Page 112 of World's Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon

“My dear…” He actually bent over and slapped his thigh in his merriment. “Oh, my dear Eloise, no self-respecting fae of sufficient resources would enter a possible skirmish without safeguards in place. Did you not realize that?”

His long fingers located the ragged rent her knife had made in his crisp white button-down. He spread the gap wider until everyone could study what lay underneath.

Armor.

The flexible material molded faithfully to his chest and shifted with his every breath, metallic threads sparkling under the courtroom’s lights. From what Gwen could see, it remained entirely undamaged. Without even a single dent.

Hugh jerked, his breath audibly hitching, and she didn’t blame him for his despair. The two of them had come so close to surviving this confrontation. Soincredibly freaking close, but now they were back where they’d started. Back to the end of their lives.

Forgive me, he mouthed to her, his angular face stark with emotion, and she mustered a shaky smile and blew him a kiss, because there was nothing to forgive. He’d tried his best to save them. They both had. As she’d once vowed to herself, they’d gone down fighting—but also with love. A love that would hopefully follow them into whatever afterlives awaited them.

In the next few moments, the sulfurous cloud surrounding him thickened into a choking, opaque mass and darkened to the same deep charcoal as Josiah’s suit. Only Hugh’s eyes remained easily visible through the billowing smoke, their fiery amber-orange glow bright enough to pierce the gloom.

His grief and fear had overwhelmed him, and no wonder.

She wished she could comfort him. Wished she could kiss him one final time. But Josiah still held her throat firmly in his grasp, and she doubted that he’d allow her a last embrace with Hugh before consuming her remaining life and tossing away her body like refuse.

“Our heart is our one vulnerability. Did you truly expect me to leave it unprotected, Eloise?” Fussily, Josiah smoothed his shirt and jacket back in place with his free hand. “You may have inflicted a few bruises, but a healing spell will take care ofthose easily enough. Otherwise, you haven’t harmed me in any way.”

“Shit. You mean I stole this from the Realm’s cafeteria kitchen for nothing?” Eloise shook her head in disgust, glaring at the knife in her hand. “I was so proud of myself for remembering that stainless steel was made from iron, and then I had to carry the damn thing in my sleeve for freakinghours.”

“Alas.” His indulgent chuckle made Gwen want to plug her ears. “All for naught.”

Eloise opened her mouth to respond—only to pause and turn to her brother instead. “Wait. What—”

“Be ready, El,” Hugh told her, the words utterly calm and completely incomprehensible. “I love you and Gwen so much.”

“Such drama.” Josiah sighed. “Get ahold of yourself, Blacke, so we can negotiate our bargain like civilized—”

“Hugh,no.” Eloise reached toward her brother, frantic. “We can find a different—”

But before she could finish her sentence, Councilor Hugh Blacke, Esquire—a half-demon of noted restraint and polite diplomacy—had already rounded on Josiah and raised both white-knuckled fists. He flung those fists wide, as if tearing a recalcitrant sheet of paper in half.

And with an echoing howl of utter agony, he turned his family’s oldest friendinside fucking out.

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The initial spray of fluid hit Gwen like warm, horrifyingly viscous rain. She instinctively jerked away from the noxious splatter, out of Josiah’s failing grasp, even as his body tore and contorted into grotesque, unnatural configurations worthy of Picasso’sGuernica.

She gagged at the stench. At the slick coppery salt of his blood in her mouth.

An eyeblink later, his flesh made an awful rippingsquelchsound that would forever haunt her nightmares, and the mangled form of what had once been Josiah fell to the marble floor with an unsettlingsquish.

However improbably, his heart was still steadily beating. Outside his actual body.

As advertised, very little could kill a fae, and apparently that included being turned inside out. A major healing spell would probably have him looking good as new.

But that misshapen asshole was the least of her concerns, because Hugh had collapsed at the same moment as his mentor. And his body might have been intact, and his eyes might have remained open, but he wasn’t moving. At all.

Not even to breathe.

Do you believe she truly would have turned them inside out?Gwen had once asked about Eloise’s final, fatal confrontation with her client and his fixer.

If so, she never intended to survive the encounter, Hugh had told her.For half-demons, the enormous outlay of power would kill us on the spot.

The wet marble hampered her sprint, but she staggered and skidded her way to his side before dropping with a jarring thud to her knees. Sobbing even as she dry-heaved, she ducked down, planted the side of her head on his motionless chest, and listened for the familiarthud-thudof his huge demon’s heart. Hovered her shaking palm a millimeter above his mouth, desperate to feel the hot puff of his exhalation.

She heard nothing. Felt nothing. Through the soft weave of his sweater, his body was unnaturally cool against her damp cheek.