Page 13 of Seduced By Darkness

She’ll die soon.

Days at best. Maybe a week.

But it’s Adaia who I focus on.

Adaia Thornborn.

Even in the Between, the light of her magic and power burns bright. Shadows writhe as her light pours over them, desperate to touch her and drag her down. She doesn’t even know they’re there.

It’s a simple flex of power. I twitch my fingers and they crawl up her skirts, dragging themselves claw by claw. The light shreds, dissipating around her like smoke. The shadows are hungry. So fucking hungry.

A rushing sound fills my ears.

Hunt,whispers a voice in my head and this time it’s not my daemon. It’s the Darkyn soul trapped within me that I’ve named Fury.

Torment is not far behind it.Gods, she tastes so divine. I want to eat her all up.

Make her scream. Make her bleed. Crush her bones. Crunch, crunch.Rage pushes against the wards tattooed into my skin.

It feels like a knife dragging over the inside of my chest. They want out. They always want out. They’re mere remnants of a whole and combined they’ll form a single entity, but over the centuries, the separation has fused them into individual beings.

Adaia looks down as if she senses something. Her light dims. Her face pales and stands sallow against the flickering torches behind her.

Behind her, a shadow drags the claw of its thumb across her throat and Adaia gasps as if she feels it, clapping a hand to the mark.

“Thi?” A hand grips my arm, wrenching me back out of the gloom.

Light and heat and sound burst in upon me. For a second, it’s more than I can handle and my grip tightens around the golden goblet I bear, crushing the imprint of my fingertips into it. I can barely see for the sudden brightness. Pain almost brings me to my knees; my heart, starting to beat again.

“Ignore her.” There’s a certain urgency in Thalia’s voice.

“Weren’t you the one arguing for murder?” The words sound so distant it’s a wonder they came from my mouth. I blink again.

Light. Fuck, I need the light.

Claws screech down the inside of my skin like nails on a chalkboard as the daemons retreat.

“Your skin is freezing.” Thalia searches my face. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

Adaia smirks at me as she lifts her hands, her rings gleaming in the light of the torches that line the clearing. She will never know how close she came to dying this night.

Sweat breaks out upon my brow. It’s never been this hard to control.

What is wrong with me?

Almost as if thinking of him summons his attention, I feel my father turn to look at me from the north. I won’t give him the satisfaction of responding, but I can sense his focus sliding over my skin like the pad of a finger trailing down a long-bleached spine.

Searching for me. Yearning to destroy me. To consume me.

Wondering perhaps, who it is that catches his attention every now and then.

He’s never seen me. He doesn’t even know I exist.

But he can sense me—or the daemon inside him can.

It’s inside me too, and it yearns to be whole.