Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,101

a lurch of my stomach, and made out three figures hovering in the air in front of me, their forms lit by wavering orange light.

The light of my fire. Of my vast, violent blaze.

Thorn’s massive wings swept through the air, holding himself and the two men he was supporting aloft. Ruse had his arm stretched out to me, a desperation in his roguish face I’d never seen before. Snap’s eyes flashed brilliant green, wide and frantic.

“My peach,” the devourer said when I met his gaze. “Don’t go. I promised you I wouldn’t leave, no matter how upset I got—don’t you leave me.”

I wasn’t leaving. I was here, and I would still be here when the fire ravaged me to the bones and spewed me back into being. It was everything else, everyone else—couldn’t they see how rotten our worlds had become?

Omen’s voice echoed up from my memories. Remember everyone who’s for you.

Those words choked me up and provoked a fresh wave of anger at the same time. As the flames around me leapt and dipped again, another winged figure soared into sight.

It was Flint, but he wasn’t alone. He was holding… Vivi. My best friend, clinging tight to the warrior’s bulging arms, her face turned ashy and soot staining her typical white outfit. My pulse hitched.

She gave me a bright smile that was all too familiar. “Sorsha, you don’t need to do any more. You knocked those assholes flat. If there are any left, we’ll take them out, however many we need to, like shooting rats in a barrel of dynamite. But first let’s cool off and figure out where we stand. Please come down?”

Down. Down. Down to the place where my most recent lover’s corpse lay slumped; down to where the Highest’s horde stood waiting to lay judgment on me. My teeth gritted. Flames lashed around me.

But I couldn’t drag my eyes from the figures in front of me. As I stared at them, more images rose in my mind.

It was also the world where my devourer delighted in everything from extravagant hotels to a simple banana; where we’d discovered his capacity for desire together. The world where my incubus had offered every pleasure he could imagine to leave me satisfied, not just bodily but in mind and heart as well. The world where I’d fought side by side with my wingéd warrior while he let his strength buoy mine rather than supress it.

The world where my bestie and I had passed cartons of Thai food back and forth on her couch in front of our favorite cheesy movies, where we’d laughed and danced together and made plans for grand adventures we hadn’t yet seen through.

Could I burn down the realms and spare the few who held a piece of my heart? Could we even hold onto any of the happiness that had brought us together in the wreckage my raging fire would leave behind?

All those people out there, all the beings drifting through the rifts—so many of them had laughed and delighted, fought and loved too. There were so many other parents, other guardians, other lovers and other friends who’d be mourned.

Maybe some of them were monsters. Maybe we were all monsters. But that didn’t mean there was nothing good in us.

Scalding tears pricked at my eyes. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to spread nothing but pain through the realms. Who would I have to be furious with then except myself?

I could make Omen right about one last thing. I wasn’t like Tempest, not at all.

As the rush of heat beneath me dwindled, my fiery wings did as well. I glided to the ground, my body seeming to contract in on itself.

My clothes hung in singed scraps, my skin equally charred. When I shuddered in the sudden cool of the night air, the blackened bits fluttered off me like moulting feathers, revealing unmarred flesh beneath.

Even in the dim light from distant streetlamps, I could see that I’d scorched the parking lot around me to an even darker shade than the pavement had been before. Tempest’s ashes had dispersed in the inferno. As my companions drifted down to join me, my gaze came to rest on Omen’s slumped form, which had somehow held its shape.

His body lay on a streak of silver and iron. The heat of my flames had melted the crossbow bolt so thoroughly that the liquid metals had rippled across the lot to pool in a nearby pothole. His clothes, burnt into a solid