Page 131 of Red Demon

He offered a curt nod, his jaw muscles clenched in his weathered face. A silence stretched between us until the rage in his face dulled with a swallow of his throat.

Although Ash had swiped a coat for me from the complex, I stood covered in blood, still wet and cooling against my skin. Crimson stained my clothing and hair. I remembered what Galen taught me: look the demon in the eyes. Use the minimum force necessary to end suffering. Strike cold, without malice, to execute a clean death. I wore the evidence that I could not, that although I triumphed, I’d failed.

“Master Seyla, can you heal my brother?” Asher’s voice tightened, turning to the older woman with brown and blue ringed eyes.

Seyla looked to the other two for their opinion, holding a cautious neutrality on her wizened features. Soren gave a curt nod, then turned away from me.

Seyla approached, placing her hand on my chest. A tingling blue light emanated from her touch, cool and bitter, a brush of soft velvet before a hundred needle pricks. I bit back a groan at the sensation.

“Mar.” Seyla’s brow furrowed as she pulled her hand away.

“What?” Asher’s head whipped up. He’d been walking toward Soren.

Seyla met my gaze. “Hate, darkness,” she explained in Chaeten. “Too much to burn away as I heal you.”

“I know what ‘Mar’ is,” I said in the fluent Asri she should have heard me speak by now. “My Taam was an elder.”

Seyla pressed her lips tight. “You don’t need me. Heal yourself, Chaeten-sa.”

“What?”

She scowled and stepped away.

Soren turned on his heel, his eyes cold. “Asher, your brother must leave by the morning. And if we ever see him at his lover’s side, we will kill him too.” The threat hung in the air. He took a long deep breath with eyes closed to control his rage, the snow melting into his black cloak.

I hung my head.

“The Red Demon won’t stand a chance against my master, Reic, Keeper of Dreams. I’m confident all other networks in the Underground will unite around this. We will kill her.” Soren shifted his stance, eyes on me. “How do you feel about that, friend?”

“I don’t know, Soren.” The words tore at my heart on the way out: the truth.

“Asher, if we need to speak more, we will do so in private,” Soren said, before walking toward the huddle of prisoners, the few that Faruhar had not killed.

Chapter 53

Path

The Underground safehouse emerged from swirling snow, candlelight in the window flickering in the gathering dark. I knew what those candles meant to the Asri, lit to remember those they’d lost.

As we neared the entrance, the door swung open, revealing Mira bathed in warm golden light. I felt a wave of relief so powerful it left me breathless. She frowned, her chest heaving at the sight of the small party—until her gaze landed on me, then Asher.

With a choked cry, she fell into Ash’s chest. He held her tight and lifted her bare feet out of the snow. I watched them for a moment, needing to borrow a little of their joy.

Her body went rigid when she turned to me. Ash set her down as she stared at my blood-soaked clothes, torn rags under the cloak, the crimson smears staining my face and arms.

“Yeah, you don’t want to hug me right now,” I said with a brittle laugh.

The concern in her eyes was a storm, and I turned away before it broke.

Inside, I took a long time in the bath, testing my new skill: feeling the pain of my cracked ribs already healing, turning the wave of pain away. But I let all that focus go, needing the judgment of that silence, lit only by candles inside my room. I knew Ash would tell Mira everything, and that I could not. My mind lay wounded and immobile, even if the rest of me would heal.

No member of the Underground would so much as look me in the eye when I walked down the creaking stairs to join Ash and Mira for a meal. Two cloaked figures promptly left the kitchen. But Mira finally gave me that hug, and I got a face full of her black hair as she nestled into my shoulder.

I winced, pain lancing my side. “Maybe go light on the broken ribs.”

Her eyes scanned me again, lingering on my chest. I shifted my weight. Disbelief flickered across her features. “They wouldn’t heal you?”

I shook my head, breathing deep. “It didn’t work. They told me to ‘heal like a Chaeten-sa,’ whatever that means.”