38. Skel

Isprawled out on the plush cream sofa as the candles in Darkmore”s office flickered, casting elongated shadows across the room. It was so homey, but even with his cozy ass office, I didn’t want to talk.

Darkmore stood behind his mahogany desk, his hooded, icy white eyes watching me with a mixture of concern and determination that pissed me off. I toyed with the white highlights in my black hair, a nervous habit I could never seem to shake.

“I’m not here for a lecture, Darkmore,” I retorted with a lazy drawl. “I’m here ”cause the council”s got their eyes on me, and my dad thinks I can still make something with myself. Fear demon rep Link is still hounding me about taking over, you know. Even after what I fucking did.”

Darkmore sat in his chair, crossing his arms. “I’m aware. He’s mentioned it before, actually. Link may have a point in wanting you to take over for him.”

My response was a nonchalant shrug. I didn’t care to take over. I swore my fucking scar over my right eye flared as I puffed on my fae pipe, the rainbow magic smoke curling into the air, a temporary barrier against the fear magic inside me that I constantly battled.

“You”re powerful, Grimshaw, but power without control is dangerous, and you have no control. The rest of the council would never agree for you to take his place,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Control?” I barked out a hollow laugh. “Look at me. I”m barely holding it together as it is, and you think I don’t know that?”

His gaze softened only a fraction. “You”ve caused fear in Pandora more than anyone else at this academy, even when you knew you were being too harsh. Do you think you deserve the position with how you treat other demons?”

The mention of Pandora sent a chill down my spine. I took a deep hit from my pipe. “Pandora…I’m… actually afraid of her and what she can do. Maybe I didn’t handle that right, but she scares me.”

“She scares you, or her magic does?” Darkmore quipped, and I glared.

“Her powers, obviously.”

“You know a lot of people are afraid of you because of your powers and what you have done,” he drawled, raising a brow pointedly.

I huffed, irritation flooding me. “I don’t give a shit.”

“Yes, you do. You hate how they fear you, but you’re doing the same exact thing to her.”

I flinched. He…he was right. I had been taking my fear of death out on Pandora. I loathed that people were afraid of me because of my power, but I literally did the same exact thing to her. It wasn’t as if she herself were scary or bad. She’s actually…not bad—for a noble. But her powers made my skin crawl.

I’d been so high that night she smoked with me that I hadn’t felt the fear, but when I woke up, I puked because of how close I had gotten to a woman who could claim my death in an instant. But that night I spent with her, meeting her little cat skull…I enjoyed myself more than I cared to admit.

He let out a pleased hum. “Has your sister reached out to you?”

Anger flared through me, the smoke from my pipe growing thicker. “Katherine”s too scared to come near me.” My words were laced with a mix of fury and hurt.

Ah, I see what I did to Pandora now.

“Why is that, Grimshaw?” Darkmore”s voice was gentle, probing.

My grip on my pipe tightened, knuckles turning white. He knew. “How do you know about that?”

“Your father and sister mentioned the village when they enrolled you here, but they spoke to me about it personally.”

My irritation was palpable as I blew out a plume of smoke. “Yeah, I figured they did. You know, even though I wasn’t a noble, others revered my fear powers. Demons in all surrounding villages thought I might even make it on the Demon Council because of the raw power.” My voice dripped with disdain. “But my power was always spilling out, uncontrollable. So, in an attempt to contain the flow, Katherine and I sought out a witch to help us, but she tapped into dark magic. Fucking stupid is what we were.”

“Can’t argue that.” He nodded for me to continue.

“Thanks,” I replied sarcastically. “It was a volatile and corrupting ritual that backfired and amplified my fear powers and tainted my fucking body, making it even harder to contain the fear powers,” I spat, anger rapidly simmering through my veins with the fae magic as I remembered trusting that fucking witch. “I didn’t want to be more powerful. I just wanted control of what I had!”

“Witches can be fucked up,” Darkmore soothed my anger slightly. “You didn’t know.”

“The relic Katherine found was supposed to be the solution,” I continued, voice growing quieter, heavy with remembered horror. “A demon in a nearby village had it and offered us the chance to try it. When it shattered, so did everything else.”

In a moment of weakness, I let the memory consume me—the wave of fear that had swept through that fucking village, the illusions so petrifying that they drove many demons to take their own lives. Only a handful of demons in that village had survived after the illusions of fear I had unwittingly unleashed faded.

“Katherine and I were close, once,” I whispered. “But after that, she looked at me with the same fear as our mother did. It broke whatever bond we had.”

“Katherine still loves you,” Darkmore murmured. “She told me that herself. She cares about you a lot.”

The uncaring void inside of me widened. A part of me sought redemption, control, but I was so numbed by the fae drugs that I couldn”t muster the effort to try.

As my anger surged, my fear powers slipped through the cracks, and Darkmore”s greatest fear materialized before us—an illusion so vivid that it shook me to my fucking core.

Pandora, utterly bloodied, chained by her ankle in a cellar, clutching a kitten skull in a pool of her own blood.

Oh, Fates. Oh, fuck. Fuck.

I fell off the sofa, stumbling roughly as I fled the room. Darkmore”s cry of emotional anguish chased me into the hall. I slammed the door behind me, hoping my magic faded quickly for him. My leaking magic caused havoc among the students, my own fears haunting me with visions of death, blood, and…chains.

I fell onto my ass, trying to calm my ragged breathing.

Was it real? The image of Pandora, bloodied and broken, was seared into his mind. A woman had lain dead beside her. It was too specific, too detailed to be a mere fucking fear.

I scrambled for my pipe and smoked it until I regained some semblance of control. Then, I grabbed my tablet and called Dad with numb fingers.

Nobody was in the hall. My fear had chased everyone away.

“Dad?” I choked on the word.

“Skel?” His voice soothed my panic. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“No—I, I lost control of my magic. I saw an illusion, and I think it was a real memory. It was so fucking specific. Can that happen?”

“It could be,” he told me. “If that person had experienced their biggest fear and are scared to experience it again.”

Maybe Darkmore experienced it with someone else, and he’s just scared it could happen to Pandora? But, fuck, Nebs was there. It seemed too real.

“Son, it’s okay. Whatever you saw was an illusion. Even if it happened in the past, it’s not happening in the present,” he murmured.

“Thanks.” I closed my eyes, but a new fear welled up inside of me—a fear that was the same as Darkmore’s. Thinking of her like that…it fucked with me. “Can I talk to Katherine?”

Dad murmured something on the other end, but I heard the faintest no from my sister. Instead of waiting, I hung up to deal with this shit on my own.