Page 64 of Once Upon a Demon's Heart
I run. I run like the hounds of Mortem are chasing after me. No matter how much my feet sting and bleed and the branches whip at my cheeks, I run as fast as I can.
I don’t stop.
Not when I hear the fighting stop.
Nor when I hear the demigods chasing after me.
I look back for a split second when I hear them right at my heels. Tears fall from my eyes as I take in the four half-gods covered in my uncles’ blood. The one closest to me swings his sword at my heel and cuts it.
I let out a blood curdling scream as my body crashes to the ground. I roll a few times before trying to get back up and continue running. But another demigod has his blade drawn and swings it at my face. I dodge only in the nick of time. The blade cuts open my left cheek. My heart is racing so fast that I hardly feel it; I just know that it’s bad, blood gushes from my face and my lips won’t close properly.
Another sword impales my heart, jerking my body back and pinning me to the earth. My sight trembles on the thick metal that pierces my chest. I don’t feel pain, I only feel warmth spreading across my back and a heavy sleep trying to pull me under.
I’m going to die.My eyes trace the dark leaves of Florum’s canopy, watching as small orbs of light shift through the branches, whispering almost. Tears trickle down my cheeks, and my breaths slow until it’s too burdensome to sip in even one more ounce of air.
Then everything crawls to a stop.
The knights linger around me, staring at my body. Murmuring about me being dead.I’m not dead. Am I?
A wall of shadow lifts from the ground before me, expelling a deity from nothing more than black smoke and embers. His form is entirely concealed in a dark robe with the hood pulled up.
The demigods gasp. “God of the Underworld?” one says with horror.
The god lifts his hand and waves it once over the four knights. Their eyes go from frightened to dull in a matter of seconds. As if this cloaked deity has stolen their very souls with the simple motion of his hand.
He turns and glances over his shoulder at me, revealing eyes the color of pomegranates. For a moment, I worry he might take my soul too, but he only stares at me for a handful of moments, expressionless.
“Whether or not you wake is not decided by either of us. But fear not, a prayer is all it takes.” His voice is cold like water over stone.
The god extends his hand to me and brushes his thumb over the cut across my cheek and does the same over my heart beforelooking away and disappearing altogether. My eyes grow weary and flutter closed.
The next thing I know, I’m lying in the forest, alone—birds chirping somewhere far away in the tree boughs.
What just happened?I lift my hand to my cheek and my eyes widen. The gash has been sealed, only minor grooves that feel like Xs remain where the flesh was reconnected. It’s the same with my chest.
The second of surprise passes and panic rolls back into me.I need to get out of Alzhorian territory.My legs carry me until I’m finally breaking free of the forest. The moment I come out of the dark trees, I collapse to my knees in a turquoise field of sweet grass.
The reeds are welcoming and a cold breeze lifts locks of my hair as if begging me to look up at the sky.
The tears stream from my eyes, but something broke inside me tonight. Something in my soul has rotted down to the core.
Half-gods are evil.
I swear to kill them all. Every last one of them, except the silver-haired girl who tried to help me. I stare down at my hand that she held so gently and with care.
But did she lead me to Alzhor on purpose? Did she know we’d be killed in Florum?
I didn’t expectto think of her much after that day. But as time passed, she plagued my thoughts more and more. When I turned twenty-four, an insatiable urge to return to Florum sparked inside me. It wasn’t just an urge. It was a calling, as if the fabric of my soul was woven with her thread.
I had to be close to her. I needed to meet her again.
It took everything in me to resist going.What is her name?I wondered. Did she grow up to be the dressmaker she dreamed of becoming? I longed to speak with her, to see her beautiful starlit hair. She held every last hope I had left for the demigods.
I trained for years to become a knight. It took even longer to become a duke after successfully rising in the ranks to commander and fending off many attacks.
Until the horrid day, a wisp showed up inside my tent and beckoned me to follow it. I was hesitant at first. Will-o’-the-wisps can have bad omens, but for me, on the front lines, it seemed imperative that I know what the orb was sent to show me. I didn’t know who sent it. I only knew that it took great power to do so. It couldn’t be for nothing.
I followed it to my horse, and with a pit in my stomach, I mounted my steed. The wisp darted to the top of the far hill where Thornhall was just on the other side of.
