Page 105 of Devil's Delirium

But who would do such a thing to me, and why? What could have possibly angered a person so much they wanted to punish me again and again and again, forever?

In the end, there were twelve souls cursed to die miserable and young before we finally reached a young woman with long dark hair, naked and injured in the forest. None of us could have been prepared for the scene before us. The events about to unfold, revealing the answers to the questions we sought, would tarnish every second of the rest of my life.

Chapter Sixty: Echoes of Eternity

The woman lay nakedand alone in the woods, her chest heaving with each labored breath.

The cold, damp earth cradled her in unyielding apathy, its chill seeping into her bones. The pine needles prickling her soft skin and invading her nose along with the musky decaying leaves filled the air, combined with the pervasive taste of that coppery tang in her mouth. Blood from the open wounds after each and every tooth had been slowly wrenched from her mouth after they shoved heavy iron hooks through her hands and feet and slowly hoisted her high in the air.

“Tell us where this Maverick is, Susannah!” they shouted. Their voices pinging from the dark, dirt walls. They had no fear of being found out. She quickly lost all hope.

Since he had left her five years earlier, there was very little hope left as it was. She knew life was over for her way before the hunters everpicked her up.

Watching the trees around her, their branches swaying in the midnight breeze as if mourning her imminent passing, she knew they were right. She was dying, her life ebbing away with every painful inhalation like the tides on their way out.

“The day has come sooner than expected, but it’s time, dear Maverick,” she rasped into the darkness.

Determined to make good on her promise, Susannah closed her eyes, her lashes fluttering against her pale, dirt-smeared cheeks. She whispered the incantation to project herself into the astral plane, her voice a raspy whisper barely disturbing the quiet creatures of the forest floor. As the spell resonated, her spirit detached from her battered body and floated away. She had secretly, long ago, used Maverick’s blood in a spell to make his essence act as a beacon to her in the astral realm. In the ethereal plane, she drifted effortlessly toward him.

Drawn to him as easily as a flame in the dark, which she’d once thought an amusing and apt parallel of his allure and charm, it didn’t take long. She found him in a warm, bustling tavern. The fire crackled in the hearth, shimmering against the wooden walls behind him. Maverick was seated at a table, enjoying a lively conversation with a pretty woman. Laughter danced in his eyes, and a carefree smile played on his lips. The sight of him so at ease, carrying on with his life while she had just spent the last two days being tortured by his seraphim hunters, made Susannah’s heart twist with poisonous anger and dark jealousy.

With a burst of rage, she propelled forward, invading the woman Maverick was with, forcing her way into her body and shoving her consciousness aside. Susannah projected her voice from the woman’s lips in a distorted and desperate plea.

Maverick’s dark expression morphed into befuddled recognition. “Susannah?” he whispered, his eyes darkening. But even as he spoke, doubt sputtered across his features. She had little hope he would come—afterall, he had disappeared without a care for her years ago, when he'd promised time and time again never to do that, never to leave her. But she couldn’t erase that last bit of love for him, a stubborn stain on her heart that had festered into a fire and fury over the five years she’d been without him. She’d never forget. She’d never forgive.

Their connection still humming in the astral realm, Susannah’s physical body lay trembling. Working quickly, she found a sharp rock and, with a pained grimace, chopped through her wrists. They twisted through the pain as she performed the spell that would curse her own miserable soul to be bound to his forever. Dark, acrid smoke rose from her mangled limbs, coiling into the air like a living thing. She grinned up at the sky, her eyes reflecting the ever-darkening twilight, as each breath grew shallower and shallower.

As her heart slowed, a sluggish thump echoing in her ears, she knew it was the end, but only for now. The dark smoke of her soul poured from the vessel of her body, curling and weaving through the air, already bound with the curse and set off to the nearest conception. Susannah’s grin stiffened, a macabre expression of triumph and vengeance.

As her vision dimmed, the sounds of the forest faded away, leaving only the haunting whisper of the wind through the trees. On that one last, shuddering breath, her spirit clinging to the vow she had made, she felt pleased, of all things. Content with her plans, grim as they were, for a reckoning that never should have been necessary.

But it was necessary. The vital imperative hung over Susannah like a relentless dark cloud the moment she realized her lover would never return.

Now, she and Maverick would meet again, and when they did, she would repay him for every ounce of pain he had caused her.

This was not an end—it was only the beginning of her retribution.

Chapter Sixty-One: The Cursed Lovers

Maverick

As the hypnotic hazecleared, my shock did not. Tess appeared just as dazed. Her eyes were red, tears streamed down her blotchy cheeks, and I reached up to wipe them dry. She weakly tried to push me away, but I grabbed her hands and held them in her lap.

“Let me be here for you, Tess.”

She pursed her lips in annoyance. “Who was that?”

“That was Susannah. I broke her heart.”

She nodded, eyes wide in dramatic confirmation. “You sure did. What did you do? Sleep with her mother, daughter, sister and father all at once without her?”

I barked a laugh despite the tense atmosphere. Surely she was joking, and that was my kind of joke. “We couldn’t be together because of the hunters. She didn’t agree.”

She laughed. “Seriously, that’s it?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t fuck her best friend or her daughter or something?”

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