Page 91 of Devoured
“Zahra?”His voice came out rough but real. “You’re—what are you?”
“I’m what this place needs,”I answered, helping them both stand.
My eyes caught what I knew were Sela’s ashes, scattered where the Judge had destroyed her. I wasn’t sure if I could bring back someone who’d been gone that long, but I had to try.
I moved to the pile of ash that had been Sela and kneeled. The others watched as I gathered the gray dust in my hands. This was different from bringing back the Executioner. She’d been gone longer. Scattered wider. But the realm obeyed me now. I poured my will into the ashes. Forced them to remember what they’d been. The dust swirled. Condensed. Took shape.
Sela gasped back to life, naked and trembling on the bone floor. Her gray hair fell loose around her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, she blinked, looking around in wonder, one hand reaching up to touch her face where the glasses should have been.
“I can see,”she whispered. “Everything’s so clear.”
I waved my hand. A simple white gown materialized around her, covering her vulnerability.
“You’re alive,”Marion told her, tears streaming down her face. “Zahra brought you back.”
Sela looked at me with those newly clear eyes, taking in my transformed state—the horns, the gray skin, the shimmer at the edges of everything I’d become.
“You killed him,”she said, voice filled with awe. “You actually killed the Judge.”
“Yes.”I stood and flexed my claws.
The realm pulsed—eager and hungry. But its hunger had changed to match mine. No longer for random suffering. Now it wanted only the truly unrepentant. The ones who hurt others and felt nothing. The ones who chose their darkness.
But for the first time in six centuries, it also wanted to release those who didn’t belong here. The broken who’d been punished enough. The guilty who still had hearts that could break.
Chapter 28
I looked at the cowering servants. The air itself had gone electric since the Judge’s death—waiting to see what kind of god I would be.
The cathedral had changed. Screams in the walls had quieted to whispers, like prisoners who’d just realized the warden was dead. Even the taste had shifted—less copper and fear, more like the moment before lightning strikes.
“You.”I pointed at the Seamstress. “Come here.”
She tried backing away on thread-spool legs, but my will dragged her forward. Each click against bone floor sounded like typewriter keys spelling out a death sentence. The faces embedded in her torso watched me with desperate hope. “Please. I served faithfully—”
“With enthusiasm.”I circled her slowly. Human skin stretched and sewn into her frame. Tools hanging from her belt—needles that couldpierce the soulas easily as flesh. “You added flourishes. Made it artistic.”
The threads that made her started writhing like worms under summer rain.
“What are you—NO!”
Hundreds burst through her pores. Red silk from the woman who’d begged for her children. Black cord from the girl who’d gone silent after the third day. White fiber from the grandmother who’d prayed until her last breath. They wrapped around her limbs and pulled.
Her shoulders dislocated first. The wet pop echoed off cathedral walls. Then elbows bent backward. Spine twisted until vertebrae ground like millstones.
“Stop! Please! I’ll serve you instead—”
The threads wove through her flesh, forming patterns I recognized from her victims’ bodies. The rosette sewn into a young mother’s back. The crosshatch used to silence a woman who’d fought back. Nerve endings severed and reconnected in impossible ways.
“You’ll feel every thread. Every pull. Unlike your victims, you’ll never go into shock. This is your existence now.”
Father Gallows tried to run—foot suspended mid-step when I froze him.
“The priest who gave absolution to killers.”I placed my hand on his scripture robes. Parchment smoked where I touched it. “Every woman you told to forgive her rapist. Every child you said must honor their abusive parent.”
The words on his robes came alive. Latin prayers slithered across fabric like insects, then burned into flesh beneath. “MERCY! I BEG FOR MERCY!”
“Like that girl who came to you after her uncle—”I stopped. He knew.
