But nothing came to save him.
And his body crumpled.
Emmery watched in horror, unable to cross the distance to him, but also unable to look away. Brennen brushed up against her in a warning not to move or interfere, yet every fibre of her soul screamed to stop this.
Destonne’s knees struck the floor with a dull, broken thud. His breath caught. Choked. Voice thinned.
Delighted in whatever torment she’d unleashed, Senka grinned.
And then something shifted.
The thorns shredded through his flesh like wet paper, starting from the base of his neck, punching through his chest, andclawing at his arms like they tried to escape. Or perhaps Senka was engaged in some twisted experiment to see if she could separate them from his body. Blood spurted as she tore at them, wrenching his body apart like a limp, stringy thing, his tendons and veins and bones malleable in her hands.
“Foolish boy,” Senka spat. “You do not choose the price. It ismineto choose.” She inhaled his pain as if it was an exotic perfume, her glimmering eyes milky-white and full of power.
Destonne screams faded to sobs, the cry of a broken man hidden beneath all his layers and shields and barriers, as the demon stripped him bare. His head fell into his hands and he fisted his hair. The vines writhed beneath his skin and bent him, warped his body, his spine bowed and—
The crack of splintering bone filled the air.
“No!” Emmery roared and leapt forward. She sank to her knees. “Stop it! Stop! You're—you’rekilling him!”
On her hands and knees, she crawled, consumed by the overwhelming need to reach him, to fix this somehow, to heal him before it was too late.
When Emmery finally got to him, her hands trembled as they hovered over his writhing body. The thorns had disfigured so much of his skin, leaving nothing but gore and red and death. Those silver threads hummed at her fingers. Pleaded for purpose. Sought his wounds—
But she couldn’t heal him like this. Not with the thorns still wrestling inside him. They would just shred through his flesh once more.
Useless. She was utterlyuseless.
Her head buzzed with a ringing so intense it drowned out Destonne’s cries. Brennen seized the collar of her tunic, held it in his mouth, tried to pull her back, but Emmery shoved him off.
“I’ll—I’ll do anything,” Emmery begged. Panic bubbled up her throat. “Just make it stop. Please, make it stop!Now!”
Senka’s eyes flicked to her, a grotesque thrill lit within them.
“No.” His wheezed protest ground out from between clenched teeth.
Senka ignored the King and grinned at Emmery. “Anything?”
As if Senka released the strings suspending him in agony, Destonne collapsed and slid in a thick pool of blood. The thorns retracted inside him, his skin a shredded mess of meat. His face went slack, his eyes closed, and his lips parted as he faded out of consciousness.
Pouting, Senka turned Destonne’s face with the ball of her foot and left a print of blood on his cheek. “So weak. I hoped we could have more fun.”
Emmery’s hands fisted at her sides to keep from lunging for the demon. A rage she had never known simmered within her, boiled over, as flames sparked at her fingertips. Darkness edged her vision, a shadow ready to claim.
“I’ll kill you,” she breathed, fire in her voice. The threat to reduce Senka to a charcoaled husk hung thick in the air.
The demon’s strange eyes widened as they locked on Emmery’s golden flame. And she staggered back a step. “The payment is complete. You may pass,” she sang, her voice ringing out. “Mortus?”
With a snap of her fingers, Senka faded into a blur of darkness.
Emmery kept her flame in her palm, braced for the demon’s return. Her heart was a galloping horse, her vestige swollen. Ready.
She wanted to kill.
Wanted to destroy.Everything.
Emmery’s attention snapped to the river as it gurgled and a thousand tiny bubbles struck the surface. A long boat sprang up from beneath the river in a spray of blood. Aboard, a tall, willowy man with the face of a crow waited with an oar. Mortus, Emmerypresumed. The vessel bobbed on the blood river, like it awaited their action.