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Felix. About the only thing I could do in this form was send mental projections to my emissaries.
I see it. Felix responded, crossing the room to join me. Careful not to touch my demon, he gently pried open one of Ryn’s eyes and the other.
I’d truly never seen anything as beautiful as the Thief splayed out before me. I’d had that thought before when this very sight came to me in a vision completed only when the second scrap of parchment had been found. I thought that it was a dream - not a premonition.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, freezing on lips that still appeared pink despite the cold that leached into her skin. The humidity that clung to me in sticky waves gave her a nearly opalescent shine as it froze like the frost from the first kiss of winter.
But those eyes captured both me and my demon the most. They were no longer a murky shade that failed to match any of the known shades for those who obeyed the cardinal tiers. They were a pure shade of silver - too luminous to be considered any shade of gray.
Eyes that as far as I knew had only existed on two others: Lucifer, and Ares, the late Arch Demonic Prince of Pride in Sanctuary.
My demon growled low in his chest. And despite her shallow rise and fall, the softest rumble was returned.
Chapter Twenty-Six - The Entity
Marrik
Storm clouds continued to crash overhead, drowning out the rumble in my chest. Lightning splintered the sky and burnt the grasses that surrounded us - flames licking their way across the world like a match to kindling. Even in her mind my Thief’s world responded to the power I exuded with destruction all her own.
Hail rolled in around us, the distant sheets moving swiftly to engulf the flames I grew around us. But my demon would have none of it, his power drawing up the flames from the ashes even where nothing flammable remained.
There was no Ness or Sister Brie this time. The soft autumn colors of muted golds and browns gave way to flashes of bright silver and the red and orange hues of my flames. The world splintered beneath our feet, great pools of wrath bubbling to the surface like magma from deep within the Earth’s core. My demon did not want to sit through another false dream. He would annihilate it, and if need be, rebuild her as he needed her to be.
The perfect emissary.
But she was already perfect. The way she responded to every taunt. The way she flaunted every curve in her utter defiance of any demand he had given her. The way she had fought back, even when the molten wrath that now threatened to tear her psychic world apart had licked up the arms that had held her physically captive. She hadn’t even been afraid to strike first when we first met in person.
This woman was a confusing dichotomy of sass, power, and intelligence. And if the Gods and hell would be fine enough to let me keep her, she would become the perfect emissary. Preferably without the demon tearing her down first.
Despite the absence of either Sister Brie or Ness, a twelve-year-old Ryn still stood across the clearing, her silver hair floating in a halo about her head, pushed in all directions by the winds and the flames surrounding her.
She walked closer, her steps less tentative and more robotic than I would have expected while silver irises shone out through her unfocused eyes. They reminded me much of the eyes of a newborn demon - attempting to take in and process far too much at once to be able to focus on any one thing.
This was no longer my Thief before me but something else entirely.
Her demon had finally risen to the surface.
“You’re destroying my world,” the childlike voice said, her head tilting to one side.
“I am,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Because it’s time for it to come down.”
“She needs it,” her soft voice replied, no inflection in its tone.
“Why?” I asked as I watched my flames flicker and lick at the edges of her body. But still nothing touched her, the flames inching away whenever she moved closer.
“Because she’s trapped here.”
“She’s safe here,” the demon replied. “Nothing can hurt her here.”
“She’s dying here.”
“Only her flesh.”
“I happen to like her in that flesh.” I replied, finding it extremely off-putting to be talking about death to someone who appeared twelve by all intents and purposes.
