Page 44 of Hellish Witch

Killian levelled me with his “stern” look, brow furrowing ever so slightly and the faintest tightening at his mouth.

I eyed the hellcat and hellhound lounging on the other side of the fire, seemingly uninterested in our conversation. But I had the strangest certainty that they were, in fact, lapping up every word.

I huffed. “More like a curse.”

“I’m going to ignore that because you’re having a rough day,” he said. “What does it feel like when it rises?”

Only Killian would call almost getting mauled to death and drowned by a pack of monsters as a “rough day.”

I fanged my lower lip, trying to put the foreign sensation into words. “It’s…like there’s something dark inside me. Something vicious and…hungry.”

A shudder crawled down my spine, and I dug my claws into my forearms, hugging my middle like I could physically hold the evil inside me.

Instead of looking horrified like a sane person, Killian canted his horns, the feather-patterned waves as stunning as the rest of him. He seemed to mull over my words. “Maybe it is.”

I frowned. “Maybe it’s what?”

“Hungry.” His voice dropped an octave, low and husky.

My lips pressed together, preventing anything stupid from falling out.

“Do you feel stronger afterwards?” he asked.

I threw him a sour look. “You mean when I fainted in your arms last night? Not particularly.”

“Such a brat,” he tutted with a roll of his storm-blue eyes. “I meantafter. What about when you killed that merchant? Did you have more witchy magic then?”

Unease dripped down my spine like ice water. Because Ihadfelt stronger in a way, my magic fuller, wilder.

“But my magic and demonic energy are linked. I’m like a glitch in nature because one side of me can feed the other.”

“And have you been feeding your demonic half lately?” That same whisky purr rumbled his throat.

Suddenly, I was parched. My tongue swiped my dry lips. “That’s none of your business.”

Especially not after he’d told me to stop throwing myself at him.

His eyes narrowed the smallest fraction. “Everything about you is my business.”

“Right. Because Rex clicked his claws, and you came running.”

His narrowed stare held, but his tail reached for something in his pocket. The familiar sound of scraping metal had me frowning. Somehow, he pulled a rolled-up stick of haze from the tiny case he always had on him, using the coils of his elegant slate-purple tail. He dipped the end into the fire and brought the dark drug to his lips.

Killian took a long drag, the haze tip glowing hot. His cut chest flared wide a second before he blew shadowy smoke into the air, blending into the night.

The gesture reminded me how bland and human he must see me as. I had no tail to casually help me smoke. No wings to lift me into the night sky. Barely any length of horns or claws to defend myself with.

No. My one gift was healing magic. And that was going about as well for me as being a succubus.

A weight crushed my chest until I struggled to take a full breath.

Was this why my birth father had abandoned me? Long before I’d found my mother in a pool of her own blood, toouseless to save her. Why my aunts had beaten me for years before they got bored enough to throw me to a brothel for a few silvers? Why the mage I’d been infatuated with had sold me out to hunters?

Even my own magic turned on me.

“Hey.” Killian’s voice yanked me from my spiral. “What’s going on between those cute horns of yours?”

He sucked in another smoky lungful.

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