Page 122 of Broken Shadows

Drip.

Drip.

***

My body doesn't bother reacting to the chilling breeze whispering over my naked skin, the source of its creation unknown, just like the motherfucking drips.

I sigh and squeeze my eyes shut as a thought whispers into my mind. I miss my fucking blanket, a constant over the centuries of my initial captivity. Holy and threadbare as it was, at least it was something tangible I could cling to when the manic thoughts overwhelmed me. I looked for it when Samuel and Evangeline shoved me in here but only received bruised knees and burn blistered fingers for my efforts.

While I’m aware it’s fucking pathetic, the King of Demons longing for a godsdamn scrap of fabric, I can’t be bothered to give a shit.

The ridiculous, binding notion of time holds no sway over me as my mind drifts among the black sands. Perhaps I’ve dwelled in this expansive, inky void for weeks, or it might only be mere hours. But one truth remains—If I think about how long I’ve been captive this time, I risk losing myself… permanently.

I hiss and the corners of my cracked, blood caked lips score upward into my taut cheeks as I absorb the euphoric agony my cage inflicts.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

I rock back and forth into the bars, slamming the back of my skull against my cage as hard as I can with every backward tilt. And yet, it does nothing to dim the acidic taste at the back of my throat or the twist of the bleeding organ in my chest as it’s rung dry.

Sizzling flesh drags against my eardrums as pain crumbles a fraction of my utterly desolate and useless thought loops.

Thoughts of my witch swim to the forefront of my mind and a raw, tortured scream eviscerates my throat, stealing my breath. It’s the same every fucking time I accept the inevitable and conjure Evie. I trace her features with wisps of memory, unrepenting yearning swallowing my senses and replacing the throbbing bliss I built rocking into the bars.

This pain?

This soul shredding ache?

Is not one I fucking relish.

I despise it.

When I wrote that letter to Evie and told her she was my eternity, I fucking meant it.

I don't exist without her.

No reason to put in the effort required to live.

Royal demons cannot die, not in the normal sense of the word, but we can fade—Our physical bodies remaining in a stasis, but our minds blank and wholly silent.

Shivers cascade over my body, the frigid floor simultaneously bleeding into my bones and extracting any warmth the trembling has created.

I'm too fucking weak to do anything but lie here… a pathetic, useless heap of a demon.

Pain pulses through my temples as my madness perks up and claws into my brain matter.

If you give in to this feeling and submit to oblivion too soon, all the suffering, both now and in the past will have been for nothing.

My heart hardens into stone. If anyone deigns to inform me that Evie no longer exists on the same plane as myself, Iwillfind a way to end it, but only after I have wrought the maximum amount of destruction possible in her name.

My vow echoes inside my mind and lodges between my ribs, etching itself onto the bone.

I swallow thickly, my throat sticking together with the fresh blood seeping through the parched, cracked membranes lining it, then get on my hands and knees and crawl away from my beloved source of pain.

I need to regain all the power that I can while also weakening the wards of my fucking cage. I battle against the persistent craving to harm myself further, then lock my arms around my knees, refusing to give in.

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