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“No, Sarika. Don’t do this.”
She was erasing who she was. Surrendering the Sarika we knew and loved for approval. I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to do all this. She didn’t need to be afraid because no matter what, we would be there for her. We would be the legs she needed to stand when hers failed. We would be the shoulder to lean or cry on. We would be her family.
The words would never meet her ears.
Not here, in the place the witch created to torture Sarika and me in turn.
My eyes glassed over but I watched the way she looked like she folded into herself.
Someone yelped, falling forward and creating an unorganized pile of relatives as the seats toppled.
A woman appeared at the end of the aisle, her hand fisted in the shirt of a man I knew was Sarika’s uncle. She held him suspended, shaking him lightly before she tossed him, sending more chairs onto their sides and more relatives onto the lawn. Fire danced over black horns, evaporating the dark slickness on them. She looked sinister, grinning as she clapped her hands lightly, as though cleaning them of Sarika’s uncle before she strutted up the aisle.
Sarika’s eyes widened. “You!”
Krish reached for Sarika, but she pulled her arm out of his reach, taking a step toward the woman I knew was a demon. She may not have the red flesh I had seen on Asmodeus when he wore his horns, but the dark tail that swished behind her in rhythm with the sway of her hips and the horns that jutted from her brow told me that was exactly what she was.
Confusion moved through me as a sword appeared clasped in her palm. The woman — demon — swiped it through the air and black tar splashed off its tip. It landed on the crowd, awakening another flurry of yelps and shouts. The tar ate away at them, burning through them like paper.
The scene dulled around us.
What was happening?
Was this her nightmare? A forced marriage broken up by a demon?
“Sarika!”
The demon grabbed Sarika, throwing her over her shoulder before she turned and looked at me. Our eyes met and any relief I would have felt at finally being seen inside the scenes of our terrors was devoured by fresh fear. The look in her eyes was intense. Brimstone carved fiery lines in their darkness as the corner of her mouth quirked.
“Eden.”
And then came the darkness.
41
EDEN
The sensation of being pulled in a thousand different directions at once made my heart beat so fast in my chest it felt like it was vibrating. Parts of me were still there, held in the body that was always mine. Contained by the skin I knew. The rest of me felt cast in stone. Frozen. Trapped.
I screamed but nothing came out. My voice didn’t know which parts of me it belonged to anymore. The screams from my family bounced around inside my mind making it feel like a cage I couldn’t escape.
All this because I didn’t know when to put a glass of wine down.
Three. That was going to be my new limit. Three glasses was more than enough to ride the tipsy without doing anything I would regret. Like accidentally marrying a demon and bringing his vendetta with a witch to my doorstep.
Hindsight was twenty-twenty and all that.
A voice boomed in my ears. It was painful as it recited. It pulled me back to that night we all knelt around my coffee table, wine glasses in hand as we read from a book we had no business messing with.
An incantation or spell. Something I knew wouldn’t be good for me.
With each word I felt a pulling.
The darkness around me dulled becoming a deep grey. It flickered and snowed like an old TV trying to find the right signal before someone banged an angry hand against its side. There was nothing to bang so I blinked slow and hard and hoped with all I was that when my eyes opened, I wouldn’t be in this hell anymore.
My eyes opened and there she stood.
A woman.
