Page 145 of As Above, So Below

Pushing harder, and ignoring the cutting gravel under my bare feet, I cross the garden and enter the sanctum. It’s there Kassil’s voice carries from the central courtyard.

“This is not my wife!” he roars.

The sound of a slap echoes sharply against the marble walls along with Cora’s sob.

My innate shudders, reminding me of its yearning to be used to cause destruction and death—the things I’d been designed to do, but refused to embrace.

Tonight, I’ll embrace them.

In a swirl of shadows, I’m no longer running through the sanctum but down the stairs of the temple into the courtyard.

Kassil turns, his face lighting up.

He’s in the middle of the courtyard, holding Cora by her hair with a hand, the black ribbon I’d given her in the fingers of his other.

“There she is,” he croons, his smile revealing unnaturally long fangs as his pitch-black eyes fix upon me.

“Let her go!” I scream, stopping at the top of the stairs.

He lifts Cora from the ground, dangling her by her hair to look at her face. “Sorry, love. Wife says I can’t play.”

Cora’s tear-rimmed, blue eyes meet mine, the fear upon her face gripping my heart in a fist of ice.

She knows.

She knows exactly who—what—holds her captive.

My heart pounds wildly as Kassil turns his gaze to me, grinning, but it’s the movement behind him that gives him away.

And in an instant, it’s as if the whole world slows to a near stop.

I cannot move fast enough.

Please no.

Please not her.

Kassil’s barbed tail strikes through Cora’s chest, piercing her heart. Her scream shatters me, and my mind snaps as it abruptly ends. My own horrified scream deafens my ears, and my vision blurs, but I launch myself forward anyway.

He tosses her aside, laughing.

As her lifeless body falls to the ground with a haunting heaviness, it echoes in the darkness of my mind, searing itself into my very being. The sharp crack of her skull against the stone from a fall of nearly eight feet will forever haunt me.

I’ll never forget the sound.

Or the icy rage exploding in my veins.

A snarl rips from my throat, fueled by panic and fear and rage and sorrow as I begin my assault. Blades of shadow appear in each hand as I strike and slash at the archdemon who’s come to return me to the hells.

Taken by surprise, Kassil dodges, but one of my blades lands against his upper arm in a wide arc. Black blood explodes from his pale skin along with the stomach-turning scent of sulfur as he roars.

In a beat of his leathery wings, he puts distance between us as he unsheathes one of the two blades crossed on his back. He swings, I dodge, taking advantage of our two-foot height difference. As he prepares to strike again, my hand whips out, launching several shrapnel-like blades into his left leg near his knee.

He staggers with a growl, his blade missing my shoulder by a hair’s breadth. Snarling, he rights himself, pulling his wings in tight. Barreling toward me, he strikes at me with the skill I expect from an archdemon thousands of years old.

This mortal body cannot stand against his strength.

As I block, twirl, dodge, and deflect, it becomes clear to me I’ll never get close enough to strike his heart with the bloodstone dagger. It’s no longer fear fueling me, it’s desperation.