“Speak,” he demands. “Or this is going to get a lot worse.”
I cringe back, hardly able to get a word out of my quaking chest. “I’m not…you know me…it’s just—“
He stops his pacing to fillet me with a venomous stare. “You’re really going to sit there and continue to say you’re the nought you’ve been pretending to be? After I just watched you murder my aunt?”
“I…I am. I’m a nought, Sitri--”
“You are a Magi!” he hisses.
My eyes widen. “No, I’m not—“
He stalks forward with a growl, and I shrink back into the wall. I realize his intention as soon as he lifts a hand. “No! You don’t understand—“ I dive across the bed, stretching my bound arms above my head to propel myself forward with my elbows.
“Don’t even fucking try.” He snatches my ankle and drags me back. He grabs me by the shoulder and flips me around before he locks me there. I stare up at him helplessly. His gaze is shrewd, eyes cold marble as he examines me like a bug plucked between his fingers. The daemon ratchets up in intensity. “What did Delyah find out about you? What did you not want me to hear?” Panic cloisters inside of me as the waves of the daemon grow stronger. I grit my teeth. I don’t know how to convince him, and he’s going to put himself at risk.
He leers over me. “Do you have any idea what I’ve done for you? And you’re not even…” Real pain flashes in his eyes before he clenches his jaw and shakes his head. He lifts a symboled hand over my chest.
“Don’t Sitri!” I bite out in a desperate plea. “I’ll—I’ll hurt you.”
“Try me.”
“No, I--” With a flick of his hand, my mouth snaps shut, and I let out a muffled wail, paralyzed as the languid warmth of his magic sinks below my sternum. His magic flits through me, searching. The daemon flashes, evading him from my ankle, my abdomen, and back to my calf.
His brow presses further down in confusion. His magic spreads, expanding and encasing my chest and my abdomen.Please don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him. “How are you hiding—“ His magic meets the daemon in my lower thigh like flint against flint. I gasp as the daemon expels sharply, hits him in the chest, and flings him back. His magic releases me immediately, and I shoot up, clapping a hand over my mouth with a cry as his body crashes into the wall and crumples to the floor.
I scan his lifeless form, expecting to find his body as Delyah’s was. But no…he’s still whole. I let out another cry—in relief this time as he rustles. He rises slowly, eyes wide and dazed. He blinks as he clutches a hand to the back of his neck. He brings it back, fingers glistening with blood, expression both shocked and vulnerable.
I know I’m about to receive the full weight of his wrath when his eyes turn to steel. A whimper slips out of me.He’s going to kill me.
But the daemon might kill him first.
I scramble to my feet. My body locks up, falling straight back to the bed. The room goes black.
And then his magic is on me, pressing into me, against every part of my body, squeezing and crushing. It dislodges the air from my chest. Every muscle burns and contracts in agony. I can’t breathe. My ribs squeeze so tight I’m certain they’re going to cave in around my organs. My body’s no longer locked because I’m thrashing. But I couldn’t get up if I wanted to.
It surges against my skull. The noise that comes out of me is a high-pitched squeal. But I hold the daemon in with everything I have.Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.
It lets off all at once.
All I can do is lie there and pant.
“Speak.” I don’t know if the words have been said aloud or seared into my skull.
“It wasn’t me,” I gasp. “It was—“
“LIES.”
The magic comes at me again. Somehow, it’s even worse this time. My limbs contort, and Iwrithewith gargled groans. There’s too much pain wracking my body to hold the daemon. It expels out of me with vehemence.Please don’t kill him. Please don’t kill him.
The room fills with the sounds of creaking, cracking, and shattering glass.
“STOP IT.”
“Caaan’t con…trol…it,” I grit out, straining to form words with the magic crushing me to the bed and the white-hot pain of the daemon surging and releasing, surging and releasing.
The magic releases me. All I can do is breathe and breathe, bracing myself for the next round. The lights come back on and I hear the sounds of Sitri’s ragged breathing across the room.
I’d let him kill me. End this misery. I’mdangerous. But it might kill him first. Moving slowly, I pull myself up, taking in the ravaged room. Pictures and lamps have fallen to the floor, large cracks sprout across the walls and the door hangs loose on its frame.
