Page 124 of Fury of the Bound
They exploded outward like a living storm, tendrils coiling and lashing through the air, fast as lightning and twice as merciless. Screams tore into the night, cut short as the darkness found flesh. Limbs were torn violently from bodies, and steel armour crumpled like tin beneath the crushing weight of it. One soldier barely had time to blink before a tendril punched clean through his chest, his sword clattering uselessly to the ground.
It was carnage.
Pure, brutal, beautiful in its horror.
Blood painted the earth, thick and steaming, pooling around the king’s boots as if the shadows were making him an altar. The metallic tang hit the back of my throat.
The demon didn’t blink. Didn’t smile.
When all the soldiers were dead, he stepped onto the bodies without pause, boots crushing the flesh beneath him.
“You’ll regret that, demon,” he said, his voice deathly calm.
But the demon laughed, like the whole thing was amusing. A low, rich sound that spread through the night like something blasphemous, something born from nightmares. His head tilted back, revelling in the carnage he created.
“Try me,” he drawled.
Then, with a single step, he was beside my mother—his hand curling around her arm carefully. Selene didn’t resist as she let him touch her.
“Better start cleaning up, Lucy,” the demon taunted.
He leaned in slightly, like he was about to share something intimately.
“But next time?” his grin spread wider—feral, all teeth. “I won’t miss. I will kill you. And the best part?” He winked. “I know how.”
King Draeven didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But the tension in his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils—he felt that threat. Deep inside.
The demon didn’t wait for a response as his shadows swirled around him and my mother, rising fast and heavy. And in a blink, they were gone.
It reached me too.
I felt it drag me down, icy fingers curling around my lungs, pulling me under before I could breathe. And then, there was nothing.
Chapter 33
RAVENA
“I need you to wake up, Cherry.”
I could hear him—his voice low, steady, grounding me. His presence wrapped around me like warmth after a long winter, familiar and safe. And beneath it all lingered that scent I knew too—clean, sharp citrus, like sun-drenched days and fleeting peace.
Power surges through me, electric and alive, and for the first time, I feel just how much was locked away. And instead of chaos, there's calm—a steady, stubborn pulse that roots me to myself. I feel whole. Fierce. Unbreakable. Finally, I’m the witch I was born to be
I can’t remember what happened, though, not clearly anyway.
“You’re alive.”
Xarothar's voice rumbled through my mind, and our connection lit up.
“Only just.”Even in the dark, I could feel the weight anchoring me down. My limbs were leaden, my ribs sore, and every nerve screamed. I ached in places I didn’t know I had.
“Better than dead.”
“Debateable.”
He huffed, that familiar, annoyed exhale that meant stop whining, you’re fine. My grumpy dragon.
“How the hell am I not dead?” I asked him, because I damn well should be.
