Chapter 26
The demon slid over the cottage, sweeping a lazy tongue across its teeth.
“Damn you,” the Bringer growled, surging from the ground. Had he his full powers, a whorl of mist and shadows would have been rising with him. Instead, he had only me. “Release him,” he commanded, his voice deadly in its severity.
“You are not of this dream,” the demon rasped, inhaling slowly through its nostril slits as if it were tasting us. I shuddered, feeling positively violated. “Or of this time. But you both have darkness within you. What is it that you seek?”
“I said to release him,” the Shadow Bringer repeated with a snarl. “He is not yours to keep.”
“But he is.” The demon dropped its head so that it was beholding its own midsection. The skin there was smooth, motionless. No sign of life from within. “The dark is where he belongs. I am defending his birthright. His fate.”
“No one’s birthright is to belong in a demon’s stomach,” I said, standing my ground beside the Shadow Bringer.
It grinned, flicking its tongue as it slid toward us. “I disagree, human. Especially when the bond is so symbiotic.”
“Demons steal birthrights and ruin fates,” I insisted, summoning every ounce of my remaining courage. “There is no bond to be had.”
Angry tears burned at my eyes, reminding me of every twisted, Corrupt body I’d seen. Corrupt children, their lives broken forever. Men and women who would never experience a true, restful sleep. Lives ripped apart before they could be fully experienced.
“Oh, how little you see,” the demon purred. “This is the beginning of something glorious.” It was close now, the arch of its skull touching the trees above us. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to breathe your mortal air.”
“On my call, distract it,” the Shadow Bringer murmured, scarcely moving his lips.
My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”
The demon rumbled on. “I want to wear your skin. Bleed your blood.”
“According to your own account, you were ‘able to reduce it into nothing,’ Esmer.” The Shadow Bringer looked very much as though he wanted to roll his eyes.
For the sake of my dignity—or perhaps his own—he didn’t.
“I’m going to bind the demon so you can safely try that technique again, but I need you to distract it first. Just hold its attention. Speak to it.”
I nodded grimly, biting the inside of my cheek. “Fine.”
“Soon I will know how it feels,” the demon said, eyes glistening in ecstasy.
I felt the Shadow Bringer’s hands on my shoulders, a brief graze of cool metal. Then he shoved me forward—right in front of the demon—with what I swore was a chuckle. I spun back to yell something unkind, but he was gone.
The demon fixed its red eyes on me, saliva dripping from its teeth.
“Your skin is soft. Your blood is fragrant. I think I prefer you to the willful child inside my stomach.”
Shuddering in disgust, I lifted my sword. It glistened with life, even in the murky half-light. “You won’t take either of us, demon.”
“Come here, girl. A truth, for one of your pretty teeth.”
The demon moved to attack, handling its body with startling speed and flexibility.
As it slid, bones began to grow out from its back, forming into the shape of six arms. Arms edged in long, brutal claws.
I lurched sideways, trying to dodge, but I was too slow.
A claw caught my side, tearing into my tunic and the skin above my ribs.
I crashed into a tree at the force of it, gasping as I fought to catch my breath.
The injury throbbed as wet, bloody shadows dripped down my ribs.
The demon moved again, fast, too fast, striking me down a second time.
The demon tilted its head, considering me. “You fascinate me, dreamer. Fragrant, indeed, is your blood. How might I spill more of it? Let us see.”
A flash of something dark and quick caught my eye: the Shadow Bringer, under one of the demon’s arms. He had become a ghost, a memory, silently threading something around the demon’s arms, spine, and head.
Something thin, hairlike. Threads of shadow, spiraling out from the Bringer’s hands as he wove them tight.
I gritted my teeth against the pain blooming in my side, determined to do what the Bringer had demanded. Distract it. I struggled to my feet, meeting the demon’s gaze. “You’re stronger,” I ground out, holding my bleeding side. “How did you manage to grow all those arms?”
“I am fed by the one who sustains me. I am made strong by his blood, his bones, and his darkness.”
My stomach churned in response. How many children perished in the bellies of demons?
How many rotted into Corruption there, believing every lie that their cursed dreams fed to them?
Gently, meagerly, light began to unfurl from my sword.
