9. Dexter

Icouldn’t shake the image of Pandora’s pretty face scrunched in agony. Why had her big red eyes widened in shock and betrayal as I lashed out at her with my shadows?

We were demons, and pain was nothing for most of us. Some demons even craved it, so why did she have such a strong reaction to it?

Fates, I really was a hypocrite.

I was a shadow demon that loathed pain, after all. Feeling pain, I mean. I didn’t give a shit about unleashing it on someone else. Since I struggled with hurting myself, hurting others was the only way I fed. But I’d never second guessed causing pain until her.

Part of me reveled in the power I had wielded with my shadows wrapped around her delicate neck. The way her pain and paralyzing fear had echoed through the room like a symphony of suffering had filled my magic reserves completely. It was a familiar taste, one that I had grown accustomed to over the years being an only child of the Shadowheart family.

My lips twisted in irony. Only child. It was how I was referred to by my parents, and it was a fucking joke.

I stepped under Occult Arch from the shadows, finding Bram and Skel already there.

“Dex, what the fuck?” Skel cursed at me as I swiped his pipe and inhaled all of the fae drugs I could from it.

“I need it more than you right now, dude.” I exhaled the magic into the air and managed another drawl before Skel stole it back and popped me on the back of my head.

“No, you literally fucking don’t,” he growled, anger simmering off of him and filling my reserves more. “You have no idea how much I need this shit to calm my Fates-damned magic. After the princess had such a fearful reaction to you, she filled me up. You know how dangerous that used to be? Well, it’s more fucking dangerous now.”

Skel had always had very powerful fear magic. So powerful that it literally instilled fear into all the demons he’d come across. What could he had done to make it worse?

I let the fae magic work through my system before blowing out the last of the smoke, feeling numbness in my limbs.

A part of me, a very small part, recoiled in horror at what I had done to Pandora. She had given me her first name so innocently, and I had hurt her more than just physically for the exercise. I couldn”t understand why I had even done it. She’d already fed my reserves with the immense wealth of negativity stemming from her. I didn’t have to hurt her to feed, but I did.

Her pain was the best I’d ever had. It filled my reserves completely—overfilled them.

Why was I even thinking this way? Why did I even care?

“How can a noble be so fucking weak?” Bram chuckled, stumbling as his back smacked against the rock arch for support. The throbbing pain from his back seeped into me.

I reached for his bottle of fae rum I’d gotten him and downed a quarter of it, feeling the burn in the back of my throat before tossing it back. “I asked the same question.”

Pandora was becoming my fixation. How had her mere fucking presence ignited such a strong desire within me? The red-eyed soul eater occupied every corner of my consciousness since Bram and Skel had bitched about her. After seeing her, though? Her image was seared into my brain like a beautiful brand.

And Fates be damned, she was beautiful.

Rum sloshed in the bottle as Bram caught it sloppily and glowered at me through bleary eyes. “Fuck you, man.”

“I got you the rum,” I mumbled with a pout. “Sharing is caring, ya know?”

Bram scowled, but he didn’t say anything else about the rum, so that meant I won. I mean, of course it did. How else would he get the rum?

Iwas the one with the fae market connections.

I’d been told more than once that I was incapable of forming genuine emotional connections with others. That had been true, except for with Bram and Skel. I wouldn’t say they were my friends, but they were tolerable. I didn’t hate them, and I seemed to have actually missed their presence throughout the years. Maybe they were my friends?

Whatever. It didn’t matter. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to shake the overwhelming need to possess Pandora, body and soul, since I first met her.

My thoughts twisted and turned like a labyrinth of madness as the fae drugs and rum ran through my body. On the one hand, I craved her with a hunger that bordered on obsession; the mere thought of her pain and negative emotions sent shivers of gluttony down my spine. Fates, they tasted so good. But on the other hand, I knew I would never truly be able to form an emotional bond with her.

Especially after my decapitations. The scar around my neck did more than give me character. It marred my psyche and dangled me above the brink of madness. Madness that felt so fucking good when I let it take over. It whispered to me in the darkest corners of my mind, taunting me with visions of violence and chaos that I never bothered to control.

Oh, Kalista, I wanted to ruin her.

