Page 142 of Devour
Astella thrashes against the skull masked soldiers, hollering, but they smother her quickly.
I try to resist as Blythe drags me forward and knocks my feet out from under me, forcing me to my knees in front of the pit of flickering flames. The heat burns my skin. I try to push away, but I’m not strong enough. I was never strong enough.
Weak. I’ve always been weak.
I stare down at my fate—the searing heat of hell.
Inside the red glowing coals is a face with eyes black as night. “My new host,” the voice purrs. “Do you know the fun you and I will have together?”
I scream.This time, when I reach for strength, I push away the bitter rage and instead think of Amora. I think of Astella. I don’t know what my body is capable of, maybe nothing, but my soul has always been strong. Not in the typical ways of bravery and fierceness. But in gentleness and determination to never lose my belief in goodness.
Yesss, Amora hisses to me in my mind.Fight for your light. Do not let the darkness win.
“I will kill, using your body,” the face inside the flames tells me. “You will watch in horror. I will find your anguish amusing.It’s always the same with each new soul I take. And yet, the joy never diminishes.”
The priestess begins chanting. I can’t make out the words, though. Something about death and blight and sacrifice. The warriors begin stomping in unison. Slow at first and then faster. Faster. Faster. Soon, it matches my heartbeat, and it’s all I can hear.
My whole existence is stomping and flames. Roaring red flames.
“No,” I say, clinging to the sunlight I cannot see. Clinging to thoughts of Astella. “No, you cannot have me!” I yell.
The ground begins to tremble beneath me.
“What is that?” the priestess says, breaking the trance. The stomping loses its rhythm. They are all over the place, this way and that.
The stone beneath my feet cracks and then splinters.
I rip my body away from the flames and scramble backwards. Blythe’s eyes grow wide with fear as I push her away. She stumbles back, flopping to her butt but then spins away, instead looking at the open door to the inner sanctum.
Haze is standing there, covered in black blood. It takes me a moment to register what he’s holding.
A severed head.
My mind flickers through this strange new reality. Haze—my Haze, my Dread—is holding the severed head of the Ancient One.
What is he?I think, not for the first time.
“No!” Blythe’s scream shakes the stone beneath me, shrill and pathetic. She scrambles forward. “What have you done?”
Black flames erupt over Haze’s entire body, and one flick of his hand sends the priestess flying backward.
Haze smiles through the black liquid coating his fangs.
“You have a new Ancient One, priestess,” he says, his voice echoed and unnatural. “Bow.”
But Blythe slumps against the wall, eyes blank.
Haze throws his arms wide, casting out new black smoke that covers the whole room. All at once, the skull men drop to the floor just before the magic reaches me.
I scream, as icy-cold black magic slams into my body, taking away everything I’ve ever known. As darkness takes me, I mentally send one last message to the one I love the most.
I’m sorry, Astella.
64
Haze
My knees tremble as I take my first steps out of the inner sanctum. My body was not prepared for the power that pulses under my skin. My mind buzzes with voices, bouncing around in my throbbing skull.
