Page 113 of The Princesses of Ruin
“My wife, I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice deep like the demon’s.
“No,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.”
I raise my other hand, horrified to see that it’s not the demon’s, but my own. How have I become this creature that is half me, half monster?
“What’s happened?” I ask, cradling her damaged shoulder.
“I made a deal with the duskwalker,” she whispers.
Another tear escapes her red eyes and drops onto my chest.
“Whatever it was, we’re alive now, and…” I look around me. We’re in the Nest, though I’m not sure where. “We’re home. You got us home.”
Her face scrunches in deep, soul-wrenching pain, and she collapses on me again. I hold her as she wails, my heart breaking with every second I don’t know how to help her. I have to help her.
Finally, her tears cease. She lays on me for a long time, the silence punctuated by little sniffles.
“I sold our daughter to him,” she whispers, and I’m not certain I heard her right.
I swallow. “Our what?”
She takes a deep breath and looks down on me. “I’m pregnant. It’s a girl. I traded her freedom for our lives.”
Joy is laced through with rage, fear, and horror. The demon isn’t just close to the surface now, he’s with me. He’s out in the open and I can’t control the violent emotion that wraps me in a stranglehold. Breath doesn’t sate the fire in my lungs.
I don’t know what to do.
“He’ll return for her in twenty years, and she’ll have one chance…”
“What chance?” My voice is heavily distorted with wrath.
Lily leans away from me. “She will get to fight him, one on one. If she wins, she’s free.”
“And if she loses?”
“He takes her.”
Sickness claws at my insides. My demon hand snatches her by the neck, and she yelps again. I grab my right arm with my left and pry it off her. Tears roll down her cheeks and I remember. I was dying inthe snow. The duskwalker had eaten my arm. It was eating me, and she was killing herself.
The fury in me subsides. She made a deal to save us all. My brave, selfless, horrific, monstrous wife.
“The child would’ve died with you in the snow,” I say, cradling her cheeks and wiping her tears. “You didn’t take away her life. You gave her a chance. And us. You saved us.”
She cups my hands, pinching her eyes shut to hold in her sobs. “This fucking prophecy…Why us? Why our child? The gods hate us.”
“No, my love, they don’t,” I whisper, pulling her close to kiss her crown. “They chose us because we’re the only ones strong enough to withstand this. I know you’re scared, but our child will be trained in every combat style possible. We’ll make sure she’s deadly. She won’t lose.”
“And if she does?” she whispers.
“We’ll kill him.”
Nausea punches me and I groan, swallowing vomit.
Lily holds up her wrist, then grabs my demon arm. There’s a matching pair of pact brands in gold, green, and red encircling them.
“When?”
“While you were at the edge of death, you agreed,” she says, kissing the mark.
