come with your descendent, who hails from the human world.”
“I know who they are.”
His eyes were beady and black, and Malicine was taken aback by the starkness of it, the void of color. There were subtle differences between them, yet when Malicine gazed at his horns and skin, there was no denying it. The two of them were each other’s spitting image.
“Never did I think, in the centuries I’ve lived, that I would see another of my own flesh and bone.”
He stepped forward and lifted a sharp claw to Malicine’s cheek. They shot a hand up to block his.
“You left me.” Their voice hardened, a rock that refused to be smoothed over by the river of his words. “Thirty and five years ago, I was born in the woods and killed my mother out of the womb. No one knew who I was. Not even me. You never looked for me.”
“You are wrong. I always searched for you, my child. You have no idea how many times I returned, trying to get you back here.” His gruff voice penetrated the walls, a crack of desperation that muffled somewhere deep in his throat. Malicine could feel their shield slowly slipping. Their fingers curled into fists, grasping to maintain an impenetrable facade.
“Do you even know my name?”
“You are my flesh and blood. I do not need to give you a name to know that you belong to me.”
“I don’t belong to anybody,” they said. “People call me Malicine. A wicked name to match the monster they saw in me. You do not know what it was like for me to be trapped there, surrounded by faeries who wanted me dead.”
His black eyes glittered in amusement. He pulled his head back and laughed, the sound rumbling the walls like an earthquake. His leather wings flapped from the jostling, and when he looked back at them, his mouth stretched wider. “They are fools for thinking you are not like them. We are the most powerful Fae who will ever live.”
“But I am only half. You were the one who intruded into my world, impregnated my mother, and—”
“The Fae are demons. Wicked spirits born with powers, capable of healing just as much as destroying. The only difference is whether we delude ourselves into thinking we’re pure and good, like manyof the fair folk do, or admit to the wicked nature of ourselves as demons.”
Malicine cast a doubtful look at him. If this was a joke, they couldn’t decipher its humor. Comparing the two seemed ludicrous. Demons and Fae had always been divided. They were like day and night, light and dark.
Then Malicine thought about Iris, Dahlia, and Clover. They remembered the wicked spells, the lashes against their skin, the years of torture and laughter at their pain. To the rest of the world, their sisters were godmothers to royalty, a noble elite of society revered in magic and purity. But they were not kind or virtuous. No, they were wretched creatures who had harmed their own family.
“When we first crossed to the mortal world, we had enchanted ourselves to be beautiful to the human eye, so much so that they romanticized us and called us Fae. Over generations, the Fae in the mortal realm remained beautiful, as we became acclimated to their world and less in our original one. I, too, believed I could be special there. Until I realized humans were traitors, and that it was better for me to stay here and revert to the form I was intended to be.”
A cold breeze wafted through the window, prickling Malicine’s skin. They had not considered they could become different versions of themselves in different worlds. How someone could be a hero in one realm, and a monster in another.
The Demon King stretched an arm toward the end of the hallway. A black aura radiated from his palm. In response, a large chunk of stone broke off the wall and slid across the floor.
“We have a lot to catch up on,” he said, “so have a seat.”
CHAPTER 27
THERE WAS NO monster hiding in the dark. Instead, there was a body that Corin once buried.
Long ago, in the depths of a cave, in the depths of her mind, she had found a body and pretended it never existed. Elly simply floated away into a dream, where she shared teacups with talking animals and swam star-filled oceans with princesses. Elly was beside her, and they argued and fought and laughed, the way sisters could.
But the truth was that Elly was dead.
So Corin might as well have been too.
Thunder rumbled across the island. Corin couldn’t hear the raindrops anymore, only soft pelts against numb skin. She held Elly for what felt like eternity, thumbpads brushing against wounds that were split open like overripe fruit. Each sob scratched against Corin’s throat, her chest hollowing with every breath until she feared collapse.
She never told Elly she was sorry.
Everything began to sink. The surrounding walls, the starved bodies, the bones, the sisters. The tunnels or the island or wherever they were. In the darkness, it didn’t matter. As mud sloshed insideher ears and worms crawled beneath her skin, Corin curled into a ball beside Elly. Even with their bones pressed together, Corin still felt her sister’s absence, an empty and hollow thing.
The darkness whispered back to her.
Your fault.
