Page 108 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Yes, maybe don’t promise a demon things you don’t know are possible,” Gurlien says, and behind all the bluster there’s a very real fear.

A fear of Delina.

“I was…I was trying not to die, okay?” Delina snaps, and they all turn to her. “I didn’t know what to do or what to say?”

“And then you got out and immediately went all Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Korhonen?” Gurlien says.

“That’s the wrong movie,” Chloe chimes in, small through the pain of the wood fragments still in her shoulder.

“I didn’t know that would happen like that,” Delina says, quieter than she likes, and another tremor quakes through her shoulders. “I thought I could get him to let me go, I didn’t…”

Suddenly, bile climbs up her throat, and she leans over, putting her head through her knees.

“I didn’t know he would die! I didn’t know, I didn’t…”

Too many things had happened that day.

Too many.

The cabin is silent, and Delina just breathes through her nose against the nausea, tears crowding into her eyes.

“You’re still hurt,” Maison says, gently sitting next to her, pulling back the collar of her shirt, where she swears she can still feel the echo of Korhonen’s hand gripping her. “Process this tomorrow, we need to take care of you.”

“No, processing now would be good,” Gurlien interrupts, and Delina’s eyes prickle. “We killed the top battle mage, their demon escaped, this is going to escalate!”

“Shut it, Gurlien,” Chloe mumbles.

“No, I won’t shut it, this is bad!”

Delina glances up to see Gurlien throw up his hands, the fear twisting to frustration.

“I’m tired of pretending that this isn’t bad, that every new thing isn’t some horrible revelation, and that I’m supposed to be normal after all of this! We saw him die! He literally crumpled into dust! We’re not gonna be okay after this!”

Gently, Maison rubs between Delina’s shoulder blades.

“A demon was told to dispose of me, if Chloe was three inches to the right that wood shard would have gone through her throat! Delina almost got zapped to death by a demon, and you—” he jabs his finger at Maison, “—you just gave up so quickly!”

“He had her by the throat! She couldn’t stand!” Maison says, and Delina can feel his anger like it is her own. “I was trying to buy time! I didn’t want her to die!”

“Thanks,” Delina breathes out, her mind still flashing to the horror on Korhonen’s face as the skin peeled off his hand. At the bones disintegrating, at the dust falling from him.

“And still your first thought was to give up. To go back to them. To go right into the situation you just got out of, except worse.” Gurlien paces in the small living room, and Chance the cat pokes his head in before skittering away.

“Not sure if you noticed, but there was a full demon there, and I wasn’t exactly winning that fight,” Maison bites out, his hand stilling on Delina’s back.

“And the demon, who nobody will explain to me,” Gurlien finishes, crossing his arms. “How could we see her? Did you know her?”

“There was a thing around her neck,” Delina all but mumbles. “It was controlling her, she didn’t want to be there.”

Chloe clears her throat, picking out another shard of wood out of her own shoulder, and it turns Delina’s stomach all over again.

“I think we should abandon the cabin,” Chloe says, and everyone abruptly shuts up. “Go somewhere else. They know we’re nearby now.”

“The demon said nobody else knew,” Delina replies, because this, at least, can distract her mind from the horror, from the skin flaking away like burned paper. “Said she tracked Maison, not me.”

Chloe watches Delina, her brown eyes serious. “And now they know how to do that. We should run.”

“I don’t want to leave the demon circle at this moment,” Gurlien says, like the conversation is distracting his mind too, derailing it from the conflict. “We go anywhere else, they now have a sniffer dog out there waiting for us to pop up.”

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