Page 27 of How Does It Feel?

“Brainless humans. Dressing an assassin as a lady of pleasure. Though I suppose that was part of a weak-minded plan, to distract us with a fresh human whore.”

He kicked me hard in the chest with the bottom of his boot, and I fell backward, sprawled on my back in a helpless pile of blood and pain.

“Please—” I gurgled.

Hot liquid had begun to rise in my throat, slowly hindering my ability to speak. My back grew wet with puddled blood, and nearly as much covered my front. My vision came and went like a sadistic strobe light, and I closed my eyes in an attempt to steady it.

I felt no pain now; I suppose my body had gone into shock. I struggled to think of what I would do if this were one of my animals at the center, but the feeling of despair hung heavy on my soul. I knew it was too late. There would be nothing I could do to save myself from a wound like this.

At the sound of my gurgled voice, the giant devil’s eyebrows bunched slightly together as he tilted his head, looking at me with a confused expression.

I was almost dead, and he would be the last thing painted across my eyelids as I closed them forever. I could feel the sins from my past and the hopes of my future settling over my chest like a cloak of shadows.

I inhaled through my nose, coughing instantly. My chest, with all of its effort, struggled to rise and fall.

I estimated I had only three or so minutes until my heart gave out.

Faint voices and stomps echoed around me in the distance.

“Pack it up. Give the message to the queen. They obviously expected us,” growled the smoke-winged nightmare in a displeased tone.

“What the fuck happened!?”

“We opened the portal, and that landed on Prince Mendax. They were obviously more prepared than we thought they were.”

“Look at her! Did you see her reach out and touch the prince’s wings? Touched the shadows of the gods with her own damned fingers! I’ve never seen anyone so fearless of the Smoke Slayers in all my time!”

“Well, it’s only Mendax and the queen who are touched with the shadows now anyway. Blessed thing you stopped her, Fish. She was clearly an experienced assassin.”

“Skilled but no match for me blade—well, and Prince Mendax holding her. What we doin’? Just leavin’ the body? The wildwood creatures will eat her. Though her human cunt is still viable, dead or not.”

“Leave the human, it’d probably rot your dick off.”

“Yea. The queen and prince would bag me if they’d known I’d touched one of ’em. King Marco would’a let me. Hell, he’d have kept her for himself—”

“Don’t speak about my dead king unless you want to die alongside the human. Get moving! Leave the trash, the creatures will tear her apart before we make it back to the castle.”

The murmurs and footsteps slowly grew farther and farther away, but I was unable to tell whether they had left the area or if I had, in fact, just died.

I struggled to open a slit of my eyelids. The small act felt like the hardest, most laborious movement I’d ever attempted. The puddle of hot liquid I lay in quickly grew cold as the forest’s chill commenced. One of my eyes won the fight and opened for the briefest of moments. Only long enough to see I was alone in the dark circle of trees.

It looked similar but not as . . . happy as before I’d fallen. Several luna moths hovered on surrounding trees in significantly fewer numbers. Everything looked different. The forest trees looked older with more character, as if they themselves were monsters. The night felt darker and more malevolent even though the same moon spilled the same silvery-blue light upon the forest. Somehow everything felt scarier.

I was going to die all alone with only an eerie darkness and an overwhelming sensation that I was a sinking ship.

Something soft and spongey rested under my cheek. What had I lain on?

I had no chance of moving my hands, so instead, I attempted to move my head with the hopes I had lain on some magical key that would save me if I wasn’t already destined for death. I was only able to move my heavy head a few inches to the right.

My face lay on a destroying angel mushroom—how poetic.

It felt like someone was slamming a hammer into my heart. Thump . . . thump . . . thump.

It was too hard to breathe now. It was time. My heart was giving out; I could feel it. I could no longer swallow through the blood that rose in my throat.

If I weren’t already dead, I would be any second. It was harder to tell than I imagined if I were alive or dead.

I crunched a handful of dried leaves at my side and braced myself for death. My biggest regret was that I hadn’t seen my family again, Eli, Seneca—no, no, that’s not true.