Page 91 of The Demon Mark

Envy turned and bolted down the streets, knowing that his kingdom was in the best hands that he could ask for. And as he ran, he ripped at his tattoos. Each of his creations, his stolen creatures, his nightmarish curses, all of them were given the same purpose.

Save his people.

Save his kingdom.

He cast them out to do everything they could do while his brother fought with the dragon. Some of his tattoos soared into the sky and prevented the fires from spreading. Others rushed into the homes and helped the people who were too close to collapsing stones. Others merely provided a faster way for people to flee.

“Bring them to the castle,” he sent out into the magic of his creations. “Save as many as you can and allow the dragons to fight.”

He didn’t want to lose any more of his creations to this circus. Lorenzo thought far too highly of himself, and now it was time for Envy to prove him wrong.

As the city crumbled, he pulled out the very last tattoo. The dark mass of shadows rolled at his side, complaining that it wasn’t going into the fight with him before it left.

And then, only then, did he summon his dearest creature to his side. The dark shadow of Orphe’s form sliced through the air only moments after. She was still weak, her body still warped by the poison, but she was here.

“You called?” she asked, flying above his head as they both raced through the alleyways of his home.

“Do you know where they took her?”

“I can guess.” Orphe turned, and he followed her down the next alleyway. “There is a part of the kingdom that’s been closed off for a long time. Rock slide was the first reason, then a cave in.”

“And?” he shouted, leaping over fallen stones and nearly falling before he caught himself on the side of a building and continued forward.

“There have been rumblings that the circus has moved there. Few of your people were willing to side with them, far less than any of us expected. People don’t want to fight with the demon king. Only the strongest were even interested, but as we know, you’ve destroyed most of the strongest.”

There had obviously been a good reason for that.

Snorting, he ran underneath her and let Orphe take the lead. In his experience, she was always right about what was happening in his kingdom.

And if she was right this time, then he intended to fight them all on his own.

36

“You’re doing so well,” the feminine voice said as fingers stroked through her hair. “Look at how much of this you’ve made for us? Such a good oracle.”

She was in a haze. There was the sensation of her power going out into the world, but it wasn’t the same feeling that she normally had. Something about this was... wrong. Usually her power went out of her body and there was a vivid burst of color and experience.

She lived the lives of a hundred people. And the beauty of that was she never had to fear it. Nothing bad happened when she was living what other people had experienced. They might have gone through hardship or strife, but that didn’t mean she had to. Even when she looked into their past, there was a disconnect. There was still her and them. A realization that what she was seeing wasn’t her actual reality.

But then... this wasn’t the same at all. She could feel memories, but they weren’t all from the same person. Like multiple people were touching her at the same time, but that wasn’t how she used her magic. She knew better than to do that. She knew better than to experience so many memories at the same time.

Why? She wasn’t all that certain. There was a faint memory of someone telling her not to get overwhelmed. That many people were in this world, and too many memories would make it hard to tell whose future went with each person.

Her job was to tell their futures. Her role in this world was to walk through every path of their life and then inform them which pieces were the right choices. She was supposed to do whatever she had to do to keep the wheel of time moving.

And yet, that didn’t feel like what she was doing.

Frowning, she tilted her head away from the cool hand that brushed through her hair.

“No, no, don’t do that, Lilith. We’re not even close to done and you can’t stop now.”

She was supposed to do something, wasn’t she? There was mist. She could feel her power was reaching for something and someone, but she wasn’t supposed to just lie here.

Her power flexed a little, wrapping around the woman’s wrist where she patted Lilith’s hair. She could not see much of her future, almost as though she was very weak. And that made little sense as well. Seeing into the future had never made her weak before, not when there was so much of her magic that was available to see into the next realm.

“You have to be very careful,” she whispered to the woman. “You’re going to make a lot of terrible decisions in your life. All of them are the wrong choice, all to feed your own desires. You don’t think of other people, and that will lead to a very unhappy life.”

“Oracle, don’t waste your power on me. Don’t you think you should focus on yourself?”

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