Page 42 of Surviving Hallow Hill
“No...” My voice is little more than a hoarse whisper, echoing with agony. My heart pounds against my chest, the fire and ice beneath my skin war until I can’t hold back my cries anymore. The scent of orchids is strong in my nose, and my Lady’s presence is so prominent in the air that I choke on it.
Styx takes a step forward. The hairs on his back rising. Hyde raises a brow at him. “You were always the expendable one at the academy.”
Styx growls, the sound violent and with promise.
“No...” But he can’t hear me. I can barely hear the choking word come out of my own throat. The pain is ripping me apart from the inside out. I drop to my knees, catching my reflection in the glass. My palms dig into the cold surface, and my gasps are silent and fearful.
My whole body suffers through tremors as if I’m back in that room. Back to feeling that pain. It lives within me and rises like a monster clawing its way out of the earth.
Styx lunges and is shot back with a blast of magic, landing with a whine a few feet away from me. The tears come to my eyes as I see blood pool beneath his body. He’s quivering from the rapid rise and fall of his breathing, and sad eyes find mine as if he means to say goodbye.
No.
No...
No!
Something inside me fractures into pieces like jagged glass. My body breaks, every bone inside me rearranging. I feel the change settle over me, like a man becoming a wolf. Only, I’m becoming something much more deadly. Dangerous. I can feel it, coming to life.
My eyes snag on my reflection on the floor in time to see my skin shred from muscle, my muscles melting, giving way to the ivory of bone. My hair slips over my shoulders, somehow still intact, curtaining a skeleton face and depthless holes where my eyes should be.
It lasts a second. A split second, this change washes over me, and yet it feels like an eternity as I shed my skin and every experimentation Hyde ever did to me finally takes hold, until I become a shadowy image of something I’ve worshipped my entire life.
Shadows and darkness. Death and despair.
Runes glow bright as if they’re etched into my new bones, and the image of me is so frightening that I turn my deadly gaze away from my own reflection and meet Styx’s fear-filled eyes.
I am no longer me.
I am Lady Death.
