Laurie wrapped his arms around Skye from behind.“It’s too late, Skye.”
Remi didn’t think, only reacted.“Hey!Let her go!”He lunged forward, pulling his fists back, ready to pummel Laurie for touching Skye, except an invisible force swept Remi’s feet out from under him.
Flames roared to life in the middle of the room, a bonfire so large it reached toward the top of the impossibly high ceiling.
Magic held like shackles around his ankles and wrists, drawing him into the air and toward the fire.He fought against the invisible restraints, but nothing he did loosened their hold.
“Remi!”Skye yelled.“Stop!Don’t do this!”
A blackened smoke filled the air and coated his lungs.Remi convulsed as he tried to cough, but found no air to inhale.
The flames licked his skin, burning him.Agony flooded his body.He thought he might be screaming, but he could hear nothing except the crackle of flames.
The scorching fire crawled up his skin.He was burning alive.Something heavy and oppressive entered him, like magic ripping at his bones, stripping him of his flesh.The flames jumped higher, swallowed him up, and consumed him entirely.
Chapter Thirty-One
WrathsuchthatHellhad never seen before filled Skye.The murderous rage was a forest fire inside her, bursting through the frozen void of emptiness that she’d encased her hellfire within.It’d been the only way.The only way to step into the demoness’s mask she needed to don in order to get Remi to hate her—to hate her so much that he’d move on from her when her wings were clipped and she never returned to Earth.
Skye knew Remi—knew all the cruel words she’d need to say to make him break, and she’d learned from their first bargain that Remi had a limit.When she pushed too hard—pushed him over the edge—instead of giving in, the rebel in him balked.
The Devil couldn’t force Remi into a bargain, and if Skye reminded him of what he truly wanted—not fame and fortune and love—but to feel as though he’dearnedanddeservedthose things, she thought he’d turn down the bargain.
The Devil would have been pissed, and he’d have taken Skye’s wings as punishment, but Remi would have been safe.
Skye wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if Remi ended up like her mother, and she knew if she’d told Remi the truth, he would have sacrificed himself for her.
Making him believe she’d been playing him had been the only way, and reminding Remi of his brother was the key to igniting his fury and inducing him to decline the bargain.She’d found that out the first time she’d tried to make a bargain with him.
But she hadn’t expected the Devil to offer to erase his memories.And she definitely hadn’t expected Zara and Laurie to play along either, but she didn’t have time to decipher their intentions.She didn’t have high hopes for those as Laurie’s hold around her waist tightened.
“You can’t save him, Skye,” he said.
“Get off me!”She tried to summon her hellfire to sift, but her magic was thwarted as a heavy barrier fell upon her, the Devil activating the throne room’s magical ward.
Skye’s vision blinked in and out of focus as the sight of Remi being thrown into the fire flickered on top of a flashback of her mother doing the same.She was here.She was there.She was now.She was then.
“No!”she screamed, thrashing in Laurie’s arms.“No.No.No.”A torrential outpouring of emotion that she’d kept locked up and contained for years unleashed itself.
Zara grabbed her face.“Skye, you have to stop,” she said, her voice soft, concerned, but that only pissed Skye off, only made everything inside of her rail against Laurie harder.She tried to tug loose, tried to call upon her fire to fight them off, but everything was blunted.
She didn’t care.She’d rip her own arms off to get to him.She’d run into the flames.Lose her wings.Lose her life.She’d do anything to drag Remi out of the hellfire.
Remi yelled, but the sound was cut off as his body disappeared into the flames.
“Let.Me.Go!”Her voice was not her own.A deep, thundering darkness detonated from inside her, and the explosion threw her, Laurie, and Zara apart.
Glass shards sliced through her as she tumbled, rolling over and over.She slammed into the wall.
A full-body ache spread through her as she pushed to standing and tried to get her bearings.She ripped out the piece of glass lodged in her thigh.She wouldn’t be able to heal herself until she had access to her magic again.
Or rather, she shouldn’t be able to, but shadows condensed and flooded her wound, knitting the skin together, healing her just as they’d done when the necklace had burned her.
Skye’s eyes widened as the shadows dissipated from her leg and curled up in her necklace, which laid at her feet.She glanced at the Devil, but he was focused with psychopathic glee at the flames in the middle of the room.
Skye scooped up the necklace and sprinted toward the hellfire just as it whooshed away.She landed on her knees next to Remi’s blackened and charred body.
“Remi,” Skye said, voice breaking.She lifted his face onto her lap and wiped away the top layer of burns.
