Page 73 of A Velvet Kiss After Dark

She'd been tricked.

This wasn't some fairy queen or elvish deity.

This was all a trick.

"No…I won't give it to you," Tabitha panted in a frightened voice.

The queen's aura suddenly darkened to a brilliant green light while her face transformed into a skeletal visage. This was no queen. This was Les the Revenant, and he'd tricked her once again.

Not a moment later, the skeletal demon lunged for Tabitha with grotesquely aged fingers outstretched to steal the relic.

Striking first, Tabitha slammed her barefoot hard into the Revenant's bony stomach. A bone cracked and the force was enough to knock the skeletal demon back, but not by much. Tabitha turned for the door and ran, her heartbeat racing in double time.

She sprinted down a hallway of trickling gold particles as Les the Revenant gained on her. The artworks that had been watching her from the walls, now gasped in terror as she fled down the corridor. They reminded her of startled children.

And then, straight before her was a thunderbolt of gold-white light; a burst of color so brilliant, Tabitha had to shield her eyes from the spectacle. The hallway was suddenly filled with something unnatural and frightening.

A loud booming voice blasted out from some otherworldly figure that glowed like the sun.

The king, Tabitha thought, because sitting upon his golden-yellow hair sat a golden crown like a halo for good.

"You are trespassing!"

Tabitha quivered and cowered against a pillar behind her. The man appeared through a cloudy, golden energy field.

"You are forbidden here!"

The otherworldly man's voice seemed to shake and crack the walls.

"I...I'm sorry," Tabitha whispered in a shaking voice.

The kingly figure held a large golden staff in his left hand that appeared made of some magical golden element. He stepped forward in an aggressive stance and made his way down the hallway.

Tabitha tried to make herself appear even smaller against her poor hiding spot, but the strutted straight past her without paying her any mind.

"You are trespassing here, Revenant! Be gone!"

The Revenant was trespassing? But…before Tabitha could so much as finish the thought, the king released a blast of pure starlight from his staff that struck the deathly figure of the Revenant.

The skeleton-demon howled in agony. He began to shake violently, his bones clattering.

Then, simply, the revenant burst into thousands of shards of green glass that landed all over the floor. Like tiny glass shards.

The queen wasn't real. But this regal figure seemed real.

Tabitha struggled to come to a stand, afraid that at any moment, she'd lie in a pile of glass too.

"Who are you?" Tabitha asked softly.

The man held his palm out over the green glass shards that littered the hallway.

"I am King Illius. King of this realm. That's all you need to know. Now, you've run amok in my world for long enough." His blazoning eyes saw through her soul as he looked at her. "Return hence you came."

The king flicked his wrist.

Tabitha blinked, that's all it was; that's all it took—and then the very next glance, she stood inside her apartment. The boxes containing all that which she'd packed for her upcoming move still stood in the same spot she'd left them. However, a thick collecting of dust for disuse had swallowed the room like a mortuary.

A ceaseless shiver began in her legs and crept up through her until her teeth were chattering. Barefoot. The red sundress she'd received at the tavern in Hell was still on her body. Severe sunburn still covered her skin. The pustules from the more severe burn were will ballooned up across her arms as she traced them with her fingertips.

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