But after a while—whether it had been thirty minutes or thirty days, I couldn’t say—the pressure in my chest lightened. The air didn’t feel quite as thick as I raked it into my lungs, and the darkness I had been wishing would devour me started to lighten.
The thick, spindly branches thinned, and red-orange light pierced the canopy. I sucked in a shaky breath, then another, testing whether I could go ten seconds without sobbing uncontrollably. I looked straight ahead at the clearing in the distance, not daring a glimpse of the ground. I couldn’t bear to see another shattered bone.
When we reached the tree line, Discord stopped and cupped my cheek in his hand, turning my face to meet his gaze. “We’ve reached the forest edge. Are you strong enough to continue the journey?”
I expected to see annoyance in his eyes, or even a smugness that he could make it through that horrible, awful, very bad place when I was ready to become its next victim. Instead, I was met with compassion, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he blinked back unshed tears.
“I think… Yeah, umm…” I wiggled out of his embrace, and he lowered my feet to the ground. My dress had gotten hiked up too high for my comfort, so I shimmied it down and made sure my girls were in their proper places.
I swear I heard him sniffle as I adjusted my clothes, but when I looked at him, the only evidence of tears I could find was mine, along with my snot, smeared all over his lapel. I rubbed my hands over my face and wiped my nose on my sleeve.
His lips twitched, tugging into a smile on one side. “All good?”
“I will be.” I hiccupped, and the last of my tears rolled down my cheek. “That was intense.”
His eyes grew misty, and he swallowed hard. “We need to keep moving.”
“Wait a second.” I grabbed his hand before he could walk away. “It affected you too, didn’t it?”
He scoffed. “No. I’m Prince of Hell, I?—”
“You were a prince. Now you’re just a demon, and you teared up. Are you all good?”
As he took a deep breath, his gaze locked with mine. The sigil on my arm heated, and it felt like we were opposing ends of a magnet, completely opposite in every way, yet drawn together by a force too powerful to fight. My body drifted toward him, the incredible urge to take his face in my hands and kiss him overpowering me.
Thankfully, my feet stayed firmly in place, and I blinked, snapping out of that alternate reality where I was falling for a demon. Whew. It was the trauma bond. It had to be because light witches and dark demons did not mix. Ever.
He cleared his throat. “I believe our blood bond caused me to feel your emotions. I’m fine, but we must keep moving. This way.”
He kept a firm grip on my hand, and we skirted the tree line, heading toward a town on the horizon. Sometimes it felt like we’d been walking for hours, but when I focused on the sensation, it seemed only minutes had passed. The orange ball in the sky didn’t seem to move, so it had to be minutes.
“Is that a sun or a moon?” I asked. “It’s been like twilight the entire time I’ve been here.”
“It is the moon. The sun never shines in Hell.”
“How long have we been walking?”
He stopped abruptly, tugging me behind a tree as a pair of harpy-hounds passed overhead. “It’s hard to say. Time isn’t as linear here as it is on Earth, and my period away has made it difficult to comprehend. The forest’s energy-draining power didn’t help either. Let’s keep moving.”
He dropped my hand and peered at the sky. When the harpy-hounds disappeared into the horizon, we paced forward, leaving the so-called safety of the tree line. Even just walking close to it made me feel icky, so I can’t say I minded losing our cover too much.
Finally, after who knew how long away from the Forest of Suffering Souls, the last of the sadness drained from my system. I furrowed my brow as we continued our trek toward the town, a spark of anger replacing the despair that almost unalived me.
“If you knew the effect that place has on people, why did you drag me into it? You knew it could kill me.”
He glanced at me. “Technically, you’re already dead.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re a Holland witch. If you were as strong as you claimed to be, you would have been fine.”
I scoffed. “I have never claimed to be any stronger than I am. That place kills demons. I don’t buy it for a minute that you thought I’d be okay. Were you trying to kill me?”
He glanced again, arching a brow. “Perhaps I was teaching you a lesson.”
I gave him a sideways glare. “And what lesson would that be?”
“That you’re out of your element here, and you need me to survive. I chose that route because of its danger. The only safe way off the palace grounds is through the front. The hunters would assume I took you that way because every other route would likely obliterate you.”
