Page 117 of Demon Food

PAIN—big mistake that I regretted immediately. But all I could do was wait until it passed. Until it subsided enough for me to unclench, one muscle at a time.

I blinked my eyes back open but not much came into focus. It was like cotton was fielding my vision in tones of white and gray, like the color had been bled from the room.

Feloré. My thoughts immediately rushed to him, but I couldn’t smell anything or feel anything. I couldn’t even fucking see.

I rubbed my eyes, squinting around my room. It was possibly evening outside. Those were maybe beams of a setting sun? Had I been asleep that long?

I wet my lips. “Felor⁠—”

A piercing throb thrashed down my throat, and I flinched back, gritting my teeth, hunching my spine because there was no other choice but to remain very still until it eased.

“Shh, don’t try to speak,” said the sweetest human voice I’d ever heard, and it dissolved my heart. “I’m right here, my prince. I’m right by your side.”

I patted around for his hand, smoothing my fingers down his arms until I found it, where I curled his fingers inside mine.

“Do as I say, okay? Close your eyes.” His voice was soothing but underscored in fear. Like he was frightened by whatever he saw. “Try to keep them closed.”

My eyes stung, watering as I did my best. I flinched at the wet warmth of something sponging against one of my eyelids. Then I realized it was a washcloth, and he was wiping gently downward.

The muscles of my face relaxed as he continued, dipping it into whatever basin he had in here and softly sponging my other eye, slow and methodical.

“Is that any better?” he asked, cupping my face. There was so much worry behind his words that I wanted to reassure him that there was nothing to be fearful of. “Try again. Try to look at me.”

I clutched my palms over his, squinting as I blinked my eyes open. The light felt like it was pressing into my skull as his outline came into focus first—a blur of strong angles and sweeping lashes and colorful copper hair.

Then his face came into focus. Gradually.

His eyes. His nose. The curve of his cupid’s bow. And finally, the whole picture.

Backlit from the windows, he looked like some sort of a divine creature with the white in his hair rolling over the red like a fiery, tunneled wave. My heart bloomed at the sight of him. Pride swelled in my chest. Mine. My human.

I parted my lips to tell him how I couldn’t wait to see the sunlight in his hair, but the pain in my throat nagged at me like a schoolmaster.

So, I smiled instead as I silently mouthed, “Hello, Snow Fox.”

He blinked. His expression was ashen and confused. It was filled with so much distress that my smile slowly faded. I’d only just reached out to palm his cheek when I noticed it.

My fingernails. My knuckles and the creases in my hands—they were caked in sticky red.

But it wasn’t just my hand. It was both of them. It was my forearms, shoulders, and chest.

“It’s blood,” he said. “You’re coughing up blood, Alek.”

I…was. Or, I had been. The faint sting of copper in my mouth was further proof. I’d never done that before. I’d never spent so much time projected outside of my body to the point where I was truly distanced, shielded from whatever horrors my body was suffering so that I could stay there with him.

Because I wasn’t about to fucking leave. Not when it had been one of the greatest gifts ever given to me.

Last night, I got to experience something I never thought I’d get. I got to be the reason he shattered. Me. And then I got to be the reason he was pieced back together, one little bit at a time. Yes, there was a heaviness in my bones today that I couldn’t ignore. Yes, there would be consequences to pay, but consequences be dammed, I knew what I was doing.

If only I wasn’t a prisoner of my shredded throat, I would explain it to him. Explain how I did not regret one second.

But I couldn’t. So, I offered him my most heartfelt smile and shrugged.

His eyes grew even wider and somehow more tormented as he bolted forward, cupping my face in his hand. “Alek. Fucking Alek, did you not hear me? Do you not understand how perilous this is? You’re coughing up blood. Blood.”

I nodded.

“Then why are you not angry?”