Page 50 of Demon’s Snack

My head turns.

Not all the way. Just enough.

Horror breaks through the heat. I see them pressed against the wall, arms wrapped around each other, staring at me as if I am worse than the thing that almost dropped on them from the roof. They are right to be afraid. The thought should repel the hunger. Instead, their terror brushes against it like kindling.

I clamp both hands over my chest and stumble backward.

“Run,” I grind out. “Now.”

They do.

The rooftop demon moves after them.

I lunge.

This time I do not grab. I strike the stones between it and the fleeing girls with a blast of raw heat that cracks the cobbles and throws the demon sideways into the wall. It shrieks, body splitting at the shoulder, and the scent of its exposed essence hits me like rotwine and lightning.

The hunger wants it.

The hunger wants everything.

I fall to one knee, one hand braced in the steaming crack I made in the street. Rainwater hisses around my fingers. The demon holding the cart driver releases him and retreats, laughing softly now, delighted because the provocation is working better than Vaerith had any right to hope.

The surviving demons no longer matter as much as they should.

That is the worst part.

The civilians matter less than they should.

I feel their life around me in layers, a dozen small flames waiting in paper lanterns, and the hunger is strong enough now to wonder why any of them should remain separate from me. My breath comes harsh and uneven. The glamour fails. Horns press fully into the open air, black and curved, and someone screams at the sight.

“Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”

A hand closes around my wrist.

The world snaps toward that point of contact.

Isolde.

She kneels in front of me on the wet stones, gray cloak dark with rain, hair coming loose around her face, eyes wide but fixed on mine. I do not know how she got here. I do not know whether she ran, slipped out, followed the bond, or walked straight through hell with a folio under one arm and a plan in her teeth. I only know that her fingers are wrapped around my wrist, and the hunger recoils from the idea of crossing through her.

“Corin,” she says.

Her voice is not loud.

It does not need to be.

“Let go,” I rasp, because I cannot make my hand move away from her. “Isolde, let go.”

“No.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand enough.”

“No, you do not.” My voice cracks around the words, and smoke curls between my teeth. “I took one of them in. It’s too much.”

“I know.”