CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EMMERY
The choice hovered in the damp, empty chamber like a rope cinched around Destonne’s neck: enter the Hollow or leave with Emmery, and no situation allowed him to have both, no choice in which he wouldn’t hang.
The cold steel of the guard’s gauntlet dug into Emmery’s back as she struggled against their hold, helplessly restrained. She winced when the blade pinched the thin skin of her throat.
At least she knew Dez couldn’t go without her. If he did, he’d be stuck at that barrier he needed her magic to destroy. But he needed to find a way around Senka’s trickery, and fast.
“You can’t do that,” he said, his voice deadly calm. A frigid darkness glazed over his features. “She made her choice. You can’t rip it away.”
“Mind your tongue, boy. The last time you spoke out of turn, it didn’t end well for you, or do you not recall?” the demon taunted. Madness churned in her milky eyes. “I know the damage that crown has done. I’ve seen it through your mind’s eye.”
“I didn’t quite hear that. I was too busy planning all the ways to wring your neck, you repugnant, festering scum,” Dez snarled.
Blood streamed from his temples. “Emmery is coming with me, and we’re entering the Hollow.
We’re done. So move. Aside.” He hissed between his teeth just before the thorns tore through his skin, mangled his shirt, and gore spurted.
The sing-song quality of Senka’s voice shifted to screeching violins. “No.”
As he advanced on her, he stared down at Senka like an ant under his boot.
“Do you think I’m scared of you? You think you can intimidate me?
” He licked his lips and his razor-edged smile was that of a predator.
“That little game you crafted was only a tasting of all my horrors. I’ve bled and endured and suffered.
If you think you can break me, you’re a fool. ”
“I have already broken you.” Senka’s gaze slid to Emmery and she grinned triumphantly.
He bared his teeth at the demon. “If you look at her one more time, I’ll gouge your eyes out and shove them down your throat.”
“You hold no power over me.” Senka barked a wicked laugh.
“I can see your fear. Taste it in the air you breathe. It’s mouthwatering.
A delicacy. I have seen the terrors in your dreams, I know what you have lost and how you hide.
You will die alone, strangled by those vines wrapped around your heart.
” The demon pouted mockingly. “Such a poor, sad, helpless king.”
Without tearing her eyes from Destonne, Senka nodded at the guard that restrained Emmery.
The soldier’s blade bit into her throat, enough to nick her flesh and splatter her collar in blood.
A tiny feeble sound slipped from her, enough to enrage Dez.
While he didn’t look at her, his hardened posture said enough.
“If you harm her, I will kill you,” he snarled. “I’ll bring this entire place to the ground until nothing remains but the dust of your bones.”
Senka giggled, delighted by his threat. “I would like to see you try without a lick of magic.”
As if the thorns had taken hold and squeezed all the air from his lungs, he choked, “I’m not leaving without her.” His fists clenched at his sides. Blood trickled down his fingers and dripped onto the ground. “She is coming with me and we’re going to the Hollow.”
“That is not an option!”
“You cannot have her,” he spat. His tone grew more feral by the second, as if that beast lingering beneath his careful control now threatened to escape its cage.
Senka stretched up onto her toes, her face so close their noses nearly brushed. “Watch me take her from you,” she whispered. “I have the perfect use for her, don’t you worry. She will provide unending entertainment.”
“You can’t have her. She doesn’t belong to you!” Destonne roared, his eyes flaring wide. The tendons strained in his neck as wildness saturated his gaze. Something primal and guttural and raw.
With a tilt of her head, Senka taunted, “And why is that?”
“She's mine!”
Those two words sucked all the oxygen from the chamber.
Emmery’s lips parted as her eyes locked on the bunched muscles in his back.
His mangled shirt hung off him and blood covered every exposed inch of skin.
She couldn’t process his words or think past the dagger at her throat as the threat of death loomed closer.
Moisture gathered in her eyes, and as she squeezed them shut, a few tears fell.
Dez’s gaze flicked to her and a sweep of vulnerability claimed his features. As if he hadn’t realized what he said until it spilled from his lips. And now that he’d said it, he couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t inhale those words back in from where they lingered in the room.
Senka hooked her claws into Destonne’s cheek and wrenched his attention back to her, recreating the wound Emmery had previously healed.
With a frigid mask of calm, he accepted the pain, took it, held it inside himself, and no doubt turned it into undiluted rage.
