Page 18 of Death of a Mortal

My brain was forming a plan. A shitty plan, but a plan nonetheless.

“I’ll draw it away so you can swipe the flower and run.”

“The last time we did this plan, you got hit with lightning in the face and lost your sight. We have to come up with something different!” Nella replied, panicked.

I needed to test a theory before I responded, so I took a steptoward the beast and the flower. It trained its white eyes on me, watching. When I took the next step, it lowered its head and started pawing at the ground, leaving smoke trails with each drag.

So the demon deer got aggressive over the flower… And it didn’t move from its guardian spot.

After yelling and waving my arms to look threatening and then throwing a rock at it that sailed right through its middle, it still didn’t budge.

The rock had gone right through it...

That was it! It wasn’t corporeal. If the thing wasn’t solid, then it couldn’t hurt us. Right? Big gamble, but we had to get a move on.

I took another step toward the stag, and this time, when it started pawing the ground, I kept walking, feeling my palms slick with nervous sweat. It threw its head back in clear anger, but it didn’t advance. Nella squeezed my hand, and then I released hers from my grip.

“Stay here,” I told her.

The banshee had said that the animals here were not what they seemed. What if this was just an illusion, something to scare us away from the flower but not hurt us?

When I got only a couple of paces from its head, I sucked in a deep breath and held it as I reached a hand toward the beast.

“Naci, be careful!” Nella called.

I hesitated, every instinct telling me this was a terrible idea. But I forced my hand forward.

Time seemed to stall. I expected my hand to meet solid flesh. Instead, it sank into the smoke, feeling nothing but cool air beneath my fingers.

The triumph lasted only a heartbeat before fiery pain shot through every nerve in my body. Shadows shot from the smoky antlers and ensnared my body, lifting me off the ground. It felt as if my skin was tearing from my muscles, and muscles from my bones, like my entire body was being ripped apart, piece by piece.

I screamed for Nella to run, but I wasn’t even sure the sound left me.

I had no grip on the world around me. The anguish I had felt in my face and neck when Aemilia struck me with lightning was nothing compared to the creeping, searing pain slipping through every fiber of me as this stag’s shadow enveloped my every nerve.

It felt like an eternity of pain…until suddenly everything stopped.

My feet hit the ground, and the surrounding smoke vanished, leaving behind nothing but a rush of cold air. The stag was just…gone. As gone as the pain was. Why had it released me?

Had the pain even been real, or was it in my head? Could shadows cause pain like that?

I shook my head to clear it and noticed the flower was gone. Nella must have grabbed it in the chaos while I was…occupied, and the stag must have dissipated once the flower was taken. No flower, no flower guardian needed—it made sense to me in the confusion.

Nella’s voice brought me out of my shock and back to my senses.

“Naci…” I knew from her sullen tone that something was wrong.

I turned to find the flower clutched in Nella’s hand. Before I could even enjoy a fleeting moment of success at capturing the flower, fear curdled in my gut.

The beauty of the flower was in stark contrast to the oozing puncture marks lining the inside of Nella’s open hand where she’d held it by its stem. Each was bleeding, with an orange thorn protruding from its center. I counted four in total.

The area around the puncture wounds were tinted green and bumps were forming in a line up her arm.

“Naci, I don’t feel good…”

Oh gods. The thorns must have been poisonous.

A pain greater than any thus far clutched at my heart as Nella raised her eyes to mine, and I saw the fear gripping her own heart.