Page 18 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
“You owe me a promise. I said to bring her back unharmed, or I would come for you,” Ediye booms, her voice shaking the planks of wood and the broken tools around us in layers of sound. “Leave or I will see your debt fulfilled, Reaper.”
I look to Ashen. He stands as unyielding as a block of granite. But I think I see a swirl of sorrow deep within the fury that resides in his eyes.
“I am trying to help her,” he says, his voice low and measured. His sword is in his hand but there is only the dimmest flame on his blade and in his eyes, little more than a candle in a cold room.
“You’ve helped enough already.”
The demon and the witch stand unmoving, immobilized like pillars of stone. I force myself to cling to consciousness as my gaze darts between them. I already know that Ashen will not back down. But when his gaze hooks on mine and doesn't let go, I know he won’t attack her either, even though he could. Despite Ediye’s power, he could still kill her. She doesn’t have the means to take his life for good.
But she does have the means to take itfornow.
“I’ll give you to the count of five,” Ediye says.
Ashen keeps his eyes on mine. I see the flame brighten in his pupils but he doesn’t move.
The stars behind Ediye stretch as though we are gravity and we bend their light to our will. They become blades of constellations in the night. Their points all fix to Ashen.
“One.”
“Lu, I-“
There is no number two.
There are only spears of light and the blood that coats them.
Ashen falls to his knees, pierced by two dozen shards of stars.
I drop my dagger. Tears pepper my cheeks with their sting as Ashen’s gaze leaves mine. His eyes fix to the blood that flows from his body. He turns to me once more, then falls unmoving to the floor.
You said you’d give him to five, I sign to Ediye as she comes to stand beside me. She picks up my blade and journal as we watch Ashen’s body turn to cinders and collapse into a heap of gray dust.
“He lied,” she says as she takes my hand and pulls me to my feet, gripping my shoulder as she guides us toward the black swath of night sky that stretches before us. “So did I.”
CHAPTER8
Ediye deposits me on the couch in the living room, yells for Eryx and Cole, and then disappears in the swirling magic of black space and glittering stars. I hear frantic footsteps upstairs and the sconces flick on, illuminating the stairs. Cole is the first to appear as he slaps the switch on the wall and squints against the lights that flare to life around us.
“What the fuck, Lu. Are you all right?”
I nod and look over to Eryx who joins us, stopping abruptly at the entrance to the room as his eyes land on me. The black portal swirls and churns with shimmering light as Ediye steps from the darkness.
A loud crash disrupts the stunned silence as Ediye drops the snake head onto the coffee table, smashing the glass inlay. “What in the goddess isthis?”
Another crash sounds from the edge of the room. It sounds like someone dropped a tray of cutlery. We turn our gazes to Eryx, who has passed out on the living room floor, his wings spread across the wood.
“Did… did he just…faint?” Ediye asks. I smirk at the combined irritation and incredulity in her voice.
Cole winces, gritting his teeth as he lifts a blanket from the couch and walks over to lay it across Eryx, whose robe hangs open with an unflattering view of his balls. Not that there are many flattering views of balls when you think about it... They aren’t really the most aesthetically pleasing body parts if you ask me. I guess angel balls are the best we can hope for, and I can now say as an authority that they aren’t any better than your average balls. I smirk again at the thought of proposing to whatever higher powers reign in the Realm of Light to make them sparkly. Then I could nickname him Glitter Balls.
“Yeah…” Cole says. His suspicious glance in my direction pulls me away from the idea before I can get too invested. He shifts Eryx’s head so he doesn’t snore too loudly. “Eryx has a thing about gore. He’ll be fine.”
“I’ll have to do something about that when he wakes,” Ediye mutters, frowning. She points down at the coffee table as Cole rises and rejoins us. “Now back to this thing. What is it doing here? It’s clearly not of this realm.”
Cole looks down at the one-eyed, severed head, its forked tongue splayed across shards of broken glass. “His name is Ningish.Was. A servant creature of the Council of the Shadow Realm.”
“Servant? In what way?”
Cole shrugs, his eyes not leaving the snake. “Fetching souls, delivering justice, that kind of thing. Entertainment of the killing variety. I’ve never heard of him leaving the Shadow Realm, however. And he’s not the only one of his kind. He has a twin, a white snake named Zida.”
