Page 125 of Their Demon

I really was going to die this time.

Loud screeching filled my ears, and I opened my eyes to see the hippocampi stopped cold, blood dripping from multiple wounds. I looked around, but there was no one else who could have inflicted the damage. I squinted my eyes, looking closer.

Poking out of their skin were shards of ice, like small ice daggers, just like the ones I’d seen Nicholas form.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The hippocampi seemed to gather themselves, looking even more pissed off than before. The one in the middle, the one with my dagger, started to charge at me once again, but it halted when a loud, high-pitched scream sounded.

It was so loud, so piercing. I covered my ears, and my eyes squeezed shut too.

Soon after, my arms were grabbed, and I was zipping through the water. I opened my eyes to find two women—well, sort of women—pushing me to the surface.

They had forest green, scaly skin, even their hands and faces, and the tail of a mermaid, but they were definitely not mermaids. Their eyes were an even deeper green, but they seemed to shine like there was a light behind them. Their hair was long and black, and their ears were strangely shaped and jagged. They were beautifully terrifying. It was difficult to look away.

I remembered seeing a picture of a similar creature in Keir’s book, the one he’d shown me when he told me about the hippocampus. She was a siren.

We got close to the surface, and they stopped, one of them swimming back down toward the hippocampi, the other staying with me. Another similar-looking siren, but smaller, swam up, the egg in her arms.

I tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but I choked. I started to try and swim to the surface, knowing my time was up, but the siren who’d helped me grabbed my arm, stopping me. She turned and took the egg from the smaller siren, who left to follow the siren who had already swam away, and handed it over to me.

I needed to breathe, but I couldn’t help but stare at her, enthralled by the sight of such a strange, enchanting creature. She opened her mouth, and I expected words to come out, but it was a strange language I couldn’t understand.

I didn’t need to, though. She gestured to the egg then to the surface, then finally toward the shore, where the king waited for me. She even put her hands on top of her head in a sort of crown shape. It was clear she knew exactly why I was here.

She let my arm go and brushed my hair back. Her eyes examined every part of my face, like she was trying to remember it, before she gave me a push to the surface.

I gasped for air once I emerged. I carefully lifted the egg into the boat, but before I could think about how I was going to crawl into it, hands were lifting me by my feet, dumping me inside.

I turned to say thank you, but she was already gone.

The row back was a nightmare, my body screaming at me for mercy. I couldn’t stop, though. I needed to get this egg to Satan, prove I had completed his insane trial, and get it back to its nest somehow.

I should have known he wasn’t going to be merciful.

When his blade struck the egg, ending the precious life it held, he might as well have stabbed me too.

All I could see was that poor, mutilated creature I had promised to keep safe as it laid bloody on the ground.

It was all my fault…

It was all my fault…

It was all m—

“Lillian,” a voice ripped through my nightmare. “You’re safe, princess. You’re safe. I’ve got you. You’re at home, in bed. You’re not there anymore. Come back to me.”

Arms wrapped around me, scooping me up, holding me against their warm chest. I couldn’t open my eyes, not yet, but I smelled him, earthy with notes of whiskey.

Keir.

My body was shaking. My face was wet.

“It was all my fault,” I wept.

He hugged me tighter. “It was not your fault,” he murmured, lips pressed against my forehead. “You did nothing wrong. You did what you had to do to survive. He’s the monster, Lillian, not you.”

He was cradling me like a child, and to be honest, I felt like a scared child at that moment. I had relived the second trial every night since—five nights, to be exact. I had relived that trial five fucking times.

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