Chapter Forty-Four
Daemon
brOTHERS
Iwatched through the stolen eyes of the ravens.
Hundreds. I had never possessed so many at once, but I could see everything.
The clearing of trees in the shadow of the flock.
Asher standing with blood dribbling from his smirking mouth.
Vhaena’s tears falling down her face from all the betrayals of the world. And myself.
I wasn’t in my body anymore. I was suspended in the air, soaring on hundreds of wings. But I still had control over myself, possessed by the full embodiment of my demon.
I was ruthless and terrifying. And finally, fully free.
No walls.
No chains.
No rules.
Ferocity surged through every drop of blood in my veins, every piece of my soul that had been carved out and repurposed into my vow. It burned, that vow. It screamed. Even if they were just words; to me, they were much more.
Alongside the ravens, I screamed back. I unleashed a kind of rage that came from a lifetime of restraint.
The ravens dove one by one like arrows. They weren’t birds anymore. They were vessels for my wrath. Their talons tore into Asher’s flesh. Their beaks pierced his skin, drawing rivers of crimson down his body. They sliced into him with the consequences he never expected from his actions.
And he laughed.
He cackled like a menace, grabbing as many of the ravens as he could. He snickered as he ripped them apart. He chuckled while biting through their feathers and injecting his venom.
“That’s a fancy trick, Dae.” Asher’s eyes slid to mine as poison and blood dripped from his widening lips. “But you’re not the only one who can play this game.”
His gaze shifted and locked onto Vhaena, speaking to her with the voice of the demon within. “You did this. You are at fault, and you know it. You’re worse than any poison, killing all of those around you.”
I lunged to silence him, but I wasn’t fast enough.
“And you want to kill yourself, too.”
No!
I slammed Asher to the ground, but the dark whisper from his tongue had already reached her ears.
Through the eyes of the ravens, I saw Vhaena’s spine straighten as she immediately obeyed, grabbing her spoon with a trembling hand and aligning the sharpened, splintered handle at her chest. I should have ripped out Asher’s tongue the moment I realized what he was capable of.
She believed him.
She obeyed him.
I have to stop this.
The ravens couldn’t stop her without hurting her. I wouldn’t possess her. I had no idea if it would kill her. There was only one way left—one thing I could do.
But I had no idea if it would destroy me in the process. I glanced over to my mask lying on the ground.
Seven slashes.
“We have more power than you realize.”
I went still, taking a single, deep breath. Then, I let go of the ravens and launched myself straight into Asher’s soul.
Possessing ravens was one thing, but another person—a demon—was something I hadn’t even considered. I’d tried it on animals, from rodents to horses and cattle. But their minds were simple, weak in comparison.
This was like a fire scorching my soul. It was wrong and vile. I was inside Asher. In his mind, his body. And I wasn’t in mine anymore. I couldn’t feel the earth beneath my feet or the wind on my cheeks. Only his. I couldn’t see through my own eyes.
But I saw everything through his eyes.
How he looked at her. Disgust. Desire. A warped obsession that was devious and violent.
How he looked at me. Like I was the sun he used to worship, only to now cast a shadow he could never crawl out from beneath. Envy—frenzied and fuming. It wasn’t just a sibling rivalry. I felt the anger boiling in his blood. He wanted to eliminate me, ruin me.
But he belonged to Rage. It was ingrained in him. I belonged to Ruin. And it was mine to uphold.
Pushing the air from his lungs, I spoke to Vhaena with his voice, but the words were mine. I forced Asher’s demon to bow down to me, bend to my will.
“You want to live. You know that it’s not your fault. You know I manipulated you from the very beginning, twisted everything into something inescapable. You know that Daemon, your demon, loves you and can’t live without you.”
She blinked, like a veil had been lifted from her glossy eyes. She dropped the wood in her hand and stepped away from it.
I leapt back into my own body, and the moment I let go of Asher, my world returned. I gasped as if I had been drowning—submerged in his horrid thoughts and hatred like rot spreading across the surface.
My knees slammed to the ground, and I held down Asher’s thrashing body. Doing exactly what I should have done at the start, I shoved my fingers into Asher’s mouth and dug my claws into the flesh of his tongue before ripping it from his throat.
He gargled on his blood, clawing at his mouth as I got up and went to Vhaena. Finally, he wasn’t fucking smiling anymore.
She stood there, frozen in place and staring in horror at the spoon lying in the dirt. My chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, and my vow throbbed in my soul like a freshly opened wound.
“No. No, no, no. What was I doing? What is wrong with me?” she whispered.
Her knees gave out, and I caught her before she collapsed to the earth. My heart was still pounding in my ears, echoing with the voice that wasn’t mine; thoughts that weren’t mine. I pressed my eyes closed, forcing my own thoughts in before opening them again.
“Vhaena, look at me.” When she still didn’t acknowledge me, I lifted her chin with a finger. “There’s nothing wrong with you. That wasn’t you at all. Do you hear me?”
“But I was going to do it,” her voice broke. “For a moment, I wanted to. Because of him. I believed him.”
“I know. But he can’t do that to you ever again. Not you. Not me. No one. I’ll make sure of it.” I grabbed her spoon and handed it to her.
She took a breath. Then another. Her gaze slowly lifted over to Asher’s thrashing body.
“I should be the one to do it. I should kill him for what he’s done.”
She began to rise, and I pulled her back down.
“No.” My voice was stern, final. She opened her mouth to argue, but I pressed my lips to hers. “You don’t get to stain your hands with his blood. He doesn’t deserve your vengeance.”
One last time, I possessed the ravens. Every last one of them. They came like the torrential storm we had evaded the previous night. The sound of their wings was deafening as they rained down from the air, swallowing Asher’s mangled screams as they tore into his body.
Vhaena’s eyes slowly lifted to meet mine. “You’re right. But it’s what I deserve.”
She rose to her feet, holding the spoon tight in her fist.
Then I rose, too, watching as she walked over to my brother.
The swarm of ravens parted around her as they continued to mutilate him.
Vhaena didn’t speak a word to him as she pulled her arm back, slamming the splintered handle of the spoon into Asher’s mouth.
It pierced into the back of his throat, silencing him for good.
She turned away, meeting my stare with tears in her eyes.
I went to her, and without another word, I lifted her into my arms. She didn’t fight me, letting me cradle her against my chest as I turned and walked away, looking back one last time as a black wall of wings once again surrounded my brother.
Nothing would be left of him.