Page 79 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

I sought Wild as he opened his eyes. There wasn’t any trace of panic, just contemplation.

“I’m here,” I blurted.

Wild squeezed my hand. “You’re here, my love.”

I’d always ended up at the north mountains looking like a mad woman. “Why am I still here?”

My stomach dropped in the next instant. Because my demon hadn’t returned.

“Any trace of her?” Rooke asked in a soft voice.

I sighed. “She’s still not here.” I frowned. “I wonder if that’s why the journey back was different. I’ve never gone that far through the memory. It was as if Wild and I changed the past somehow. I always black out when the darkness pours down my throat because that’s what happened. This time, I crawled out of the car and interacted with the demon king and witnessed what happened after.”

Corentin startled. “The demon king killed your family?”

Perhaps I’d put that together on some level already, because the knowledge didn’t shock me as it should. Or maybe I was in a state of shock and couldn’t feel anything. “He didn’t kill me because my demon sacrificed herself so he’d leave me alive. He took her into the demon realm, but she left some of her heart blood within me before leaving.”

“So she’s been in you from the day your family were killed?” Rooke asked.

Something niggled at me. “Longer. I knew her, and didn’t too. As though we’d just met, but I knew everything about her somehow.”

Wild looked at me. “Since you’d turned sixteen or younger?”

“I’d guess my entire life, but I can’t recall if I felt any different at sixteen. Why’s that?”

Corentin answered, “Because demon power awakens at sixteen. In a full-blooded demon anyway.”

Wild spoke low, “Syera was trying to tell you something before we were hit with his magic. She said something was happening to her. She’d thought her magic was coming in finally, but it wasn’t that.”

My mouth dried. He was right. I could hear her words as clearly as if she was speaking in my ear, and yet with everything else that happened that day, I’d never paused to reflect on what she’d been trying to tell me. “She felt different. And the change happened recently. We turned sixteen a few months prior.”

“You’ve said that she had less magus magic than you,” Rooke said. “What if her demon power was more evident because of that?”

I had a theory that the force of my magus power had kept my demon locked away in my affinity. “It’s possible. But apparently my demon hasn’t truly been present in me because the demon king took her to his realm that day, so that theory could be out.”

“We have confirmation that she’s in the demon realm and has been for some time,” Wild said grimly.

I felt his despair. “Exactly, so what happened to pull her all the way there?” I answered myself in the next beat. “She used up her reserves of blood in me to help us survive the recent attack.”

Without repeating the same process of stabbing herself in the chest, she couldn’t return.

Dread filled me, only heightened by Wild’s determination to keep his reaction together for my sake. What would happen to him? To us?

“I hate putting you through that,” Rooke admitted.

I hated going through it. “This time was different. I feel like I’ve seen the whole thing. I blacked out on the day, and each time I visited the past, there were so many questions left over. Why did the murderer leave me alive? Who attacked us and why? Having those answers means a lot.”

He left me alive because my demon sacrificed herself to become a slave in his realm. Without her in me, maybe I wasn’t a threat to his rule. Why hadn’t he killed her afterward, though? I wasn’t sure, but perhaps the blood in me had acted as a safeguard for her somehow.

He’d killed my family because Syera and I held the blood of the previous king. Because my mother had fallen in love with his enemy.

“I guess I have another reason to kill him,” I said mildly.

Wild said, “At the end, he looked at us and seemed to see us. Did you notice that?”

I shivered. “Yeah. Do you think he was there?”

“Seemed that way to me.”

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