Page 13 of A Summoned Husband

The shadows murmured to me as the pages opened to the one smeared with the blood of the female that was slowly infecting my mind. Summoning all my strength, I ignored the tantalizing red mark and read through the page.

Lips pursed, I frowned.

This was old magic.

Mischievous.

Flames surrounded the book, and it disappeared into the ether. I would keep it safe until I found out who wrote it, and then I would break every single bone in their hands, again and again, to be sure they never wrote another thing for as long as they lived.

Until then, I would return home until I figured it out.

Fire circled the floor. The circle connected, the familiar star in its centre and the surrounding script lighting and rotating. Fire rose, ropes and wisps that surrounded me, wrapped around me, ready to pull me home. The familiar burn etched into my flesh and the ground rumbled at my feet.

The scent of fire and brimstone filled the air.

A growl erupted from me as something slammed into my chest, sending me flying back into the trees. The wood splintered and the towering tree cried as it fell to the ground. Pushing up from the wreckage, I looked at the symbol that was to be my portal home. The flames wavered and the circle broke.

“What?” I hissed. “No!”

On my knees, I slammed my fists into the ground.

I was trapped. Bound to the woman whose blood tasted as close as I would come to heaven.

My mortal bride.

4

EDEN

The world was nothing but wreckage at my feet as the ground opened. Cracked pieces I knew would never be whole again shifted, and I fell.

Down, down, down.

It was dark. It was a heat that burned past my skin and scorched my soul. It devoured me, condemning me to the dark.

Visions of the demon who stared into my very soul with eyes as dark as the blackest night played through the darkness around me. They forced me to remember those days I sat in a pew as I ignored the pastor and all he foretold of my soul and the damnation that awaited it were I not to follow the path God laid out.

Sorrow inflated my chest as I wished, for a moment, I’d listened.

Religion hadn’t been something I wanted for myself. It was ties around my wrist that always felt too tight. Too stifling. Yet, as I looked into the eyes of a demon, I couldn’t deny there may be some truth to it. That there was a path I was supposed to walk and I had ventured so far from it, I wasn’t sure if I could find my way back with a goddamn map.

This was the end. It had to be.

My eyes narrowed as something glinted in the dark, falling alongside me.

It was so fast. The air whipped by, my hair a cyclone around my head as I did my best to remain upright. Not that I could tell which way was up and which was down.

I reached out into obscurity.

It glinted. A shining light in the dark that called to me. I tried to move, tried to somehow fall closer to where I knew, without a doubt, I needed to be. I knew I had to reach it, had to wrap my hands around the light before I hit the bottom. Before the end reached up and claimed me.

Groaning, I ground my teeth and lunged.

My hands closed around it.

Relief poured into me as I held it as though it could be my salvation. It was cool in my grasp. Ice pressed up against my flesh in the heat of the summer, hot and humid. It was a calm that seeped into my skin at the contact, forcing a smile from me.

I clutched it to my chest, holding it there until it battled away all the heat.