“I’m not done burning yet.” My voice shook, but the words held steady.
He smiled again, the kind of smile that promised I hadn’t even glimpsed true pain yet. “We’ll see.”
He turned to Zinlia, who had moved closer, silent as ever. “Take her back, let her rest. She’ll need her strength when I decide to finish what I started.”
Zinlia bowed once. I wanted to pull away when she reached for my arm, but my body felt sore, each movement stinging, fragile and sharp. I let her guide me, though my eyes never left the Demon King.
He watched me go, crimson gaze alight.
“Tell me, little flame,” he called after me. “When you see my son again, will you still believe it’s you he wants, or only your fire that makes you useful.”
I stopped, every instinct screaming not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
But I turned anyway.
“If all he wanted was my fire,” I said, my voice low, raw. “He wouldn’t have taught me how to make it burn bright enough to fight back.”
Something unreadable flickered across his face, annoyance, amusement, maybe even curiosity.
He waved a hand, dismissing me as if I were smoke.
Zinlia’s hand still gripped my arm when the sound came.
A deep, concussive slam shuddered through the floor and rattled the torches along the hall. The air itself seemed to crawl back in fear, waiting for the next strike.
Zinlia stopped mid-step. Even her calm fractured for a second, her gaze flicking to the doors at the far end of the main hall. The heat around us shifted, darker, hungrier.
Another crash followed, louder, closer, followed by the shriek of metal being torn apart, demons being ripped to shreds.
The Demon King turned, half-way across the throne room, crimson eyes narrowing.
“Ah,” he murmured, voice thick with interest. “It seems our guest has found the door.”
Zinlia’s grip tightened, a silent command to move, but the King raised a hand. “Bring her back.”
Before I could protest, Zinlia obeyed. Her hold was firm but not cruel as she steered me to stand once more before the ruined throne. My thigh burned, the wound pulsing intensely, black veins whispering against my skin, faintly hissing under the stress of magic in the air.
The great doors to the main hall shuddered again. One of them buckled inward, the ancient hinges shrieking.
And then, for a single heartbeat, silence.
Shards of iron and splintered stone screamed across the room as the door exploded. The air filled with crimson light, threads of liquid blood coiling and slithering through the dust like serpents. They sliced through what remained of the doorway, curling and retracting in elegant, lethal precision.
He stood framed by the ruins, every inch of him the storm I remembered.
Malakai.
Power radiated off him in waves, thick enough to taste. His jacket was torn, the fabric wet with blood, but his posture was relaxed, confident andunbothered. He looked like he’d stepped out of a battlefield he owned.
His eyes found me immediately and for a heartbeat, everything else ceased to exist. His gaze swept over me, lingering on the torn sleeve, the bruises, the faint smoke curling from my palms. Then lower, to my thigh, where the wound throbbed under shadow slicked skin.
His expression didn’t change. But the air around himdid.
The crimson threads pulsed once, then shimmered into blades sharp enough to sing.
“Ah,” the Demon King said softly. “My son.”
The words had me freezing.
