Page 58 of Discord and Cinder

The thing that ended the best kiss of my life? My chest feeling like some magical force was trying to turn me inside-out. I groaned, and he gripped my shoulders, pushing me away.

“Someone is attempting to summon me.” Alarm crumpled his brow and widened his eyes at the same time. “I cannot fight the pull.”

I heaved in a breath and stumbled, dripping to my knees. “It hurts.”

“If they succeed, you won’t survive.” He kneeled next to me and reached for my face, but his arm turned into green smoke.

I cupped his cheek in my hand and closed my eyes, focusing on our bond, willing, hoping the completed binding ritual would be enough to keep him by my side.

It wasn’t.

Smoke crept up his arms, spiraling around his head, billowing down his body until his entire physical form morphed into a cloud of green. My head throbbed, my skull threatening to split beneath the pressure. I lay on my side, clutching the sigil on my arm as my vision tunneled into blackness.

A bright white light appeared in front of me in my mind. Was this the end? Was my soul being obliterated?

The light flashed, and a vision formed. Ash’s studio. She and Ember stood outside a summoning circle with two men.

Chaos and Mayhem.

I recognized them instantly, my bond with Discord not only allowing me to see with his eyes, but to feel his emotions, read his thoughts. In his smokey form, he moved around the perimeter of the circle, first looking at Chaos and then Mayhem.

A spark of hope ignited in my chest, and though my pain tried to extinguish it, I held on to the flame. Ash had found my journal. She and Ember had released Discord’s brothers. But the veil…

Even as my body was dying, I could sense the unnatural thinness, could feel the rifts my sisters had mended. All Hallow’s Eve was fast approaching, and in its current state, the veil wouldn’t survive.

“Ask them for the amulet,” I said in my mind, hoping to Hecate that Discord could hear me. “It has the power of resurrection. I can’t go home without it.”

My muscles screamed with pain. My bones were about to splinter and crumble.

“Have you the amulet?” Discord’s voice echoed from both sides of the veil.

“We have the means to avenge our imprisonment,” Chaos said. “Join us in the mortal realm so we can identify Isabel’s descendants and claim our prize.”

“I owed a debt to the witch who freed me, and no one else,” Discord said, being cryptic AF, as usual.

“Tell them to get the amulet, and then get your ass back over here. I won’t last much longer.”

“That’s our sister, Cinder,” Ash said. “She needs you to find our parents and bring them all here to break my family’s curse.”

He had the nerve to laugh. “That was not the debt she asked I pay.”

Okay, this was ridiculous. I got that withholding information to maintain control was kinda Discord’s thing, but I was lying there about to die while he played games with our siblings. It was time to pull the plug and bring my demon home.

I focused on the fire symbol etched into his skull and sent a pulse of persuasive magic through his sigil and into his psyche. “Come back now.”

“I’m trying, but your sisters are strong.”

“Our soul bond is stronger. Come back. I need you.” I pushed out every ounce of vim in my system and latched on to Discord’s essence.

Mayhem stepped toward the circle. “Join us, brother. We have fae to battle.”

“Not now, you don’t.” I imagined my vim digging claws into his soul.

“Find my amulet, and I will consider it,” he said before I wrenched him home.