Page 136 of Lourdes & the Mafia
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
She smiles. “Oh, my queen. Don’t you know by now that you should not hold demons to their promises?”
“You’ll keep this one.”
“Will I?”
“Yes.”
I turn away from her then, taking one last shuddering breath before I step into the portal.
Thuriel waits for me on the other side. I fall across the other end, wobbling on my heels. I straighten myself immediately. Fear pulses through every inch of my body, but I refuse to show even the slightest amount of weakness in front of him.
I hold my head up high and meet his gaze with a glare of my own.
His lip twitches up in what seems like amusement as he looks me over from head to toe. “How… quaint,” he says, looking at the dress hugging my body. “You came prepared.”
“Okay, chicken wings. Let’s get this over with.”
His smile falters, replaced with a look that strikes paralyzing fear into my chest. From the ground, figures begin to rise. Slow. Dangerous.
Deadly.
“Yes, seer,” he says. “Let us get this over with.”
Kane
Ihavenevergiventhought to the loneliness of waking to an empty bed. Usually I blazed through the days with little sleep, instead deciding to spend my time torturing the souls in The Pit. My bed was rarely a thing I used, my room nothing but a brief place of solace that I rarely spent time in because of the suffocating feeling it gave me.
I didn’t know then what I do now.
What it’s like to feel alone.
That suffocating pressure threatens my throat the moment I open my eyes. My hands reach out for someone I instinctively already know isn’t there.
In fact, the spot where Lourdes had laid beside me is cold, indicating she’d been gone for a while.
My heart thumps in my chest in a rapid staccato, and I grunt as I sit up, staring at the blank spot where her body used to lay.
Something curls in my stomach. Not because she’s not there. Yes, I wish she was, but I know her attentions are shared between Lorenzo, Ramiel, and I, but unease slides through me and I can’t quite place why.
I wonder if this sort of dreadful anticipation is what the souls I reside over feel when they see me approach.
Fear, premonition, something like dread.
I blink and my clothes form against my body.
I blink again and transport out of my room, following the trail of her scent throughout the castle.
Faint, diminishing.
And her essence?
Not here at all.
That fear rises. How is it that only hours before she was in my arms for the first time, that when I am finally able to touch her, she disappears.
