CHAPTER FORTY #2
“Quiet,” Senka snapped. She rounded on Dez like she debated flying across the room and slitting his throat herself. “Is the blade not enough to shut you up?” She nodded to the guard who held him.
They lifted his tunic and shoved the fabric into his mouth.
Boots scraping against the floor, he fought against the guard’s hold and shouted something, but the wolf didn’t turn around, perhaps from guilt or shame or sheer indecision.
Or maybe Brennen knew if he faced his dearest friend, he would change his mind.
So he stepped forward and gingerly took the vial between his teeth like it was the most sacred, precious thing he’d ever held.
In a swirl of shadows and darkness, Brennen disappeared.
Emmery lunged. Her joints screamed as they stretched, but the guard held firm. “What did you do?” Emmery snapped at the demon. “What did you do with him? Bring him back!”
“He made his choice,” Senka hissed. She nodded to the massive guard who held Destonne.
The guard lifted him off his feet like a rag doll and not a fully-grown man, and dragged him beside the velvet chair.
Senka’s bare, blood-crusted feet slapped against the stone floor as she stalked to Emmery next. “Now, you must make yours.”
Emmery’s heart pounded and she couldn’t catch her breath. Every morsel of her attention fixed on the blade at Destonne’s neck. One quick flick of the guard’s wrist and his throat would be flayed like a cutlet. She couldn’t reach her magic or set this room alight before the soldier’s hand moved.
“Your choice is simple,” Senka began as she stopped to stand in front of Emmery.
The distinct scent of decay wafted off her.
“Either you choose your King, and you carry on into the Hollow. Or—” her eyes flared wide, and a wicked, evil snake writhed in that milky stare. “You get all you ever wanted.”
With a hasty snap of her fingers, a man appeared.
A man shrouded in a black mist.
With fierce green eyes.
Shade.
Emmery’s knees buckled and she barely managed to hold herself together. To keep herself from falling to pieces. Tears pricked her eyes as the man drank her in as if he’d infinitely thirsted and she was a finely aged wine.
She choked on her words. This had to be some trick.
“This isn’t fair,” she whispered. Her gaze darted between Dez and Shade. “This isn’t fair. You can’t do this. You can’t—”
Nothing is free. Nothing is fair. Vesper’s warning rang true.
“Silence,” Senka snarled. She waved Shade forward. “Come now. Don’t you want to greet your love?”
Emmery’s heart stilled, her chest constricted to the point of pain, and she turned to Shade, fearing her soul may leave her body entirely with just that glance across the room.
“Emmery?” His voice echoed that same familiar call from far away.
But then he advanced on her, and she was in his arms, and everything was alright. Everything in the world came together, her purpose, the prophecy, and they could leave this place now.
“Shade,” she whispered into his shoulder. “Why are you—why do you look like this? I don’t understand. You said this wasn’t what you…” She swallowed hard, her throat like sandpaper. “I don’t—”
He pressed a finger to her lips, and said, “Hush now. Everything is alright.” It was such an unShade-like thing to do. She blinked up at him. Her brows pulled together and she opened her mouth to speak but—
He kissed her.
Emmery’s arms wound around his neck, pulled him closer, and she wanted to feel him, for him to fix those broken bits of her, to soothe the ache and hollowness inside her that only seemed to grow.
But his mouth was cold, lifeless, hard, and unforgiving. None of the things that fed her soul. And her mind wandered back to the dream with Dez.
Until it dawned on her.
That first day, Senka had rifled through Emmery’s mind.
And all of this, the labyrinth, the dreams, the games—all of it was a manifestation of all their fears.
She knew as much, but it hadn’t exactly unfolded like this in her mind until now.
This fear played out before her. That her and Shade wouldn’t be right for each other. That he wouldn’t love her.
Or perhaps, that she would never love him.
That she would always long for another.
Emmery bit back the urge to shove him away. Because every piece fell into place like a neatly stacked row of dominoes.
As she kissed this Shade imposter, her gaze flicked to Destonne.
He watched her, a flat, dead sorrow etched into the lines of his face.
Blood trickled down his throat from where it appeared he leaned into the blade, and between it, the crown, and the thorns punctured through his skin, a mess of crimson soaked him, but the pain in his eyes was something else.
Like a fragment of something he’d clung to now came apart. Frayed at the seams.
Shade pulled back and Emmery gasped as if she’d held her breath.
“What’s wrong, love?” Shade asked with a mocking tilt of his head.
Somehow, she knew. It was like that dream she had. He didn’t smell right. Didn’t hold her right. Didn’t have that same pull that Shade had. The feeling that reached inside her chest and held her heart in a way that couldn’t be replicated.
Emmery whipped her head towards Senka.
The demon grinned back. “You must choose.”
Emmery lifted her chin, fire in her eyes as she said slowly, sure to announce each word, “I choose Dez.”
Because she wasn’t sad or desolate. She was fucking angry.
Shade staggered back from Emmery as if she had struck him. “Why? Emmery, I love you. Don’t you know—”
His words broke off as a gnarled claw punched through his chest.
Shade glanced down at the hole in his abdomen. His green eyes flared wide, his mouth agape as his hands hovered over Senka’s fist. And for a moment, Emmery wondered if she’d made a mistake.
If she had made a horrible, miscalculated mistake.
But then Shade exploded into a burst of ice and shadows and Emmery was left standing there with her heart racing and no way to calm it.
“You thought you could trick me?” Emmery spat. Venom practically bled from her eyes. “For a demon, I thought you would be better at this.”
Senka sneered. “Yes, well, we are not done just yet.”
Dez’s eyes met hers, his thoughts written clearly across his face. He thought she would let him die. Thought she would leave him here. Thought she would choose Shade.
He opened his mouth to say something. Like the words crawled up his throat and choked him, but died on his tongue. He took a step toward her. Another.
The guards didn’t move as Destonne seized Emmery in his arms and held her so tightly she feared she may actually shatter. But their wordless exchange was cut short by the demon’s impatient voice.
Senka tapped her foot. “Destonne O’Daire, it’s your turn.”
The King faced the demon, determination set on his face as he held his hand behind his back to hide the secret Emmery had slipped him.
“Now you must choose.”
A guard grabbed Emmery once more and pinned her arms behind her back. The steel of a blade nicked her throat as her head tilted back.
Destonne’s eyes widened as they dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the far corner of the room. “You will receive passage to the Hollow,” Senka said to Dez, “but, if you choose to pass…” She giggled, an awful, bone-chilling noise. “Your pretty, little fire girl belongs to me.”