Chapter 12
TWELVE
There’s no surviving the monster realm.
RIVEN
I should never have taken this job.
I’m making a fortune, but S’lach’s daughter is a complication I didn’t expect.
Break her, then kill her—those were my instructions. Simple. Easy. And open to my interpretation. Why is nothing going the way I planned?
I stand outside her cabin and listen to the demon fuck her. When the eclipse rolls over the realm, I switch skins, selecting one better suited to withstand the extreme cold. Even as I listen at the door, my mind presents me with pictures I don’t want or need.
I slide my fist into my mouth and bite down on my knuckles.
There’s not a compliant bone in the angel’s body, yet she begs for demon cock as if she’ll die without it. And the things he says to her in response . . . I shudder as he gives her his dignity, freely handing over every weapon she could need to destroy him.
He’s a fool, and I am too.
“Torment her,” S’lach told me. “Destroy everything she’s built, then erase her for good.”
It should be easy. Why isn’t it easy?
Her lovers refuse to leave her, even to save themselves. That doesn’t make sense, either. Everyone chooses to save their own skin in the end; it’s a near-universal truth—the drive to survive is the most powerful force in all the realms.
I could kill them and tell her they left her behind. I picture the crushed look in her brown eyes and reject that idea. It’s too cheap. Too quick. And I promised a show in the arena.
I might have accepted this job in a freelance capacity, but that doesn’t mean I can’t kill two birds with one stone. Break Celine slowly—make a fortune while I’m at it—then kill her and move on. The liquor, the bed, the medical treatment, I’m protecting a short-term investment and that’s it.
The bets from her first fight brought in an astronomical sum of money. Enough to keep this place running for a year and satisfy the powers that be back on the mainland. We’ll meet our quota without issue.
My fellow veydran are thrilled. If only I cared.
The barbaric sounds trail off inside the cabin.
I should go in and remind them to fear me. Instead, I freeze like an imbecile, my fingers hovering over the keypad to the door. Bitter wind ruffles my cloak. What’s left of my hood grazes my cheek, but I barely feel it. How could I when the skin I wear doesn’t belong to me?
Inexplicably frustrated, I leave the cabin and the defiant redhead behind.
Destroy everything she’s built.
Yeah . . . it would have been better to kill her.