Page 85 of Satanic Shadow
His voice makes me open my eyes. Dane is sitting on my bed, ankle crossed at his knee, reading a textbook from the Fire Realm. He throws it down. “You’ve underlined the wrong letters by the way. You need to emphasize the D inzedorphia, not the Z.”
“How are you here?”
He shrugs. “One of my powers—”
“No. I mean, why are you here, in my room, when you should be in the dungeons?”
“The only strong connection I have for materializing is to your room. I can’t leave through your door; it’s like I’m locked in here. I can go back to the dungeon if I travel, but that’s all.” Then he stands, tilting his head. “It’s probably a good thing, since I need to siphon that nasty curse from you every few hours.”
I glance down at my hands, which are already staining again. “Will it eventually kill me?”
“Yes,” he says, and my eyes go wide. Dane closes the distance between us, and my heart gallops from his proximity and towering height. “But as long as you let me do this, I can slow it down until I find a solution. There is always a loophole.”
Electric shocks rush up my arms as he takes my hands. “Why?”
His green eyes are on me, studying my face, and his stare feels like a soft caress on my soul. “Why what?” he asks.
“Why are you helping me?”
He massages my palms with his thumbs then circles his fingers around my wrists. The pulling sensation has me gasping with pain as he grits his teeth, transferring what he can of the curse to himself. He keeps his eyes on my face until the staining fades, his own veins injected with ink as his pupils dilate.
Before, the veins in his neck turned inky; this time, the dark vines crawl up the side of his face and his right eye turns entirely black.
He forces out, “Like I said, you haunt me.”
We break away, and as I press my palm to my chest, he slams his against the wall, causing the room to vibrate like we’ve been struck by an earthquake, focusing on filling his lungs until the burning stops.
“Are you okay?” I ask when he stays silent, his back turned from me.
He straightens. I bite my lip nervously as he turns and looks at me again with a contorted expression. “You should take that bath now, mortal. As much as I enjoy the scent of you coveredin my cum, I need to go back and pretend to be the imprisoned heir.”
My cheeks heat, and I turn away from him to hide my blush. “Did you do what they say? Did you kill someone?”
“I might as well have.”
I slant my head. “Meaning?”
He comes up behind me, shivers wracking my body as he whispers against my ear, “Be a good girl for me, little mortal. I’ll return in the evening.”
26
You think I don’t know you? I’m fucking haunted by you. Do you think I want to be here? That I want to wake up every morning and have to spend time with you in this castle? In these fucking classes? It’s childish and beneath us both.
That spiel from Dane replays in my mind like a broken record. The words were spoken so harshly it was as if he was offended that we were both here, like it was all my fault.
I’m fucking haunted by you.
Haunted.
I’m starting to think I’m haunted by him too. Because even though he isn’t here, I can feel him nearby, smell the mind-bending scent of him, the spice and musk filling my senses.
He visits twice a day. Once in the morning, then again in the evening. While he’s here, he makes my entire body quake as he siphons what he can of the curse. It hurts, but we’ve grown more comfortable with it. He tells me to take a few breaths before he starts. One of the times it was so bad that we both passed out on top of my window seat, and I woke up with his head in my lap.
Usually, after the torture, he sits around for an hour until his powers regenerate enough for him to travel while either being a dick to me, teasing me about my mortality, or commenting on how fast my heart is racing without him even touching me. He’ll do something to piss me off, I’ll threaten him with objects around me, then he vanishes until the next day.
No matter how many times I ask, he won’t tell me about the person he killed or why he did it. The academy hasn’t mentioned anything else regarding the matter, as if nothing happened at all. Valin is still teaching. The twins still want to kill him. I haven’t left my room. And Dane is still trapped between here and the dungeons.
Shivering, I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling as the shadows dance around, as if there’s a silent chant that has them excited that Dane should be here soon.
