Page 36 of Taken to the Deadlands

I swallowed thickly and sent Aris a forced smile. “Nothing. The faster we get rid of the wraiths, the better.”

With an open mouthI watched as Yien banished wraith after wraith.

All of them had been hovering around my previous room. Maybe Aris had been right, and all this time I had acted like a beacon for them. Maybe if I had just ignored the pounding onthe walls that night, they might not have noticed me. But since then, their presence has only grown stronger.

Plus, if I had, the rest of the night wouldn’t have happened either. And I didn’t regret that.

Even though the rooms were close, the wraiths never entered Aris’s room. At night, their moans and pounding would wake me up, but they wouldn’t get close enough to touch me with Aris by my side.

Maybe the memories of what Aris did to them were still too fresh for them to dare get near her.

There were about eleven in the hallway alone and a few more in the bedroom. Yien wasted no time using her shadows to wrap them in cocoons of darkness, squeezing until they disappeared entirely.

Even as Yien was destroying them, the hallway was thick with the dark aura that surrounded them. It was enough to make my stomach twist.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“No,” Yien responded, not even bothering to turn to look back at me. “The only pain they feel is emotional. Once they’re banished to the Shadow Realm, their soul will wander there until it too perishes.”

I swallowed thickly. This would be hell for Iris as someone who saw emotional auras. I wondered if she could feel them as well.

I moved to follow Yien as she entered the room, but Aris’s firm hand on my elbow held me back.

“Let her deal with it,” she said, her voice low enough so the demon would hear her. “I know seeing them distresses you.”

I grimaced.

“Is it that obvious?” I asked with a nervous laugh.

“Very,” she answered. “Fear is particularly easy to smell. It excites the frenzy.”

I bit my bottom lip hard enough to clear my mind of the fear she so accurately pegged, but that wasn’t the only thing bothering me.

“It’s hard not to feel bad for them,” I admitted. “It’s not just fear but also?—”

“You feel for them,” she finished for me. “Your fellow species. And you know I am the one to blame. You see how I tore apart their flesh. How I consumed them.”

Her words caused my entire body to stiffen. Even without their memories, I would still have been able to see it. The claw marks left on their skin. The way some of their heads were holding on by thin scraps of flesh.

It was horrific.

How could I not feel for them?

“Do you resent me?” she asked. “For what I did to them? For what I could do to you?”

No,was what I wanted to say, but no words came out. There was something deeper in her question. Something that I needed to answer for myself as well.

If I don’t resent her, what do I feel for her?

We didn’t just fuck—we slept together, had our meals together, spent time together. She told me things she had never told anyone before… So where did that leave us?

“Alright,” Yien said, breaking the awkward silence. “Now let’s take a look at the rest of the house.”

Aris didn’t seem pleased, but she let me go. And I was thankful for it.

Chapter 16

Mia

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