was incessant, the words never stopping, not until you started talking to me. At that point, it wanted me to kill you, but when you wanted to come and see it, it seemed to think that was a good idea and quieted down. I think it’s more focused on you now.”
Or he’s just trying to hide the darkness within. The darkness that is crawling within him from freeing you, that you never even noticed, the wound that never healed that you didn’t even care enough to try and heal with your magic, witch. Her eyes dipped to my chest where she knew the wound was, and I could almost feel her assessing it. Before she could ask about it though, the demon voice began speaking again. You poison everything you touch. The mirror realm healed when you left. You were the reason it was being torn apart, the reason it was decaying. Look at what’s happened to your companions since you joined up with them. The banshees wouldn’t even let you stay. They knew the darkness that infected you would just spread to others.
“I’m going to try something. I need you to step back and not worry about the noises I’m about to make,” she said seriously, pinning me with a stare that brooked no argument.
I did as she asked, and Mae turned to the head and walked around to face the demon at the back. She raised her hands and flames shot out, hitting the desiccated flesh of the head. The thing laughed as Mae let out a screech of pain and the cuffs around her ankles and wrists began to glow a bright blue.
The screech of pain turned into a scream of fury though, and the flames turned a bright white as they continued to pour from her hands. As though that wasn’t bad enough, the demon voice that had been echoing around in my head was shrieking as well. The howls and cries that were leaving her became too much to bear, and I ran to her, unable to withstand another moment.
Without thinking about it, I tackled her to the ground as I shouted, “Stop, Mae. You don’t need to hurt yourself for me.” I wasn’t sure if she heard me over the cries of pain she was letting loose, but the fire that had been flowing from her slowed and stopped.
As soon as I moved off her a little, she pushed into a sitting position and lifted her hands, grabbing my arms and shaking me just a little as she demanded, “Why did you stop me?”
“Because I don’t want you in pain on my behalf,” I said as I shrugged out of her hold, pushing back until I was kneeling. When her hands came away, there was a rush of pain to the area she’d been touching. I must have winced or something, because her gaze dropped from mine to the place on each arm where she’d been holding me.
“Gods, Alastair, I’m sorry.”
I looked down and saw handprint shaped burns on my arms where the material of my shirt had burned away, and all that was left were the ashy edges around the holes.
“I shouldn’t have touched you.” Her eyes seemed to ping pong between the burns on my arms and the wound in my chest, and I knew she wasn’t just talking about the burns. When no snide remark came from the demon voice, I looked over to the table where it had been positioned and saw that it had been reduced to nothing but ash and fragments of bone.
The pedestal it had been sitting on had burned away to nothing as well, revealing a hidden compartment within that held the piece of the Horseman’s skull that I’d been searching for when I came into this infernal tent. As much as I wanted to go and grab it, Mae was more important in that moment.
She was trying to pull away from me, to shimmy out from under me and put distance between us, but I wasn’t about to let that happen. I reached out and snagged one of her hands, pulling her into a hug. Quietly I whispered, “You’re not poison. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”
When we broke apart a few moments later, she watched me, her eyes searching my face for any signs of betrayal. She would find none. I meant what I said. I also knew she wouldn’t question it overtly, not with me at least, since I always