Her eyebrows pinch. “Your heart will feed me for years. It’s likely the strongest beyond that of one of the Divine themselves.”
“I said lie to me.” I’m a mere arms reach from her, but she doesn’t come for me, not yet. The hesitation is weird, but so is the expression on her face.
“They will likely move you.”
“Lie to me, please.” I choke on the words.
Her eyes move between mine, just as she reaches slowly into the cage and grabs my elbow. “I won’t come back, Succubus.” Heat pulls straight from behind my eyes. “Can I know your name?”
“Xeraphine.”
“Can I know his name?”
I hesitate, but as I watch her shift down just as my hip meets the bars at an awkward angle, I whisper, “Kairhyse.”
She smiles sweetly for the first time. “Xeraphine and Kairhyse. It has a nice ring to it.”
I’m not one to shy away from gore, but watching her jaw open, the skin between her lips stretching to ungodly lengths, has me queasy. Then, her sharp teeth quickly bite down into the flesh of my stomach, and I turn away immediately with my scream. The tear of my flesh is quick, but it isn’t just my skin and muscle she takes. Whatever was in her way of getting close enough to shove her hand into my uterus, is now floating around me like a lava lamp.
My body twitches and I can’t believe how quickly I’m going into shock. Pain ruptures through my spine and I scream again. Fire erupting around my pelvic region, causing nausea to hit me like a bullet train.
“Breathe, you can’t die—your heart needs to keep beating!” Sinnix coaches, and I swear I could kill her right now.
Just like when Zade did it, the moment it’s torn from my body, I’m trembling and trying to find air to fill my desperate lungs.
I glance back at her, noticing her gaze fixed on her clenched fist, the blood swirling away as the water around us slowly claims it. “Eat it…” I demand, which has her licking her lips. “It has a heart…”
There is no part of me thathateskids, but one created out of rape… that I do. This thing would be used and abused, just like I am. A demon brought into the world forcibly, bound to fulfill someone else’s will, would never truly live—and I’d never be able to protect it. At the very least, that’s what a mother is supposed to do for her child.
Sinnix does as I commanded and shoves whatever was left of the fetus into her mouth. After a moment of chewing, she turns to me. I lift my nearest arm over my head, exposing my chest fully to give her the best access I can.
“And Sydni,” I mumble. “And Mister.” My vision flickers in and out of focus, my head shaking with each pulse. “That’s my stupid little family.”
“Take a deep breath,” she says, barely giving me enough time to do so.
The initial bite pierces right to my ribs—I can feel the grinding of them as she tears back my muscle and tissue. The snap of skin and ripping of tendons is drowned out by my high-pitched scream. Her arm comes around my neck as she drives her hand through the hole she created, grabbing a rib. And I think at this point, I go numb, because all I feel is tugging. My body jerks involuntarily, leaving me powerless to keep kicking or fighting against the natural pull as my body begins to floatdownward.
“Stay conscious, Xeraphine, almost there.”
Staring into her piercing yellow eyes, unwavering as they focus intently on her task, I fight against the relentless pull of death, desperate to resist the descent it demands of me.
If I could have turned fully to face her, she could have just gone up through my stomach, but this… I do not want to remember this, especially as she grabs hold of my beating heart.
No longer am I numb, but the sensation isn’t painful. It’s warm, and when I release the air I have, I can feel liquid building up toward my throat. She had to go through my lung. That’s why she told me to take a deep breath.
It’s strange, but I want her to keep cradling it—I don’t hate the feeling. Even as she squeezes it, I don’t ache.
An odd sensation washes over me, each snapping tendril tethering my heart to me unraveling one by one. Then, she lets me go, and I begin to fall. The dark world around me drifts farther away as her face fades from view, replaced by the curve of her chest, the hand gripping the last piece of me I had fought so hard to keep safe, and finally, the flicker of her fin as I descend into the abyss.
My body lies on the seabed below, and I watch the black that will consume me crawl from under the metal restraints at my hands.
Then, as swiftly as a blink, the cold embrace of the sea vanishes, replaced by the place where I long to stay for the rest of my miserable life.
Unlike before, Kairhyse is here, hovering just above me, his hand resting gently against my cheek. A touch that feels both impossibly real and achingly distant.
“Hey, little demon.”
I inhale sharply, and for the first time, the breath comes without the searing pain that had gripped me before.
