Page 146 of The Blood Witch

The images wouldn’t stop.The memories wouldn’t stop.

“You think you understand suffering?” Kallista asked, hervoice coming from everywhere and nowhere. She was the darkness, she was the voice surrounding them, she was the cold and infinite void. Vee whimpered. “You think you have any idea what that word means?”

This was the Demon’s world. Her realm.

Kallista stepped forward, out of the dark, kneeling before Vee while she shook with fear and pain.

She touched Vee’s temple, gently.

“You don’t know anything about suffering,” the Demon told her. “Let me show you what suffering really is, mortal.”

Four thousand years.

Four thousand years of war, and pain, and death. Kallista took that pain, took those memories—hermemories—and pushed them into Vee. Flooding them into her mind.

Vee screamed.

She begged.

She cried.

But the pain wouldn’t stop.

And eventually, when nothing else worked, she gave into the darkness and let it take her away.

Chapter 72

FEY

When the sun finally rose the next morning, it bathed the sky in a pink so dark it was almost red. Fey watched it from a window in her sisters’ apartment, watched the colors bleed over the city, tinging everything in a rose-colored haze.

Behind her, she heard the sound of a door opening, followed by light footsteps on the carpet. Her sister’s footsteps.

“You can see him now,” Joy told her. She sounded completely drained. Exhausted. Fey wasn’t surprised. Joy had put everything that she’d had into that healing. And even then, even with all her power, it almost hadn’t been enough.

“Is he…” Fey swallowed. The light from the sunrise looked a little too much like blood to her. “Is he going to be okay?”

Joy’s hand landed gently on her shoulder, turning her away from the window. Exhaustion lined Joy’s face. But so did hope.

“He’ll be fine, sister,” Joy assured her, smiling. “Back to normal before you know it.”

An awful weight that had been pressing down on Fey’s chest lifted, ever so slightly.

“Thank you,” Fey murmured. “For saving him, and for… for everything.”

Joy’s answering smile was full of understanding.

“You love him, don’t you?” she asked, gently. “You and your Vampire?”

Unable to speak, Fey just nodded.

“I saw. On the rooftop, when you let your blades fall.” Joy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Sister… If I hadn’t made it in time? If he had passed into the afterlife? I promise you—I would have reached into the beyond and pulled him back with my own two hands if I’d had to. For you.”

Fey let out a laugh.

“You know, I almost believe you could, sister,” she said, shaking her head.

“Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. But he needs to rest. I healed the worst of it, but—” Joy rubbed a hand over her face. “I need to rest, too, before I can finish the rest of the healing. I’m tapped out. His hip is still broken, and he has multiple contusions that aren’t life threatening, but…”

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