Page 165 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“Conner, subdue our demon friend. You, Chloe Tombbreaker, if you want your friend, step away.”

Killian stiffens, and Chloe reaches out wildly, grabbing his hand.

The demon doesn’t move.

The man sighs, then tugs the leash dangling loosely from his fingertips. “Conner, make him helpless.”

And the other demon explodes into action.

Killian all but shoves Chloe away back into the wall, warping the shield to fit around her, before snapping out a strand of power to meet the other mid stride.

The demon barely stumbles, instead snaking out magic and lashing out at Killian’s knees, like he hopes to knock his legs out.

The power collides in a shower of sparks.

And the man, still sitting on the lab chair and holding the spirit fox, meets Chloe’s eyes and smiles.

“Do you want to be the one to control him, is that it?” he asks, gesturing at the spirit fox. “This little thing won’t help with that, you know.”

The other demon makes a strike at Killian’s shoulder, staggering him, but Killian clenches his fist and sends the other demon reeling as if he was punched.

Black blood wells from the wound on Killian’s shoulder and from a cut on the other demon’s cheek. It hurts to watch, in some esoteric way, her mind not fully comprehending the motions, the magic being spun around.

Like this sort of thing isn’t meant for human eyes to witness.

Chloe presses her back against the wall, gasping for breath as the power floods through the room.

“You can’t actually love him, not in the depth of a bonded demon, you know that, right?” the man asks, almost quietly, as if he’s one hundred percent unfazed by the battle in front of them. “We can’t give them what they need, not really.”

His fingers play in the leash, and corresponding with the motion, the other demon changes trajectories midair, slamming his elbow into Killian’s gut.

“You’re just going to give him heartbreak if that’s what you’re after,” the man says, and there’s almost an urgency in his tone. “If you take control of him, it’ll just be worse for both of you.”

He twitches the leash, and the other demon scrabbles against it for a split second, before slashing at Killian with more power.

That power tastes like Terese’s. Like the one time she saw Terese actually expend herself, actually use any of the nebulous power she somehow has at her disposal.

She had leveled a small structure on the property, one they were gonna destroy to build anew, and it had taken her all of three seconds.

And that sort of power is in the hand of this man.

“You wouldn’t need to do much, I’ll hand over this,” he shakes the spirit fox again, who makes a small noise of protest, “and give over your bond. Easy.”

Easy.

As if it wasn’t some nebulous thing that Chloe’s only half aware of. As if it’s something possible. As if she didn’t know Ambra, at what losing her bond had cost her, at what lengths the college went through to use it and harm her with it.

Instead, Chloe locks eyes with the spirit fox, who’s still squirming in his grasp towards Chloe, like she knows Chloe will be safe. Like she knows that the moment she can get to Chloe, she’ll be out of these cages, out of these bonds, and be free.

The other demon lands a strike on Killian, and he reels back, the edges of him blurring for one long second, before his eyes flash over to Chloe for one brief second, one brief crystalline moment.

One moment where there’s blood in the air, where the other demon coils to strike again, the leash a vicious red and black along his neck and terror in his jaw.

One moment where panic bleeds through from Killian, panic at the fight, panic at the shield around Chloe failing, at being so close and having something so obvious in their way.

He’s hurt. She can feel it in her bones, he’s hurt and he doesn’t know if he can win this fight. He doesn’t know if they’ll make it out, he doesn’t know what he can do, and there’s so much desperation.

And the other demon’s chest heaves, but another twitch of the leash pushes him forwards again.

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