Chapter Three
CHAPTER
THREE
Demons were the night’s perfect predator, their eyes rumored to discern a single speck of dust amid the darkness.
Aurelie had always believed that to be a grim exaggeration until now, as her chest ached and her thighs burned while she fought to keep pace with the envyborn weaving effortlessly through the towering maze of oak trees.
“Faster,” jeered a tinny voice beside her, buzzing like a misaligned lute string. A flicker of red light pulsed erratically at the edge of Aurelie’s vision, darting closer. “Faster, or you’ll never make it bleed!”
Though no larger than a nightingale, the vesper was a menace. Tendrils of crimson light trailed behind wings patterned like fragments of stained glass. It paused just long enough for Aurelie to see its spritelike form, limbs as fine as willow twigs and eyes aglow with clever malice.
“You’ve been waiting for this,” the vesper crooned, its voice sticky-sweet. “Get to the demon, before it gets to you.”
The words sank into her, feeding her frenzy. Aurelie had to shake away its influence, swatting the wretched thing away.
Infernal creature. She doubted it’d stray far.
Vespers had a knack for showing up whenever you least wanted them, and their energy was infectious.
The white ones weren’t so bad, but the red?
Already its venomous words were burrowing into her thoughts like barbs, hastening her steps.
Red vespers could turn anyone into their puppet if their influence was strong enough.
The farther she ran, the more the forest seemed intent on swallowing her whole.
Verdant moss gave way to soil slick enough to devour her boots.
Darkness shrouded her like a veil, pierced only by pale moonlight that sliced through the dense canopy and illuminated the path forward.
If the demon sensed her closing in, it gave no acknowledgment.
Shadows snapped at its heels, growing thicker as the forest cracked open its jaws.
Sweat pooled at Aurelie’s throat from the cloying humidity that enveloped her.
The air was so thick that strands of hair curled at her neck as she crouched against the base of an oak, steadying her breathing until she could hear the song of the cicadas and the lapping of water over her thunderous heart.
The river gleamed in the darkness, a silken ribbon winding through the trees.
Orion was watching over her; a few steps farther and she’d have walked straight into the clearing, leaving herself vulnerable.
Just as the demon had.
Shadows sloughed from its body like a discarded cloak, revealing a humanesque form with skin of midnight blue and horns that curled upward like a ram’s. The demon had tufted ears and a barbed tail that trailed behind it, leaving tracks in the dirt as it crouched at the river’s edge.
Aurelie’s fingers curled around the hilt of her longsword as the demon bent toward the water, its reflection rippling as it cupped its palms to drink.
To any other eye, the female might have looked small and unimposing, but Aurelie knew better.
Her gaze drifted downward, to the writhing shadows coiled at its feet.
While all demons possessed magic, few could harness its full power. Yet this one wielded darkness like an extension of its body. The shadows writhed at its heels like a living being, and Aurelie knew at once that it was soulbound.
Somewhere, a thoughtless human had sealed their fate to this creature. They had shared their very life force, granting the demon full access to its power in exchange for the use of magic.
So focused on the demon’s shadows was she that Aurelie hadn’t noticed the night closing in around them, silence weaving through the forest like spider silk. Nor did she see the stars flickering out one by one as darkness blotted over them like a stain upon the sky.
It was only when she sensed a sudden shift in the air that she readied her sword, but she was too slow. The demon had sprung its trap.
It pounced, claws slicing the air mere inches from her face as she threw herself to the ground to evade the deadly strike.
The demon spun to face her, and in their closeness Aurelie saw that its eyes were not the starved, red-rimmed eyes of any demon she’d known.
They were a pure and striking crimson—the mark of a well-fed demon.
A powerful demon.
She threw her blade up just in time, steel meeting the strike of claws.
“Did you think yourself clever?” the demon purred, tail swishing with great amusement. “A fledgling could have scented your blood.”
Aurelie swung her blade, but the demon moved faster.
Claws slashed across her sword hand, and she cried out as her grip went slack.
Her weapon clattered to the soil, disappearing into the feasting shadows.
They curled around Aurelie like a phantom hand, the chill of the soil biting through her armor as the shadows restrained her.
The demon loomed over her, dark blue hair brushing her cheek as it crouched above her with a curious tip of its head.
It had severed an artery in a single strike, yet even while Aurelie’s blood drained down her wrist in rivulets, she heard her father’s voice in her head, echoing his favorite sentiment: There’s always a path to victory. You need only be clever enough to find it.
She was larger than the demon, stronger, and she needed to use that to her advantage.
Aurelie bucked hard enough to throw the envyborn off balance, locking her legs around the thrashing beast. The shadows loosened their hold in the demon’s distraction, and Aurelie summoned every ounce of her strength to seize the opportunity and flip them both onto their sides.
The demon snarled, its claws sinking deep into the tender flesh above her heel. The pain struck like lightning, hot and blinding.
Aurelie struggled to breathe, seeing stars.
