Page 42 of Maneater

Yellow eyes, bright as canaries.

Wait, where was I?

Each breath came shallow and sharp, scraping down my throat.

My chest ached, each heartbeat thrumming wildly.

I couldn’t remember what was real anymore.

Was I burning up? No, I was cold. Ice-cold.

My skin had prickled and tightened. Damp clothes clung to me like a second, suffocating skin, and I was soaked through.

Had I found water? I looked down, expecting a stream.

But there was only a forest floor. Moss, mulch, and gnarled roots twisted beneath me.

Next, I raised my right hand. It trembled so violently I barely recognized it.

I blinked, trying to steady my vision, but the world kept spinning and lurching sideways.

When it finally cleared, I saw that my skin was blotched with blue and purple.

Sweat beaded along my fingers, slipping down my palm in slow drops.

Then, I reached for my neck. It was clammy, fever-hot. Just like the rest of me. Was I dying?

I tried to stand. My legs buckled and I collapsed again.

A sharp pain lanced through my shoulder and I gasped, cradling it with my right hand, but the fire in my flesh only burned hotter. The agony was beyond anything I’d ever known. I cradled my shoulder as if it might help, though it only made it throb worse.

Gods, it hurt.

Then there was a rustle behind me. Even through the haze of pain, I turned.

The light was gone. Shadows spilled across the forest and fear took hold. I gasped. There it was again.

Yellow eyes, bright as canaries, glinting from behind a grove of trees.

Those eyes, I knew them. I’d seen them before, but only when the darkness crept in and took control.

They were dangerous. That much I felt in every fiber of my being.

I had to get away. I had to run.

I tried to stand, to move, but it was useless, my legs were dead weight.

Heavy as anchors. All the while, my gaze remained locked on those yellow eyes.

My breathing quickened to a fever pitch.

My chest heaved, dragging in air like it might vanish at any moment.

Then the fire in my left shoulder flared again, the feeling unbearable.

I broke eye contact with the shadows and looked down at the wound.

The sight nearly made me vomit.

With my nose so close, the stench hit me first. Rancid and sour, a rot so thick it turned my stomach.

A wound was festering, leaking pus in sickly shades of green and yellow.

The arrow was gone, but the hole it left behind had widened and warped.

No longer was there a clean puncture. It was frayed and necrotic.

My flesh that was once pink and pulsing with life, now turned pallid and foul.

I knew this wasn’t something I could manage on my own. I needed a mender.

Get up , I told myself. Get up. You need to find water. You need to clean the wound. Anything to slow the infection.

Then, the yellow eyes shifted.

In a blink, they were five paces to the right. Another blink, and they snapped three paces left. One breath later, they were directly across from me, barely visible behind the trees.

“Who are you?” I rasped.

The eyes blinked once, then vanished.

My vision blurred, and the world tilted on its axis. I turned my head, scanning in every direction until the dizziness nearly dropped me flat.

Was I hallucinating?

It had to be the infection. It was spreading, coursing through my bloodstream, rotting everything it touched.

Warping my senses and stealing my grip on reality.

Every time I thought I’d made progress, thought I’d crawled one step farther than before, I ran headlong into another barrier.

Another stopcock sealing the way forward.

Now I saw the truth. Freedom was too much to ask.

I slumped to the forest floor, the last of my will draining from me. If death came for me now, I wouldn’t resist. There was no point in fighting anymore, no sense in struggling against what felt inevitable. Let the darkness come. If it was death, let it be swift.

I was so tired.

I had spent my life bending to the will of others. My mother, my father, Griffin, Caz… and now Gadriel. Always deferring, always yielding. And now, I wasn’t even sure if anything I’d believed I wanted had ever truly been mine.

How could I know what I wanted when I’d never been given the opportunity to choose?

I used to think I had a clear sense of who I was, something I understood to my very core.

But I was wrong. I didn’t know myself at all.

Not what I wanted. Not what I needed. The confidence I carried for so long was just a front, easily shattered the moment I questioned it.

