Page 84 of The Demon Mark

“I come from a long line of healers.”

“But it’s not just bodies that you can knit together. You can heal animals, objects, even rips in the realms.” She ran her fingers over his head. “There is someone here who will covet that power.”

His mother gasped again. “The king?”

“His power is far more than any healer we have ever seen. This world needs more people like him. More powerful creatures who are willing and able to heal what has been broken. Emotional wounds. World tears. All the problems that have always plagued us since the beginning of time.” She patted the top of his head and then turned to his mother. “Keep him hidden.”

“Where?”

She was about to tell them that they should go to an abandoned home, one that had been in the mother’s family for ages, but another voice interrupted them.

“Don’t say a word, oracle.”

Her mind turned toward the person who spoke. And all she could see in their future was blood. So much blood. Blood all over her face, her hands, her body. She didn’t know whose blood it was, though.

As she turned on her heel, she faced the man who had once made her call him master. The man who had tried to change her entire life and turn her from the path of the oracle.

Lilith thought in that moment that the blood she had seen wasn’t her own. And she was ready to see red splattered on the cobblestones.

33

Envy hated letting her do this on her own, but he knew better than anyone what had to happen. In this case, it was that the people who hunted her had to feel like they had the upper hand. They had to grab her, tear at her pretty flesh with their fangs. Soon enough, though, they would discover why it was so foolish to fight against their king.

He and his brother stayed in the shadows. They were far enough behind her that no one would question what they were doing, and they didn’t look like Envy or Sloth. He’d cast an enchantment over them to ensure no one would recognize them.

“Did you have to make me so ugly?” Sloth grumbled yet again, his eyes on everyone but Lilith. “You know I’m usually the handsome brother. I’m unused to so many people glancing over at me as though I am nothing better than a farm boy.”

And honestly, that was the exact template that Envy had used for his brother. A farm boy who had seen plenty of hours of work, which made him seem even less of a threat. Everyone who looked at Sloth would think he was one of them. A hardworking individual who had seen too many years of hard labor.

“That’s the point,” he hissed back as he tried to keep track of Lilith as she meandered through the crowd. She hadn’t been telling anyone prophecies just yet, but he’d seen the way the crowds looked at her.

People knew who she was. Whether that was because they had gone to the circus and seen her powers in person, or if they had just heard of the oracle who their king had captured, it didn’t matter. People knew her. They looked at her. And those covetous gazes made him see red.

“I know the point is to make me hard to notice, but why did you get to be the more handsome of the two of us?” Sloth complained again, even as he stepped in front of Envy’s view and made it almost impossible to see Lilith.

“Would you focus?”

“Look at you! You’re the wise man with the silver streaks in your hair. Women have been taking glances at you the entire walk here. Why is that?”

Because he had chosen someone who looked kind. Because he had met this man once in Lust’s kingdom and noticed that even though he was older, everyone still trusted him. The man had radiated some sense of comfort that other people believed.

Grumbling under his breath, he walked around Sloth and continued to follow the woman he suspected might be the other half of his soul. “Just be happy I didn’t make you a woman.”

“Now that I wouldn’t complain about. I wouldn’t mind being in the skin of a woman for a few days. Knowing what it’s like to have breasts? That is only a pleasure, my brother.”

“I highly doubt you would agree with that once you’d walked a mile in their shoes,” Envy said, then lifted his hand for his brother to be silent. They were approaching the town square. If he knew his Lilith, then this was where she would make her move.

Unfortunately for all of them, if she did, it would make everything complicated. The square was full of people. He wouldn’t be able to keep her protected if he had to shove everyone out of his way, and he intended to if someone tried to grab her.

The problem was that everyone was so closely packed together, it was hard to see any faces he might recognize. The circus performers were easy to pick out of a crowd. But not today. There were so many people in this crowd wearing cloaks. Most likely because they were getting close to the winter season of this kingdom, and there was a chill in the air today.

He could conjure a few warm gusts of wind and force everyone to overheat so much that they had to remove their cloaks. But would that be suspicious? Lorenzo and all his cronies would know what was happening, and they’d scatter.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sloth said, as though he could read the thoughts that were going through Envy’s mind.

“I’m not planning on it.”

“If you do something stupid, they’ll know we’re here. Lilith was right, you know. This is a one-time deal. We can only use her as bait once before they realize what we’re doing.”

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