She held tighter, ignoring every ache and the numbing chill that crept up her arm as she made herself a puppet, silencing her thoughts and trusting her body to move as it had been trained.
She lashed out with her good foot, striking the demon hard in the ribs.
The momentum sent them both sprawling, and she seized the advantage, pinning the creature beneath her.
Her knees dug into its wrists, anchoring it to the earth as she slipped her dagger free with her uninjured hand.
She swayed like a cattail in the breeze, held together by a fragile thread of adrenaline. But somehow, impossibly, she kept the demon down, the dagger poised above its throat.
“Make it bleed!” cried a vesper. “Strike it down!”
The bloodlust fueled her, hastening every move.
This one’s for you, Orion. Aurelie raised the dagger for the final blow, but seconds before her blade met flesh, the wind carried a whisper that slashed her resolve.
“Use that blade,” the demon said, its words coiling around her like smoke, “and I won’t be the only one it kills tonight.”
The magic that crept up Aurelie’s arm—the proof of the demon’s soulbond—tightened like a noose around her resolve. If she struck, the human bound to this demon would die as well. A human who very well could have been forced into their pact.
It could be some nameless stranger, some wretched soul who had made a bargain out of greed.
But what if it wasn’t?
“Don’t hesitate,” the vesper spat. “It should have been you who died that night, not Orion. You let him fight for you. Let your mother die for you. And still you will not strike—”
She slashed at the vesper, who narrowly avoided having its head chopped off before it fled back into the trees with a hiss.
The beastly thing was right. Even the stars seemed to mock Aurelie’s hesitation, their pale light illuminating the demon’s throat as if guiding her blade.
She knew better than to trust a demon, and yet the threat burrowed into her, threading doubt through her resolve.
She’d always known that her hands were destined to be stained with blood, though never in her wildest dreams was that blood red.
“Aurelie!”
Nicolas’s voice shattered the stillness like a bell tolling through the woods. It was still distant, but Aurelie’s head snapped up, dread coiling in her chest.
Wherever he went, Solange was sure to follow, and her arrival would mean the end of the demon. There’d be no questions, no assessment of the situation—if Aurelie didn’t kill it, the Beaumonts would.
But she couldn’t do it. She’d been prepared to take a demon’s life, never a human’s.
“Play along or die,” she commanded. The demon’s tufted ears flattened against its skull, its composure faltering.
Unfortunately, there was no time to savor its fear.
This time when she thought of Orion, Aurelie prayed her brother would avert his gaze as she slammed her dagger down—not on the demon’s throat, but on its tail.
Perched on a nearby branch, the vesper squealed with delight. Its manic laughter was eclipsed only by the demon’s screams that shattered the stillness of the woods, sending tremors through the earth. Its scarlet eyes blazed as they fixed on the severed tail Aurelie held in her bloodied grasp.
She felt the vibration of footsteps as the knights closed in, drawn by the sound. The demon’s growls deepened, and she ignored them to settle her weight more firmly onto its chest.
“Hold your breath.” Slowly, her body aching with the knowledge that this could very well be a grave mistake, Aurelie slipped off the demon and shoved its body toward the river. Every muscle screamed in protest as she kicked the limp form into the current.
The demon didn’t thrash, but allowed its body to drift lifelessly down the water, a trail of blood staining the silvered surface.
The crunch of bramble signaled Nicolas’s approach not a moment later. He tore through the trees, hunting her down. Solange was on his heels.
The sight of them came with such relief that Aurelie bowed forward, her body finally succumbing to the pain. Her eyes burned, though from tears or exhaustion, she couldn’t tell.
“She’s lost too much blood,” Nicolas said, his voice a distant echo in her spinning head.
Solange knelt beside her. “Carry her. I’ll keep my swords ready.”
Nicolas hoisted Aurelie onto his back. She barely had the sense to lock her arms around him, the world tilting as darkness clawed at the edges of her vision.
Beneath her, Nicolas stiffened. “Aurelie. What’s that you’re holding?”
One by one, she unfurled her fingers. The severed tail gleamed in the moonlight, its barbs cutting into her palm. “A trophy,” she managed, her voice thin.
Nicolas’s gaze slid to the river, where the demon’s body had already disappeared into the current. Beside him, the red vesper clutched its sides, its laughter like the chime of broken bells.
Solange’s face slackened, and though Aurelie knew she should be ashamed for the lie, it felt good to hold the tail out before Solange. To see her shock.
“She’s done it,” Nicolas whispered, awed.
Solange glanced back toward the water. “Then let’s get her back to Azriel before she bleeds out.”
Aurelie slumped against Nicolas’s shoulder, her strength ebbing with every step.
Somewhere in the distance, the bells tolled three times in quick succession, marking the end of the night’s horrors.
Yet as the vesper’s laughter echoed in the distance, Aurelie couldn’t help but feel that this bell didn’t mark the demons’ defeat.
Somehow, it felt like the mark of her own.