Page 238 of Psycho Gods

I blinked.

John’s image changed.

A cape of darkness was draped across his shoulders and blew on a phantom breeze. A jagged crown sat atop his dark curls and his eyes were pools of darkness. His features were hard.

There was nothing boyish about him.

I blinked.

The crown and cape disappeared, but his rage remained.

Scorpius’s grip on my neck tightened, and I choked on air.

Betrayal mixed with asphyxiation, and suddenly it hit me—I’d had enough.

Kicking out and flexing with all my might, I ripped my neck out of Scorpius’s grip and climbed to my feet.

I stalked toward the man I thought I loved.

Chest to chest with John, I asked him, “What are you talking about?” He’d taken off his combat boots to stitch a foot wound, but I still had mine on.

We were eye to eye.

Up close, John’s darkness shimmered. Ice spread across the side of his face where I breathed on him. His expression was severe.

A stranger stood before me.

It wasn’t John who answered my question.

Scorpius’s voice was cruel behind me. “I heard what you said to Sadie.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“You shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations,” I replied, still facing John. “I don’t owe you any explanation for something you weren’t meant to hear.”

“Please,” Scorpius spat. “Save your excuses.”

John’s frown deepened.

Malum made a strangled noise.

Ice expanded out from me like an infection. Scarlet flames leaped higher in my peripheral vision.

A soldier whistled, and I jolted as I remembered where we were. Someone’s amputated arm was lying on a silver tray a couple feet away. Doctors and soldiers were staring at us with open mouths.

A tension headache throbbed in my left temple.

“I’m not doing this.” I stalked out of the medical barracks. The freezing wind slammed the door shut satisfyingly behind me.

I only made it a few steps into the blizzard before I was picked up and thrown over a flaming shoulder like a sack of grain.

My mind flatlined, and I hung limp.

Snow whipped around the realm in a frenzy.

I slammed frozen hands across Malum’s flaming back, cobalt blue streaming from my fingertips as trails of ice covered his coat.

The world was viciously cold and angry.