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“From your expression, I suspect you have, just what I thought,” he replied. “Ever wonder what it is?”
“My fucked up version of conscience?” I asked, a sweet and bitter edge to my tone.
“If that is your conscience, then my Little Thief, you are going to have problems,” Marik replied, his voice carrying a touch of amusement.
“Then what is it?” I questioned, a sense of unease settling in as the entity deep inside me grew eerily quiet.
“Your demon,” he replied, his words dropping like a weight in the air, revealing a truth I had suspected but never fully acknowledged.
“My what?” I screeched. The entity inside scraped claws down the inside of my chest. That was a first, and I hoped for a last. Another internal eyeroll from deep within.
Apparently, the eye rolling was back again. Great. Just great. Just waiting on the pig pen again and we’d be cooking with gas.
“You’re a demon, Aeryn,” he said to me. “It's why you’ve been able to hear my growls. Those were specifically designed for demons. And how we’ve been able to speak on multiple occasions psychically - we’re able to form those mental pathways because of our demons.”
I wanted to argue with him - rail against what he was saying. I should have felt more shocked, more out of sorts with his proclamation. A fundamental truth I had lived with my entire life was crashing down harder than the London Bridge, which should have utterly shattered me.
But it didn’t. A part of me had always known I wasn’t a normal caster. It was as if I had to be convinced. Finding out I wasn’t one was like letting go of a lie I had never wanted to hold onto in the first place.
I was a demon. The entity inside me wasn’t just a figment of my broken psyche. It was real, and it was there. It was a part of me.
The memory I’d been stuck in began to play out again. But this time, I watched it with different knowing eyes.
“Your demon is quite strong - you shouldn’t be able to sift through shadows at twelve,” Marik said as my adolescent body disappeared into a cloud of smoke.
“I don’t understand how I did it then - I can’t do it now,” I admitted, a hint of frustration in my voice.
“You can, and you just need to learn again. It’s a difficult skill, and most demons can’t manage it. But I’ll teach you,” Marik reassured, his voice carrying a mixture of patience and determination.
“Why was I able to do it there?” I inquired, a puzzled tone in my voice as I sought to unravel the mystery of my past actions.
“You demon was extremely close to the surface that day. I suspect she directed you to leave the castle to look for a hellbeast.”
“Why would she go looking for a hellbeast?” I asked skeptically.
“All hellbeasts are created by Lucifer, and despite having primary essences of their own are all tied to pride. You being a demon of pride are naturally drawn to them, and them to you.”
“Pride? I thought pride was banned from Earth!” I cried, my inner turmoil evident.
“We thought it was. Until you came along, my Little Thief.”
My head swam with this new information. “So, you’re saying that I am not a caster but a demon. And not just any demon, but a demon ofpride. The essence that no one on this planet should be able to control. And to add to it, my inner entity, who I just found out was a conscienceless creature of pure sin, led me to make a series of stupid mistakes that ended up killing the only woman who was ever an actual mother figure to me. Do I have that right?”
“More or less,” Marik replied, his eyes searching mine with wariness.
The hole in my chest split ever wider. Knowing that I hadn’t been in full control of that situation made it worse. How could I possibly know that my demon wouldn’t one day do something even worse and cost me so much more?
The pure agony was near suffocating.
“And I don’t get how I can control virtues as well. If I’m this…thing, how can I control them?” I shut my eyes, a frustrated tear rolling down my cheek. “It was enough to think I was a freak of a caster, but now I’m also a freak of a demon. The only demon in the entire world to control not only Pride but virtues as well.”
“We all have our crosses to bear, so to speak,” Marik replied. “And you aren’t alone with the virtues.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Marik sighed deeply. Rather than answer, he raised his palm, and before I could say anything else a small ball of glowing lavender appeared. I stared at the ball of pure humility, mesmerized by the tiny filaments that burst back and forth within their confines like tiny bolts of electricity. I raised my sixth sense to verify it wasn’t some mental manipulation. But I could tell immediately it wasn’t - the tiny traces of lavender humility starkly contrast to the bright metallic hues of the wrath he held beneath his skin.
“How are you doing that?” I asked, dropping my sixth sense as he closed his palm, reabsorbing the virtue into his skin.
