e her relationship with Davian. Or make it seem tawdry. She had honest, soul-deep feelings for the king. And while they were difficult to reconcile, they weren’t crude or false. They sure as hell weren’t transient.
Before leaving, Michael said, “Think about what you’ve gotten yourself into, Jade. It could turn out disastrously for you.”
She wanted to throw something at the door he closed behind him, but the indisputable fact was that he was right. She continued to fume over the situation when it dawned on her that Michael shouldn’t be this far outside the village on his own. Grabbing her weapon, she raced out of the cottage.
“Michael, wait!” she insisted. “Let me get my coat and I’ll walk with you.” He didn’t slow down. “Michael! You stubborn ass—”
A sudden burst of flames made them both jump back. But Jade immediately regained her footing, thanks to her work with Toran. She rushed forward as the fire wraith appeared and lit the dark night. His horse galloped toward Michael, sending snow flying in every direction. The menacing poltergeist chilled her straight to the bone.
“Move!” she screamed at Michael.
The wraith’s mammoth beast was much too quick, though. The horse charged and its shoulder clipped Michael as it whizzed past him, hurling him to the ground with a sharp yelp of pain.
“Michael!”
Jade couldn’t get to him because the horse surged onward, heading toward her, its nostrils flaring and foam dripping from its bared teeth. She lifted the sword with both hands, prepared to fight. But a fireball expelled from the demon’s mouth and erupted against the tip. Searing heat surged down the blade to the hilt.
Jade cried out from the burn she received and dropped the sword. She fell to her knees and pressed her hands against the snow as agony lanced through her.
Without giving her time to catch her breath, the horse lurched. The flames around the cloak of the wraith and in his eye sockets vanished. Clothed in black, he was impossible to see, save for the spindle-fingered, skeletal hand that shot out of a sleeve.
With a death grip on her upper arm, he hoisted her onto his steed and the horse raced through the woods, his thundering hooves reverberating all around them.
The demonic beast cut a path in the dense forest. Tree limbs and needles lashed Jade, slicing her skin open in large gashes and shredding her sweater as she tried to shield her face. Terror seized her soul as the horse wove its way through the dense foliage with such speed, the surroundings became a blur. She closed her eyes and continued to battle the branches tearing viciously at her flesh.
Finally, they broke free of the woods and she opened her eyes—to find herself covered in blood. The brutal sting of her injuries stole her breath. It was difficult for her to get her bearings, until they reached a clearing that lay before an abandoned, stone-walled church that had been built high above a concrete monument. The house of worship had been set ablaze when the first renegade demons attacked the village, shortly after it’d been established. Every human who’d sought refuge there that night had perished, trapped inside.
Jade’s pulse raged in her ears as she stared up at the remains of the church. Flagstone steps led to the scorched steeple. Despite them being hidden by drifts, the horse she involuntarily rode reared and then pitched forward, taking the treacherous stairs with her on its back and the wraith floating weightlessly behind her.
She clutched strands from the horse’s mane to keep from falling. When they reached the landing, she had but a moment to look out at the stretch of land that edged the river and the forest beyond, at the base of the ridge where Davian’s castle sat. She screamed for him.
A heartbeat later, the wraith threw her from the horse, tossing her to the stone floor. With the roof burnt, there was a bank of snow coating the hard surface to help break her fall. But her blood stained the pristine white.
Her face and arms were slashed and she tried to concentrate on healing them, but she had no time. The wraith’s fingers wrapped around her neck and he lifted her up, only to launch her across the span of the church where her backside crashed against the remainder of a decayed wall.
Jade’s strangled cry of agony pierced the quiet night as she slumped to the floor again. She felt the blood flow along her nape from a laceration at the base of her head. And from her shoulder blades to her tailbone, it seemed as though every inch of her had been beaten to a pulp.
The pain was nearly crippling, but she attempted to stand. The wraith was not done with her. He hauled her up one more time and slammed her onto a pew made of granite. On her back, with the wind knocked out of her, she couldn’t suck in a breath, much less scream. Until the wraith’s razor-sharp fingertips grazed her skin above her left breast, slicing it open.
A shrill, terror-laden sound erupted from deep within her. The demon hovered over her as he seemed to penetrate tissue in search of her heart. Her eyes crossed. The torturous onslaught was so unbearable, she couldn’t detect a single ounce of her that wasn’t burning or throbbing.
“Jade!”
She heard Davian’s voice in the distance. Too far off for him to help her. Yet she whispered his name.
Her eyelids became too heavy to manage and they closed. A tragic death was not one she’d permitted herself to think of, but somehow, it seemed befitting of the world in which she lived—and the trouble she’d invited into her life months ago.
The wraith’s hand moved from her chest, but she didn’t bother to open her eyes to see what he was up to next. She could barely breathe, let alone fight him off. She wheezed and sputtered, finding it impossible to focus on one particular injury to heal first. They were all too severe, the damage ravaging her straight to the core, it seemed.
However, when the fiery sensations suddenly came from outside her body, her eyes snapped open. The wraith had taken his flame-edged form. His blistering heat melted the snow around her, including the layer on the pew. The water boiled and she howled as it seared her skin through her sweater. Her body convulsed with violent seizures, causing her to fall off the bench.
“Jade!”
Over the ringing in her ears, she heard Davian’s voice again and the unsheathing of a sword. She carefully maneuvered onto her back, finding a patch of snow and a hint of relief on her scalded skin as the cold penetrated the material covering her.
“Focus on healing!”
Staring up at the sky, she realized she had no desire to do as the Demon King commanded. A few minutes more and she’d black out. She was certain she wouldn’t heal enough in her unconscious state to ever wake. There was too much destruction to her body and no way to concentrate on the individual wounds.