"You think things like us have any place out there, Saph?" Amber's voice spat viciously in the darkness. Saph had never heard her like that before...so devoid of warmth. Amber's image in her mind was cracking. Bright eyed, hope-filled Amber. The woman who could pull her from the depths of anguish with a grin.
"Amber...you swore to me."
Promised that they'd make it out together. That they were more than what he said they were.
Amber said nothing.
Shock made its way through Saph's body like a sickness. Her wet clothes clung to her and made the cold night press around her suffocatingly. Amber's words of betrayal echoed in her skull emptily as she hung in the air, icy claws cutting into her arms.
"So you've chosen him," Saph finally whispered, head hanging. "What did he bait you with?"
The only person she trusted with her life, with her soul, was somewhere beyond her in the night, turning her over to the man that had made their lives hell. Not being able to see her traitorous face almost made it worse.
Amber ignored her question.
"Your place in the shadows awaits, Saph. Demons don't belong anywhere else."
Saph's insides were ice now, colder than the river in the depths of winter. She thought the tears rolling down her face might freeze to her skin. Her fingertips itched, and all other pains were forgotten. She was angry.
Amber's voice faded into the background of leaves and wind, and Saph became still. She felt as if she had been gutted with a spoon. There was nothing left to lose anymore, was there?
Saph gave in to that fiery cold brewing inside her, the darkness she'd tried to keep away. She didn't care if it ended her. But she'd never go back to that place.
The black veins on her arm burned hellishly as she shifted, and her bones cracked and grew. She screamed as her teeth became jagged and her skin hardened, cried as she became what she'd always hated.
The sounds of others were muffled, Amber's shouted warnings a blur in the dead of night. Monstrous shrieks fell on her ears as she raged and raged, vaguely recalling something hot and sticky on her claws.
Then everything went black as Saph lost who she was.
YOU ARE READING
HUNTED SOULS
FantasyCaptured as a child and controlled by unknown enemies, Saph only knows a painful life in the shadows...until the fateful day she makes her escape. Hunted and weakened, she struggles to contain the monstrous spirit within herself. The realm of Eorit...
