Page 174 of First Ritual

I had no choice.

I stretched power down my divination affinity to the block. I looked at her barricade through new eyes. She’d always been there—since birth—blocking my divination affinity. When I gained more power after the murder of my family, I’d mistakenly believed that I’d gained a new affinity. Really, I’d just been able to access the affinity when the demon was forced to retreat further down the channel in the midst of more magus power.

I spoke to her in my mind, I am aware that killing you would kill myself.

The darkness uncurled like a sleeping cat. Black mist rose from the creature like the swish of a tail, and two red eyes peered from the shadowy depths that concealed all else.

I knew those eyes.

When the darkness poured into me long ago in that car, these eyes had been there. They didn’t belong to the demon who’d killed my family that I’d believed possessed me too.

These eyes belonged to the creature that saved me—or saved herself as she bided time for her kind to arrive and exterminate magus.

The red eyes were unblinking. Unafraid. Angry.

That made two of us.

Because I’d finally discovered why Mother made me swear never to return to the Buried Knolls, and the reason was nothing like what I’d assumed. What she’d let me assume.

I lifted my chin, and spoke to the demon again, We need to talk.