It was never real, just something I held onto because I had nothing else.

“Kill me,” I whispered to the forest.

As if in answer, the yellow eyes opened again. This time, I didn’t flinch. I looked straight at them. I’d like to think I still had some strength in me, some trace of resolve, but more likely, my stare was empty. Just tired.

The yellow eyes drifted closer, though shadows still clung tightly to them.

I could make out a figure, tall, hard to define, like it didn’t want to be seen.

My thoughts were slipping, my body heavier with each breath, drawn toward the quiet pull of sleep.

Of nothing. But I kept watching, even as the shape began to step forward.

It wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t a beast or creature.

But it stalked me like I was prey.

The folk of Falhurst once called me a devil, but they were wrong. I knew now what a devil truly was, because it stood before me.

The thing radiated pure malevolence. The air around it was thick with something vile, something ancient and vengeful. If I hadn’t already collapsed, I would have fallen to my knees beneath the weight of it.

Torhiel was the land of devils and one of them had found me.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, barely tethered to the world around me. But I felt strong hands carrying me from below. My arms hung limp, swinging with each step, and my head lolled in rhythm. Yet, strangely, the searing pain in my shoulder had dulled to nothing.

Maybe the god of death had taken pity on me , I thought. Maybe he was carrying me to his kingdom to let me rest.

That was wishful thinking.

I didn’t feel dead, whatever that was supposed to feel like.

The thought made me giggle deliriously. The arms around me paused at that sound, just for a moment, then carried on.

My eyes fluttered open and closed in lazy intervals, catching only flashes of my surroundings.

I felt the cool whisper of wind in the air around us.

I heard the steady crunch of footsteps against earth, slow and willful.

There was no sound of breath, yet I could feel the rise and fall of something against me, like lungs drawing air.

As time passed, still no light touched our path.

The hypnotic rhythm of movement lulled me into another brief, fragile sleep, but I jolted awake as I was being set down. My eyes shot open, though I still saw nothing but black.

The relief from the earlier pain vanished in an instant.

It came back in pieces, sharp and scattered, like shards of glass sinking into my flesh.

I cried out, a hoarse sound tore from my throat as my body met the hard ground.

Frantically, I reached, grasping for the arms that had held me, the ones that had made the pain bearable.

But they were gone.

And in their absence, the fever surged, and the cold returned with teeth.

It felt like ages when the arms finally returned to me, but they no longer offered the gentle touch they once had.

They moved with intent, positioning me roughly, turning me onto my side and exposing my left shoulder.

I screamed violently, pain flashing stars across my vision, but the arms didn’t falter.

They held me down, tearing at my tunic until the fabric gave way and my shoulder was bare.

I shrieked and thrashed, trying to wrench my arm away, but I was too weak, too spent.

I was no match for the devil that had caught me.

The air filled with the sharp aroma of myrrh, garlic, sage, mint, and honey.

The strong hands pinned me in place. My arms were useless as strange fingers found the wound and packed it with a poultice of the crushed herbs.

I let out a harrowing scream that echoed through the forest. The pain was so deep, so severe, I feared my throat might tear to shreds from the sound of it.

Then something sticky and sweet was shoved into my mouth, coating my tongue and teeth. I gagged, choking on the taste.

I felt powerless, and something inside me stirred at that. Hot and angry. The rage bubbled up fast, pushing against the pain. I thrashed again, not with strength, but with wrath, the dark part of me rising with the agony.

Just when I reached my breaking point, the touch from the devil changed.

The hands returned to their gentle manner, as if satisfied by my outburst. Like they were proud of what had come with it. Fingers brushed along my cheek, tucking stray locks of hair behind my ear. I didn’t know if it was real or imagined at first, but then I heard it. A low, soothing hum of a song.

The tune was unfamiliar, sung in a tongue I didn’t understand, but it filled my ears and offered a strange comfort. It didn’t try to silence my wrath, but acknowledged it, allowing it to exist without letting it consume me as it always had.

And for the first time, the wrath didn’t rise against me, it rose within me.