“She’s just a pampered little princess,” Skel blurted, coughing on a fucked up inhale of the pipe.

“I’m sure Daddy has never let her get hurt, so you may have been the first to hurt her,” Bram slurred before chuckling. “How’s that feel, Dex?”

“There’s something more to her.” I tapped my nose before smirking. Maybe it was fucked up, but I liked seeing her tears drip down her rosy cheeks. The color of her blood was close to the color of her lips, and I wondered if they tasted like her pain. “And I can’t wait to find out.”

Skel sucked in another draw from the pipe and blew out a harsh breath as his eyes rolled back. “It’s her fucking fault that I have to get higher. My magic is itching to escape.”

“Already escaping, dude.” Bram’s eyes were shut tight, and his fear slipped out of him. Bet it was a spider he was seeing. He’d been afraid of them ever since one crawled into his pants leg on the first day of high school.

Skel gave a self-deprecating laugh before smoking more. “Fuck.”

“Oh, shit, I got you, dude.” I pointed a finger gun toward him and shot a couple of bullets into his chest. They ripped through, and sharp, white-hot pain exploded from the sight of entry. I ate his pain as his magic reserves healed him.

“Fuck,” Skel croaked, smoking again. “Thanks.”

“I’ll hurt you any time, you beautiful fear demon you,” I chuckled, shooting a few more bullets into the sand and watching the grains ripple.

“The chaos from your little stunt with the noble had my reserves filled, too,” Bram grumbled, but I knew that asshole loved it. Bram loved his reserves all filled up because he thrived on chaos more than any chaos demon I had ever met.

“There has to be more to her than being a spoiled noble,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes with the base of my palms before pressing them deeper into my sockets. “She’s riddled with pain and negativity. You don’t get that way from being spoiled.”

“Or she’s just weak,” Bram spat, eyes still shut tight as he leaned sluggishly against the rock arch like he could barely stand—he probably couldn’t. Fucker downed the rest of that fae rum like it was nothing.

Greedy demon.

“No fucking way that’s it.” I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the memory of the pain around my neck from Darkmore’s vengeance magic that had lashed out at me, giving me a taste of what my magic did to Pandora.

I didn’t fucking like it. Not one bit.

“Why do you think that?” Skel asked, puffing a few more times before letting out a gleeful sigh as he sank to the ground and splayed out on the sand.

“Darkmore.” I fell back onto my ass, thankful Occult Arch was big enough to provide immense shadows. It was fucking hot, and the shadows were where I felt the most at home. “He was protective as fuck over her.”

“What do you mean?” Skel peered over at me through slitted lids.

“He went vengeance demon on me. Cut my throat like I did hers, and he even slammed my ass back into my shadows.” My skin crawled at how invasive it felt.

The only person who had ever forced me into my shadows before was my father, and it sucked every time. My shadows turned against me every time it happened, and I was stuck with a thousand shadow tendrils embedded into my skin until my magic realized it was just me.

The decapitations were bad enough, but it was what they did before reattaching my head that fucked me up the most.

“Darkmore, huh?” Bram’s lips twisted into a sinister smirk. “Fucking nobles. Darkmore and Death are on the council together. He’s probably scared Daddy is going to kill him for allowing his precious daughter to be hurt.”

“Doubt that was it,” I mused, but a dark web of irritation formed around my chest. “He was pissed off on his own behalf.”

“Think he’s fucking her?” Skel asked, but his question was hollow—and it sent rage through my veins.

“Probably.” Bram turned over, and vomit spewed from his mouth before he rolled the opposite way.

I scrunched my nose at the putrid scent. “Maybe he is. I’ll ask. I see him Tuesday mornings at eight every fucking week until graduation.”

Bram wiped his mouth with his arm. “I have it Thursdays at five in the evening.”

“Fridays at six in the evening.” Skel’s eyes slowly fluttered shut.

“We all have Darkmore as a counselor?” I lifted a brow as their heads nodded in synchronized bobs. “That’s going to be so much fun.”

They both groaned in denial, and I found my lips tugging into a smirk.

Mandated counseling would suck, of course, but getting to feed off such a delicious demon made being sent to this Fates-forsaken academy worth it.