Page 57 of The Demon Mark

“It better not have harmed a hair on her head,” he snarled as he started up the stairs. “I was so looking forward to keeping it. But I will kill it if I must. And the man who commands it.”

22

Lilith had never been more terrified in her life. But she also knew that she couldn’t freeze. No matter all the warning signs that were going off in her head, telling her to just stop moving because she was about to die. She couldn’t listen to that voice.

He had told her to be ready. There were plenty of places in this room for her to hide, but none of them were good enough. At least, not now that she was looking.

Breathing ragged, she tried to still her mind to calmly look at her surroundings. The closet was an obvious choice, but that was the first place anything would look. Plus, there was no way for her to escape if something opened the doors. The creature would have her pinned there.

Underneath the bed was obvious as well. Sure, there was enough room for her to slide underneath, but that was the same problem as the closet. If something found her, it could reach underneath for her and drag her out before she could even attempt to flee.

But the bath.

The bath was right there, and still full of water. If she filled it with enough of the scented bath milks that Envy had left for her, then it would not only be hard to smell her but also hard to see her. Not that she could hold her breath for that long, but if she was careful...

That was it. That was the only thing she could do. A chimera had an impressive skill in scenting its prey, it could track her until the very end of the realms.

Not that she really thought the chimera was coming after her. But there was a hint of darkness in the future that she had seen. A warning that she didn’t think was entirely for Envy.

Her power had never done that before. She could lie to herself and say it was just the tea that she had drank which made her a little more powerful.

But everything her master had told her about the tea claimed the opposite. It wasn’t supposed to make her more powerful. It was supposed to dull her power so that she could think and heal.

Even among those thoughts was the whisper of a memory that suggested she’d been lied to for years. That tea wasn’t meant to make the world so foggy. And if it had been made correctly, or perhaps not laced with whatever the circus master had given her, then she would have been this powerful her entire life.

Dumping four bottles of bath milk into the warm pool, she stirred it quickly while looking over her shoulder. Bubbles rose on the surface of the water, enough to hide her from the creature if it did come in here. Good enough for her. The water was opaque at this point, almost impossible to see inside, and the room was filled with such a cloying scent of perfume that she could hardly breathe.

Ripping off her dress, she left it in a pile in the corner of the room as a distraction and then stepped into the water. No fabric would float freely around her or draw up to the surface of the water.

If there was anything Lilith was good at, other than prophecies, then it was surviving. She knew how to keep herself alive.

So she sank into the water up to her nose, ignoring the headache that burst behind her eyes at the scent of all this perfume, and waited.

She planned to wait in the bath until Envy came to get her, but she didn’t have to wait long at all. There was a commotion on the other side of the portal. She saw a tail slide through it, and then one of Envy’s tattoos came hurtling into the room. She narrowed her eyes and forced the scream in her throat to stay put.

The tattooed creature looked a bit like a boar, although it had horns on top of its head and flames shooting out of its nostrils. It wasn’t the type of creature she wanted to anger, but it didn’t even cast a glance toward her. It just shook its massive head and then charged back through the portal.

So the chimera was here after all. And that either meant that Envy was dead—entirely a possibility—or that the chimera had immobilized him and that it was here for her.

A cold chill trailed down her back despite the hot water that she sat in. Did her master want to kill her?

Whispers started inside her head, voices from the countless oracles who had come before her, and all the oracles in other kingdoms who still existed. Handlers were known to kill their oracles before. And it was all right if she died. She didn’t need to feel guilty for leaving this realm without telling enough of the futures that she could see.

All oracles were connected. If she died, her power would be reborn in the next oracle. Cut off the head of one hydra, and another grew in its place. Magic like hers didn’t just leave this realm, no matter how much people tried to get rid of it.

But she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to leave this place, where she had found some modicum of peace.

She sank deeper into the water, soaking her hair so it stuck to her head and wouldn’t float when she made her way beneath the bubbles. She waited, even though she knew the creature that next stepped through that portal would try to kill her.

If only she could see the futures of magical creatures as well as people. This would be a lot easier.

A taloned foot appeared. Not thrown through, but stepped with intention, and Lilith knew what was coming for her. She didn’t have to wait to see the maned head, nor did she care to see it. She could go her entire life without ever seeing a chimera and be perfectly happy.

Sinking beneath the water, she held her breath and stared up through the bubbles. Soap stung her eyes. She didn’t want the creature to see her, but she couldn’t stop looking. Not when her lungs began to burn and not when a shadow passed over her head. She could feel her body tensing, but she could see a hundred images of the chimera reflected in the bottom of the bubbles.

It looked down at her, as though it knew where she was. Its head tilted to the side and a clawed hand rose and then fell. Had she done it? Had the perfume confused the creature enough that she might survive this? She thought, for a blissful moment, that she would live.

But then the clawed hand lifted again and sank into the water.

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