Page 52 of Fallen Stars

She shook her head, trying to empty it of what she’d just seen. Picking up her pace, she twisted directions again, trying to lose the demon while also searching for Sofia once more.

She took up a sprint, the maze winding and twisting, the fog thicker and thicker as she tore through. She shrieked as she felt something tear at her dress, whipping her head around. Hands were stretching out of the hedges, nails curled and yellow, skin waxen and clammy as they rippled.

“Eli,” she screamed, whipping a shadow at the nearest pair of hands. She carried on, a stitch forming in her side as ragged sobs tore her throat.

“Eli,” she screamed again, scared to slow, scared to stop.

She tripped on a root, falling with a grunt to the pebbled floor. Sharp stones cut into her palms, burning. She turned her head, looking at the undergrowth beside her.

A bloodcurdling sound tore through her as Enzo’s dead, blank eyes stared back, his mouth agape as flies poured out of it. His face was half rotted, bloated with death and peeling off around one eye socket.

“You could have saved me,” he said, voice distorted as the flies buzzed and swarmed, his mouth hanging slack as he spoke.

“Enzo—”

“You could have saved me,” he repeated as a maggot crawled across his decaying nose.

She gagged, scrambling back as she forced herself up off the ground.

“Boo,” something whispered in her ear.

She screamed again, turning as Botis lunged upon her, his yellowed claws digging into her shoulder. The pain was unbearable, and she screamed anew, begging and pleading as his black tongue flicked out.

“Your fear tastes so delicious,” he hissed. “Just a lick, I’ll take. Just a tiny piece of flesh.”

He bore down upon her though she struggled against him, thrashing arms and legs at the demon. He tilted his head back and laughed, his sharpened teeth gnashing as he pushed her to the floor, the floor where she had just seen her soulmate’s corpse.

She squeezed her eyes shut, crying, begging and pleading.

“The rule was not to get caught, little Moon. And now that you are, you’re all mine.”

This couldn’t be happening. Not ten minutes into a dream and she had already been bested. She struggled, panicking against the weight that groaned on top of her, the demon whispering and rasping in a foreign language as he brought his mouth towards her throat.

Eli’s safeword was on the tip of her tongue. She couldn’t do this. How had she ever thought she had a chance in Ariete’s dreams?

She sobbed, all bravado gone. Perhaps she had been fearsome and deadly when it came to murdering a mortal, but something other? She was far out of her depth. She opened her mouth to scream the word ‘silvertongue’, to have Eli yank her out of these dreams.

The demon’s stench wafted to her, smelling of carrion as his tongue licked over her neck.

And that’s when she stilled.

“You could have saved me,” Enzo’s corpse had hissed.

Elara had been weak before. Helpless too, with no magick. And now she had it in abundance. She was agoddess.

And she was sickof her fate being left in another’s hands. Sick of those more powerful taking whatever they could from her. She had been Ariete’s prisoner once, she would not be this demon’s.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm, forcing herself to breathe even as the demon’s claws scraped against her clothes, attempting to tear at them.

This was a dream.

With gritted teeth, she envisioned a weapon being conjured in her hand. A sword. She didn’t know why a sword. She had never used one in the waking world, had no clue how to. Yet here, in this dream realm, its weight became heavy in her hand as it formed, its hilt hardening beneath her grasp, its blade tipping her wrist down.

Finally, she forced her eyes to open, the sight nearly making her give up entirely. Botis’s claw was drawing a cut upon her now bare stomach, his jagged claw forcing blood to well. The act, what she was seeing, suddenly didn’t scare her. It enragedher. Her flesh was not his to touch. To desecrate. He was so busy with what he was doing, his wholly black eyes glistening with appetite, that he did not see as she raised the sword, a scream on her tongue, and sliced it through his throat.

Black blood sprayed as the demon barely let out a sound. It pooled, small bubbles forming at the corners of his mouth as he wheezed and clawed at his throat and the blade impaled through it. He took one last breath before his black eyes dimmed, and he collapsed on top of herElara lay, the dead demon on top of her, gasping for breath, in shock at what she had just done.

She didn’t know how long she stayed there for, trying to will a semblance of calm into her veins as shock and fury made her shake.