Chapter Forty-Three
Vhaena
RAVENS
Ijust stood there. What else was I supposed to do? The Corse brothers were fighting. But it wasn’t like one of their childhood brawls. They were out for blood.
Asher’s voice spewed more poisonous lies, tainting the air. And Daemon was listening… He was actually listening.
My attacker, my nightmare, the monster I’d been running from even before the Hunt began, was trying to convince Daemon to doubt me. To abandon me. To discard the vow he’d made to protect me.
And the worst part was the uncertainty that had flickered in Daemon’s eyes, even though it was just for a second. It was enough.
I couldn’t stay here. I wouldn’t listen as Daemon was being turned against me by the very person who broke me.
The cloudless sky rumbled, darkening the island. The sound came again, louder this time. But it wasn’t thunder. It was more violent. More ominous. More demonic.
It was the thundering of wings.
My heart pounded in my chest as shadows rippled across the sky, getting closer and closer.
I spun on my heel to run. I didn’t care if it made me a coward.
I was too close to the end to die now. All I had to do was make it through the night.
If I could run, get as far away from them as possible, I could evade them long enough to make it to the end of the Hunt.
Then I could go home.
I sprinted across the clearing, and the sky exploded with dark movement blotting out the light of the sun. Screams of beating wings split the air. Ravens descended from above the trees, and I ducked instinctively.
Hundreds of black birds fell down from the heavens. Like war-born shadows, dozens of ravens split off from the rest of them and circled around me, encasing me in a winding torrent of wings.
My passage was completely blocked. I wanted to move, but I was trapped in a feathered tomb. I shielded my face with my arms as I spun in place to see the unkindness flocking toward Daemon.
He stood, and in that moment, he looked like a god; a tyrant, a ruler over the darkness that had spilled into the world from the depths of the hells and risen in the ashes of damnation. He bled into the shadows of the ravens, like they were one and the same.
I felt the shift in the air. Daemon’s breathing slowed, even and steady, and his head tilted back while his eyes turned black and empty.
My breath caught in my throat.
Daemon was nowhere to be found. Only the demon within remained.