I focused on growing the blade’s light, letting my anger and desperation fuel its strength, and imagined that the light could move, quick as a whip and as fluid as the wind.
The demon chuckled. “Bind me, you bind the boy. Kill me, you kill the boy.”
At the demon’s threat, I hesitated. What if the demon was right and I did hurt—or even kill—the boy?
Would the Shadow Bringer die, too? Demons were masters of lies and half-truths, so it could be lying.
But maybe not. Corruption bound a demon, physically and mentally, to its chosen human.
Maybe that truly was the dark reality of it all: To kill a demon, its human must be killed, too.
There was no salvation without death, similar to the Light Bringer’s creed.
“You may join him in my entrails, if you would prefer,” the demon rumbled. “I can arrange it.”
I glanced toward where I thought the Shadow Bringer stood, but he was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to be brave, wanted to play the hero, but fear was threatening to crumble it all. The demon was a monster—a monster.
“Let him go,” I said, my voice fiercer than I expected it to be. “What do you want in return?”
“Your soul,” the demon said simply, licking its teeth.
“If you wish to save him, you must offer yourself.” The demon made to taste a blood-tipped claw, its face bright with triumph, but its arm jerked to a stop before it could.
Bound by the Shadow Bringer’s threads, the demon couldn’t move.
It roared, struggling mightily against the shadow bindings even as they cut deep into its skin. “Cursed dreamers—what is this?”
The Shadow Bringer burst from below, using his patchwork of threads to climb the demon’s back.
As he climbed, he sent a quick breath of shadow into the demon’s red smoking eyes, blinding it.
The demon roared again, and quickly, wildly, the pond began to rise.
Its scum lapped against my feet, ankles, shins—just as the Bringer finished his climb, making to wrench one of the demon’s horns from its head.
The horn broke free with a brutal snap.
The demon hissed, thrashing in its blindness. It caught the Shadow Bringer off guard, and he fell, crashing through his threads and snapping them. He cursed, making to grab a thread, a bone, a horn—but everything slipped from his hands, just as the demon broke free an arm.
It happened fast.
The demon threw its arm into the Bringer, crushing him against the pond-soaked earth.
I expected him to rise immediately—to shrug off the demon’s arm that pinned him underwater—but the demon persisted, leaning its weight into his chest as he drowned.
I lunged for the demon, sword raised, just as the demon grabbed for its broken horn.
Hissing, growling, grinning, it drove the horn down, stabbing clean through the Bringer’s armor. Clean through his chest.
“No!” I screamed.
It was as if the horn were in my chest. I couldn’t see the Shadow Bringer, couldn’t see if he was moving. Dark, bloody water pooled from where he was pinned.
The demon turned. Its vision had been restored; hatred burned in its eyes.
“Now it is your turn,” it said simply, just as its bindings dissolved.
It rocked forward, widening its mouth into a colossal, endless hole. I couldn’t move. Mud clung to my legs, rising with the water. Frantically, I lifted my sword, desperately calling to its light.
Too late.
The demon brought its jaws over my body.
In the belly of the demon, I found the young Shadow Bringer.
He knelt in a shroud of mist, framed by a void of black.
There wasn’t much to him, really. Just a tangle of skinny limbs and too-large clothes, eyes wide and sad under curls of raven hair.
A far cry from his future self—what he would one day become.
His hands grasped at the mist, as if he wanted to squeeze it into submission.
Or maybe it was simply to ground himself to something. Anything.
I approached him, surprised when his gray eyes lifted.
“I thought I was alone,” the boy whispered. He sounded distraught that I was there with him. “Did the demon devour you, too?”
“I think so,” I croaked. My throat was surprisingly raw and painful. Had I been screaming?
I took a moment to study the demon’s pit. It sloped up on all sides, globe-like, and a dark fog crawled over the ground. Time, light, and color didn’t exist.
There was only the young Shadow Bringer and me.
It was disturbing that I hadn’t woken up—that I was truly here, rotting inside a demon’s stomach. I let out a tense, frustrated breath. This was the Bringer’s childhood dream, but it also felt real. Present. Alive somehow, and not just a memory.
Turning back to the boy, I asked, “Are you hurt?”