“You are a fool to think that,” the demon sang. “She will never be yours.”
Senka nodded to the guard again. With a flick of their wrist, the blade at Emmery’s neck sliced up her cheek. The sharp pain took her by surprise as warm blood welled, dripped from her chin, and soaked her tunic.
Destonne’s chest fell impossibly still.
“I will carve her up until she is an unrecognizable mess of flesh, and you will never see that pretty face again. Don’t test me. The seconds are ticking down, boy. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.” Her head swiveled with her sick song. “The longer you wait, the more she will bleed.”
His voice was cold steel, as Dez said, “I warned you not to hurt her.”
They hadn’t seen Emmery slip him the knife she’d hoarded since the second game. Dez flicked his wrist. The knife descended from his sleeve.
And he struck.
The blade embedded between the demon’s ribs with a squelch. Senka doubled over, gasping. Black goo gushed from the wound, coating her hands, and spilled onto the cold stone floor. But Destonne wasn’t done and twisted the blade for good measure. It should have been a fatal blow.
And it would have been if she had a heart.
Her wet hands slipped on the knife’s hilt as she tried to wrench it free.
Before Dez could retreat, she sank her claws into his wounded arm.
She shrieked as her hand tangled with his thorns.
Crimson sprayed as Dez staggered back, roaring through clenched teeth.
Senka studied her mangled hand and a sinister viciousness settled into her stare.
The guard’s hold on the blade at Emmery’s neck slackened as they fought to decipher the bigger threat. Emmery took advantage of that brief flicker of hesitation, stole the moment, and seized her magic. It sprang to her hands and she let the khaos flame become her.
Let it bleed into her bones.
Let it burn everything.
Her fire feasted on the damp air. She cast an untamed tornado of fire, sent it whirling, and engulfed the guards. Their screams tore from their throats, brief, almost inhuman, like the man she’d seen burn at the stake those years ago across the gate. But now, she held the guards’ pain in her hands.
And that control felt too good as the fire consumed them.
They fell down, gurgling, their armour melting, merging with their skin in a hot molten mass, metal becoming man, and man becoming metal.
They writhed helplessly against the flames and crashed like brittle towers, as they struck the ground in a motionless puddle of blood, melted flesh, and gold.
The sight should have struck Emmery with remorse, disgust, some glimmer of emotion, but her vision blurred as anger burned through her, and she became a severed limb, still twitching but no longer anchored to her body.
She sucked air between her teeth as she called her flame. Begged it to come back to her. Begrudgingly, her magic obeyed but threatened to overtake her at the next slip.
Senka ripped the knife from her chest and tossed it aside. The steel clattered to the ground and burst into a cloud of dust. Her eyes set on Destonne. He clutched his arm though blood seeped between his fingers and he stood, spine straight, unfaltering, unfearing, but vulnerable, and weaponless.
“You will pay for that,” she hissed, her pale eyes glowing. Something in her gaze shifted, pulsing like Kenna magic, but much more sinister. Insidious.
Senka’s magic unleashed. Darkness shadowed the braziers, snuffed the flames, and plunged the room into shadows.
And she shot that nightmarish darkness at Destonne.
For a brief moment, Emmery thought he would be alright, and he could fight it with his stubborn will and fearless stare.
But then his back arched in an unnatural curve, and he choked like his throat turned inside-out, his organs rearranged, intestines jerked from his body like sausage links and tied in a tidy, meaty bow.
He fell to his knees. His bones cracked on the slab of stone and Destonne clutched his temples.
His fingers impaled on the thorns and his face contorted in pure, unadulterated agony, his mouth agape as if he needed to scream, as if the pain was too much to hold inside his body and he needed to expel it.
But no sound came.
Emmery sprinted, not a second thought given to what she would do when she reached them. All she knew was she would torch that demon bitch.
Blood ran down Dez’s fingers and chest, soaked the stone floor as his thorns wrestled in his body, like they tired of their cage and craved freedom. He crumpled. His forehead struck the floor.
“Get out of my head!” he bellowed, pure suffering soaking his words. Nothing could compare. “Get out. Get out—Get out!”
Then he screamed.
It was unlike any sound Emmery had ever heard. It wasn’t human or monster. It embodied pain, agony, and was laced with demons and shadows and a penance for existence.
Senka drank it in, became drunk on it, as if this was the only meal she had ever consumed, and she’d start a war to taste this sweet nectar.