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“No, Gol’gonaar,” I say his true name calmly, “you will be the one who bows.”
For the first time I see true fear register on his face. Right in time, too, as I press down on his chest, my hand sinking through until my fingers grasp and clench around his beating heart.
“I name Gol’gonaar,” I pronounce, “and claim his spirit in sacrifice.”
I squeeze his heart in my fist and crush it. Then, the flesh in my hand disappears as the space between realms opens up.
My vision schisms like a kaleidoscope. Power pulses behind my eyeballs, and I give in completely. I am only spirit again and the most powerful in the room. This weakened spirit I hold in my hands will go where I take him. Where I drag him.
He only thought he was the strongest because he picked on those who were weaker before. Like a bully in a playground.
But I cannot waste time, even though here in this space, time feels like nothing at all. Time is just a silly construct humans made up to file away their lives. First this, then that. But there is no forward or backward here.
There’s only now. Always now.
And now, I will send the devil to the darkest, coldest, most remote hell I see in the kaleidoscope of realms. There are no other beings to conquer there. It is a void, and there are no pathways back. It is a lonely place for souls who deserve no better.
I press down with my will, and Gol’gonaar’s spirit is siphoned through what I can only liken to a cheese grater to the portal I desire him to go to. I hear a brief scream of disbelief, but that’s all. The being who has tormented my husband and his family is finally gone.
Chapter Twenty-Six
PHEONIX
10 Years Ago
I sit on my bed, staring around my pink room and thinking about Layden. Missing him feels like all I do lately. I think I’ll miss him forever. I shouldn’t have sent him away like that. I’m wracked by grief and guilt one second and then sure I did the right thing the next.
I miss him so badly. I grab my phone and check it for texts, but of course, there are none.
I didn’t think missing someone could hurt this much. I miss my parents, yeah, but that missing just feels like a dull ache. I was a kid back then and didn’t understand what was happening. This is fresh and hurts in my lungs. And my stomach.
I look at the clock. 9:12 at night. Almost time for another long night of tossing and turning, unable to sleep. I slump down on the bed and pull a blanket over me.
I miss the stupid moments, like when we’d stay up late in the computer lab and he got so excited learning about some new programming trick. He was always so enthusiastic to show off to me. Like a kid, but at the same time, there was never mistaking him for anything but a man.
I ache for him in places that remind me I’m a woman. Not that it will ever matter now that I’m doomed to be alone.
I pull the covers up over my head and close my eyes. They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, right? Maybe I should be feeling lucky to have ever had him in my life. Because we had so many good times together.
Like the night we stayed up late talking last week and he told me what really happened the day Sabra actually managed to send his spirit back to his realm. When he talked with the angels.
He hadn’t told us the whole truth that day when he got back. He saved it and shared it only with me. Because he trusted me. He trusted me, and then I hurt him so badly. I try to push those thoughts away and focus just on the memories; those are all I’ll ever have of him. An ache stabs at my stomach even as I remember.
“It was a beautiful place. More beautiful than I can even describe,” he said, his eyes getting a faraway look of wonder. Layden was usually incredibly handsome, but in that moment, as we sat on his bed together, he looked practically beatific. Like an angel carved from marble himself.
“What was it like talking to an angel?” I asked.
“She was so bright I had to shield my eyes. And I was also sort of floating because I was out of my body. She knew me. She called me a creature of the thief and asked if I was a thief too.”
“The thief. You mean your father?”
He nodded. “They knew my father well. I could barely answer her. I kept stuttering because she was so overwhelming. The whole place was…” He drifted off, his eyes still lost in the distance before coming back to me. “It was just the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. So full of light.”
I felt a pang in my heart then, because I knew that was the kind of place he belonged. And here I was, dragging him down into my darkness. “I’m so sorry your father ever took you away from there.”
Layden shook his head. “I was born on earth. He’s a thief because he stole the spark of life to create my brothers and me in a forge here. But to know that any part of me came from there…” A soft smile lit his face. “After feeling so monstrous my whole life…”
“No part of you is monstrous,” I interrupted with feeling. And I knew then that I couldn’t keep him here even if I couldn’t admit it out loud. It would be wrong. No matter how I felt about him as we both sat there together on his bed, our thighs so torturously close to touching.
