Page 133 of The Demon Court

His voice rose into a roar. “I said get away from her!”

They needed to stop arguing. They were fighting over the same thing. They all wanted to help her. And she wanted them to know that it didn’t matter. They couldn’t help her, so would they all just gather round so she could see their faces one more time?

She forgave her sisters. She forgave them for what they had no choice in and what they had to do. They deserved to know that before she left them forever.

Lust looked back down at her, and she realized it wasn’t rain tracking down his cheeks. Tears leaked out of his eyes as he hovered his hands over her body, never touching her with those dangerously sharp claws.

“Oh,” he breathed, the sound shuddering and sharp. “What did they do to you? Selene, my moon.”

His moon? She’d always been little moon, not his. Her thoughts were scattered.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” He slid his hands underneath her shoulders, carefully dragging her into his lap. “I figured it out. I figured out how to save you and if you had just waited just a few more minutes, I could have…”

He didn’t have to be so careful with her. She couldn’t feel anything, after all. Even the cold snow wasn’t sinking through the pain of the snakes wriggling underneath her skin.

She stared up at him with love in her eyes and struggled through the pain. “I—“

“Shh, don’t talk.” He pressed his lips to her forehead and her head rolled as though he were cupping it with his hand. “This is going to hurt, my moon. I cannot change how much it hurts, and I do not wish to harm you more. But we are running out of time.”

“Wa-it,” she swallowed, trying to tell him those three words that meant everything. Because he couldn’t save her. It wasn’t possible, and he had to know.

“She’s trying to say something,” Ursula called out, the crunch of ice suggesting she took another step forward.

His eyes flashed as he glared at her. “Take another step, sorceress. Your blood will stain this snow.”

“Let her speak. What if she doesn’t want you to heal her?” Another crunch. “What if Minerva was right?”

Those words apparently got through to him. What had her mother said to make his eyes look so hollow?

“Is that the way of it then?” he asked, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek. “Did you flee here to leave me? Was I so terrible that you found yourself trapped in my castle, and the only way to leave was this ruse of a curse? They want me to believe that, Selene. They want me to believe you did not want me.”

Oh, her love.

He had nothing to fear. Channeling all of her energy into the words, she whispered slowly, enunciating every word so he would not mishear her.

“I-“

Lust leaned closer, pressing his ear to her lips.

“Love-“

He reared back, his eyes wild and something dangerous flickering in their depths.

“You.”

He bared his teeth in a horrible snarl, but it was a victorious look. As though he had saved the world and somehow been handed her soul at the same time.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, and she felt his magic twist around her. It pulled at her heart, her soul, her very being, and a bubble of magic seared around them.

Like a shield, it grew, stretching in a wave of lavender light. Streaks of brighter patches glowed over her head and she had never seen anything so beautiful. She could hear her sisters pounding on the edges as though it were made of glass.

“They will not bother us now,” he whispered.

Her head lolled again as he shifted her in his arms. He turned her face to him, so he was all that she could see. And Selene was glad for it. She’d never wanted to stare at someone more than him.

Some of that terrible visage bled away, leaving in its wake a different man. Or perhaps she simply didn’t remember how softened his face could be.

Deeper laugh lines framed his face. Small crow’s feet spread around his eyes that suggested he’d smiled too much recently and marred that usually beautiful face. And those eyes, ah, those soft eyes that stared at her with so much emotion it made her heart ache.

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