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A gust of wind, sharp as a saw blade, slammed him against the back wall. He slid down, a grotesque heap on the bloodstained floor.
Golden blood poured from his ruined eye socket. The eye itself dangled, grotesquely tethered by torn muscle and nerve.
Peri didn’t move. Not at first. She forced herself onto her elbows, breath heaving, watching.
He didn’t stir.
Shaking, she crawled toward her satchel, hands fumbling. The room spun, her vision blurred, but she found the whistle.
Please.
She’d tried calling Zila before, to no avail.
Please don’t let her be lost to me.
Her fingers closed around the hilt of her knife. The haze of molten fury dragged her forward, back to Valus.
He lay sprawled, his body bloodied, half-dressed. Still alive. It would take far more than this to kill an Ascended demon.
But he would suffer.
Peri swiped a sleeve across her face, smearing tears, snot, and golden blood together. Her body trembled, her breaths came ragged. But she forced her hand steady.
She raised the knife—slashed down and a squelching crunch filled her ears.
She had aimed for his pinky but had instead mangled three fingers. A frustrated scream tore from her lips. She struck again, harder.
This time, she severed two fingers clean. The third she left behind, half-destroyed.
A mark. A warning. A payment.
She hadn’t thought she could truly hate someone but she had been wrong.
The severed fingers were wrapped in a nearby silk scarf. Her gaze flickered back to Valus’s ruined face, to the eye still dangling from its socket. Why not? With a quick, brutal slash, she severed it completely and tucked it away in the cloth with his fingers.
Clutching her stolen trophies to her chest, she staggered back to her bag, her breath hitching.
Please.
Please, Zila. I need you.
She picked up the whistle and blew—short, desperate bursts.
Again.
Again. And again. She blew until her lungs burnt and her breath dissolved into ragged sobs.
She was still desperately forcing air through the whistle when a warm, wet tongue swept across her cheek.
She gasped.
Zila had come for her.
And behind her hellcat, silent as the night, stood Hemlock—his fury-filled eyes sweeping across the wreckage of her blood-soaked bedroom.
“You’re here,” Peri choked out, reaching up towards her hellcat. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”
Zila nuzzled her, and warmth flooded down their psychic bond, a comfort so fierce it nearly brought Peri to her knees. “I’ll always come when you call, little hellion.” Peri sucked in a sharp breath as the words curled into her mind, solid and real. “Hemlock discovered that they were planning to give me to Valus and then he claimed me first.”
