Page 93 of The Demon Mark

“Everything hurts,” she whispered.

“I know. I know. We’re such bad people for hurting you like this, but you know we have to see the future. So many of us rely on this place to live. The circus is the only place where we are fully accepted. And you are the best way to get money.” She swiped some of the blood from Lilith’s mouth and wiped it off on Lilith’s shirt. “It’s okay. I know this hurts now, but you’re not going to feel any pain soon and we’re all going to live our best lives. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Lilith shook her head from side to side, trying to clear her thoughts a little more. “I don’t want to do that...”

“Of course you do! Everything in your life has always been for us. You lived to make sure we thrived. And we will thank you for that for the rest of our lives.”

Lived?

That felt past tense. Like she wasn’t expected to live past this and that... wasn’t right. She could feel the mist drawing tighter into her body, as though it sensed the danger as well. Nothing was right, and she wasn’t herself and...

Where was Envy?

He was supposed to be here. It wasn’t likely that he would let her wander off on her own without him. He seemed to always be glued to her side, both as protector and lover.

Would he let her disappear like this? Or had they taken her?

“No, no,” Joan whispered, and then her hands were on Lilith’s cheeks, forcing her to look at flaming red hair and nothing else. “Easy, oracle. Nothing is wrong. You are doing the right thing. All you have to do is keep trying to see our futures.”

In the haze of her mind, that felt right. Lilith couldn’t see anything other than Joan and the white mist that surrounded her.

So it was easy to allow that mist to coil around her friend. Joan had never wanted Lilith to look into her future, nor had she ever given her permission to do so. Taking someone’s future without permission was wrong and immoral and everything that Lilith had never wanted to be.

And yet, now Joan was asking. She let the mist wrap around Joan’s shoulders and it seemed to hold her in a grip tighter than was reasonable. Her power seemed to know something Lilith didn’t, though, and she had learned to let the magic do what it wanted.

Joan’s eyes widened as she was dragged forward. Her red hair billowed and there was a shout from the other people who were in the room.

But she could feel her power snap closed around them. The others were fighting against the mist. She could feel them, but there was something here she had to do first. Something very important that she could only do with Joan.

“Lil,” Joan whispered, her voice perhaps a little raspy. “You have to let me go. I’m not doing anything wrong, and you’re going to regret doing this. Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know if I am,” she replied before diving into the other woman’s future.

And what she saw there chilled her to the bone.

At first, it was all so hazy. She couldn’t see much other than the overwhelming feeling of guilt. There was so much of it swirling around the other woman’s future in every single path she could take.

Then Lilith saw herself. Her own body, laid out on the stone here surrounded by scrolls of paper that were actually prophecies. Every one of them. Prophecies that she had said, in her sleep, in her waking days, and recorded from every time she had told any person their future. Prophecies that meant something to so many people, and that gave Lorenzo far too much power.

All of these pieces were brought about because they were stealing her power. They’d sent the priestess to care for her first, because that woman had so many other paths in her life. The priestess wouldn’t stay long and besides, she hadn’t understood really what the consequences of what they were doing were. But Joan knew.

Joan knew every single thing this would bring about and why it was so wrong to do. She knew that she was going to lose her friend, and that hadn’t stopped her from helping them.

Joan had always been a friend. But no matter what choice she made in the past, present, or future, it always brought her right here. To this moment. Laying Lilith out until she bled to death on the stone.

Maybe that was why Joan had never wanted her to look into the future, because all Lilith would see was her own death. And right now, that’s what she was looking at. A dead husk of a body. Her power drained out of her and bottled away. Taken from her.

Her power tightened around Joan’s neck, and she heard the wheeze of breath struggling to get into her friend’s lungs.

“Why?” Lilith asked, her voice almost as breathless as Joan’s.

“You know why.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Joan blinked, and then her lips curved in a sad smile. “You were always the favorite. You never felt the hardship, and you never knew how much we all suffered.”

“I suffered for you,” she hissed. “You all lived your own lives, and I was the one licking his boots clean. I barely ate. I barely rested. I worked for hours on end using powers I did not understand for you.”

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