Page 39 of Satanic Shadow
I curl my lip. “Sounds stupid.”
“Just fucking say it.”
I do, and the instant the last word drops from my mouth, so does everything around me. I’m falling, flying through colors, my stomach close to emptying with how fast I’m falling. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. Like a never-ending well I’ve toppled into, down and down I go.
My feet hit the bottom. I’m weightless in a sea of glitter, with tiny black dots—ash— floating around me. The oxygen is weird—it feels like water in my lungs, yet I can breathe.
The silhouettes in my bedroom walls are here, or maybe I just think they are. The dog is barking, frantically running from left to right down one wall, the other has a couple pointing to the right, and the little girl walks with me until we reach a wooden door full of fragments of glass.
I can see my reflection. And it stops me. I’m me but older, and my eyes are silver. She’s saying something I can’t hear, and she has a terrified expression. I blink, and a younger, more present version of myself stares back.
I can see the scroll. It’s near a window, one that I walk towards and peek out to see a humongous castle. Instead of white bricks and looking like something inviting from a kid’s movie, it seemsto be more of a horror style. Everything is shrouded in blacks and grays and… death.
So much death.
That explains why it’s so cold here.
I look up, and above the tallest tower is a spiral vortex, angry and fast, taking up the entire sky. The other night, while Dane and I did task two, that was above us. Maybe not this specific one, but one of them.
Where am I?
The world around me stills—even the vortex halts its spinning—and I frown. Ice trickles against my neck and spine, sending shivers all over, and I have the feeling I’m no longer alone, as if I’ve been seen. Caught. Close to being a captive within this world.
I rush to the scroll, and as soon as my fingers touch it, everything around me warps into one color, but not before I turn to see a figure with horns charging at me with fire blazing from its body.
I scream, loud enough to hurt my own ears. I drop the scroll, bring my hands to my ears, and let out every bit of breath until the fear unravels and someone’s fingers are grabbing my chin.
“Breathe.” He shakes me. I know it’s Dane, but I’m slipping from this reality again, and I think something from that other world is trying to drag me back. “Breathe, you imbecile.”
Everything halts, and my eyes ping open. “Don’t you dare call me an imbecile after what you just made me do!”
He lets out a breath, drops his hands from my face, and settles his back against the desk in front of me. Both of us are on the ground. Both exhausted. “Fuck. You were in there for hours.”
Shaking my head, I stay as far away from the diamond as I can. “I was there barely minutes.”
“That’s how it works there. Time is different. The sun is already rising, mortal.”
He’s right. The moonlight creeping through the windows is gone, replaced by orange and yellow hues filling the sky.
He’s still shirtless. I try not to look again. But this time, I’m catching a glimpse of more symbols beneath the dried blood, inked words that make no sense. I want to trace each piece of ink. A forbidden image infiltrates my head and has me gaping at myself, of me dragging my tongue up each ab before dropping to my knees. I… I wasn’t thinking about that.
I glance up at Dane, and he averts his gaze.
“You need to stop,” he says.
I raise a brow. “Stop what?”
“Everything. Stop trying to figure out my history. You will find nothing. You can stop spending hours in the library with my father’s book.”
Of course he knows about that.
“What is your reason for looking into my past?”
I shrug, picking invisible lint from my skirt. “I wanted to make sure you’re not going to morph into a dragon while you’re inside me.”
He visibly pales, and I chuckle at his horrifying expression.
Dane gets to his feet, not offering a hand to help me up. “Making jokes about our future unfortunate events is immature.”
