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Her hands ball into fists at her sides. “You are beneath me,slayer. You’ve always been beneath me.” The words are clipped and sharp. “Each kill was nothing but luck—you’re not even worthy of the title.”
Part of me agrees with that last part. Even though I decided to use it to my advantage against Elizabeth and any other who seeks to cut me down—a slayer isn’t who or what I am.
I open my mouth to speak, but in a blink, she has closed the distance, snarling inches in front of my face, a metallic odor on her breath. Nails filed into points, dig into my arms, piercing my skin. Rivulets of warm blood trickle down.
Heat slides over my right hand. Chancing a glimpse, I find my fingers gripping the night-forged dagger, plunged into her heart. Elise’s blood stains my hands and arms and is splattered down my front.
Horrified, I recoil, jerking back. My heel catches, and I stumble back against the wall. The winter chill has seeped through the stone and mortar and stings my skin.
The blood is gone.
Elise is gone.
Then, each light is snuffed out one by one until only the single flickering candle across from me remains.
Shadowy figures stalk toward me from all sides. Their shapes morph from human to demon, then back, each impossible to look at directly.
A growl rumbles beside my ear and turns my blood to icy sludge. The final light extinguishes as if by the sound alone.
Taloned hands brush over me. Too many to count. They skim down my arms, my legs, curl around my shoulders, and dig into my waist. One tightens its grip, piercing my skin and muscle scraping against my bones.
I can’t move. I can’t even scream.
The scent of my blood drives them wild. Their vicious claws pull me in all directions and into mouths with razor-sharp teeth that clamp down, ripping into me as they drink me dry.
* * *
I squint and blink until my eyes adjust. For a brief moment, I’m confused as I stare up into Della’s face. She studies me with dark eyes, sharp as that of a hawk. Graceful and beautiful. Deadly. And seeing far more than anyone will ever know.
She arches a brow in wry skepticism. “What in the Otherworld have you done to those demons?”
My body is heavy and my mind sluggish. I shift. And that’s when I feel them. Cherno and Asmod have both curled up against me. Cherno is tangled in my hair, while Asmod has snuggled up in the crook of my neck, with the lower half of their long body wrapped around my arm.
Della walks around the bed, tying the curtains back.
After some effort, I untangle myself from Cherno and Asmod. The two of them turn accusing glares on Della before burrowing under the blankets, warmed by my body. I slide my legs off the edge of the bed, letting them dangle as my eyes adjust to the light.
“You still look a demon’s ass,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “You bathed, at least. That’s a start.”
“A start to what?” I stand unsteadily on my feet as the last vestiges of my dream sluice off.
The details of my dream grow hazier with each passing second until I’m left with nothing more than an unsettling feeling.
Della ignores my question and crosses the room to my trunk. She digs through it, grabbing one of the first things that aren’t a set of training clothes.
Behind thick pockets of gray clouds, the sky is a sickly blue with washed out golds as the sun sinks lower in the sky.
“Get dressed,” Della orders, shoving a bundle into my arms.
“If this is your attempt at distracting me—”
“If I wanted to distract you, I’d set wild animals on you,” she says, cutting me off. Crossing her arms, she waits for me to do as I’m told. “We are going into the city to fit you for dresses.”
“I have—” I say, pausing in the middle of changing.
She snatches the shirt over my head before I can refuse, leaving me with no choice but to don the dress she selected.
“The queen is throwing a ball in three nights, the first of four leading up to the coronation, and you need something suitable for the occasion.”
