Page 202 of Scourged
Shawth turned to the creature, his eyes alight.
“With the blood of the usurper, may the true god be set free.”
The demon snarled in feral delight.
My light?—
The words were frozen on Lisabel’s lips as the demon’s serrated claw pulled a jagged line across her throat, biting deep into the delicate flesh. Dark, ruby blood burst from the wound, splattering theaberrantbelow the platform in a violent, macabre waterfall of death.
When her mother’s lifeblood met the cursed stone, Mariah erupted.
Chapter 70
The beast consumed her.
It tore through Mariah’s skin, unleashed by her rage, her pain, her regret and anguish and love. A thing of light and fire, scorching through her veins, turning her blood to molten lava and her bones to ash.
Once everything within her was burned and destroyed, the beast began to build and change.
There was pain. So, so much pain. Her bones reformed into pillars of steel, shifting and cracking and changing beneath her skin. Her flesh hardened, stretching across those new bones. She was dipped into fire, forged into somethingother.
Her hands lengthened, extending out across the gardens, the cuffs on her wrists snapping easily. Her neck elongated, turning serpentine as she arched toward the sun blazing high above. Light burned her, burnedaroundher, as she shifted. Talons took the place of her feet, leathery membranes unfolding down her arms and connecting to the skin along her sides.
Mariah thrashed in pain as her tail erupted from the base of her spine and scraped across the grassy footing. Behind the pain, the gardens grew small, the tang of blood and fear filling hernostrils. She stretched, and her arms—wings—nearly spanned across the gardens, shadowing the gathered crowd.
She gave herself further to the beast, losing herself to her heartbreak and the burning pain.
When the blinding agony stopped, the roar of a great silver-gold dragon tore across the Khento castle gardens, and the earth shuddered.
Everything was so much brighter.The world more vibrant. Sounds echoed against her ears; smells inhaled through deep, powerful lungs.
The smell of her mother’s blood was the worst of it. Sweet, tinged with a trace of silver moonlight, that single drop of magic Lisabel had carried and hid from the world for so long.
As terrible as the smell was, the sound of it dripping onto the vile, black stone was worse.
Mariah’s claws scourged deep rivulets into the soft soil beneath her. She reared up on powerful hind legs, her body crashing into a riser. Her great, leathery wings, shimmering with silver and veined with gold, spread wide. Her lips pulled back from wicked sharp teeth, and with all the anger and pain in her heart, she roared again, so loud it shook the walls of the castle behind her.
The people quaked. Cries of terror and pain filled the risers, and the crowd rushed to escape her wrath. Those in the riser nearest her were crushed beneath the weight of metal and stone, the tang of their blood mixing with her mother’s sweet scent. A few still cried meekly from the rubble, left for dead by the other fleeing attendants. Guards—both human and demon—raced to block the exits, filling the air with more panicked shrieks.
Mariah paid no heed to any of it.
She was still focused on the slowdrip, drip, dripof her mother’s blood against the stone.
She took a lurching step, the soft earth giving freely beneath her talons, her wings crashing more of the risers to pieces. A black-haired man appeared before her, gazing up at her with a look of awe and pity and devastation.
Mariah knew him. Would always know him, no matter the form she took. He was as familiar to her as the silver-gold magic whirling freely through her new body, set free from invisible chains, unleashed from the confines of mortality.
She was still here, but she was also no longer the same. Everything had changed. She still felt that mortal part of her, buried deep within. But the woman had retreated, content to let the beast decide the fate of her world.
At her feet, the familiar, beloved man—Andrian, her mind told her—was speaking. He gestured at the cuffs on his wrists. On instinct, Mariah reached for the bridges in her mind, the ones meant to bind her to this world.
And was met by black and gold adamant.
Renewed fury flooded her, and with a snarl, she sent a burst of magic down those bonds, smashing the walls holding them from her to bits.
That substance was made to bind mortals; it was never meant to withstand whatever she was now.
The cuffs on Andrian’s wrists snapped. His bond roared to life, along with six others beside it. They filled her mind, shouting and roaring and calling her name.