Demonkin Read Online Free

way.”
    “Why? What’s the cost of this cure?”
    “Those cursed must trade another’s soul for theirs.”
    Jyllith sagged in place, an empty pit opening in her stomach. Sera would never send another soul to the Underside, yet there was a possibility there. One hope.
    “What if I went in place of Sera?”
    “Oh, child.” Melyssa smiled at her, like her mother smiled when Jyllith answered a question right. “You can’t. Only an uncursed soul may be given in trade.”
    Uncursed. Well. Jyllith was far from that.
    “Now, while I can still stand.” Melyssa stepped closer. “Kill me and take my head.”
    “I hate you for this.” Jyllith took the dagger and gripped it so hard it hurt. “I’ll never forgive you.”
    “Just forgive yourself.”
    Melyssa had trusted and forgiven her. Melyssa had saved her when no one else would. Melyssa even made her happy, sometimes, when she knew the old woman wasn’t looking.
    Jyllith drove the dagger right between Melyssa’s ribs.
    Melyssa gasped, eyes wide. She fell and Jyllith caught her. She held Melyssa as she trembled, shook, and choked on her own blood.
    “Thank you,” Melyssa whispered.
    Jyllith refused to cry. Melyssa didn’t deserve to see that. “I’ll stop them. I won’t fail you. Thank you for everything.” She kissed Melyssa’s forehead. “I wish we had more time.”
    Melyssa smiled at her. Her face relaxed. For a moment Jyllith felt like she had always felt when her mother smiled at her, warm and safe and happy. It felt like holding her mother again.
    Then Melyssa died.
    Jyllith held Melyssa on the cold stone floor and wept. She hugged the old woman’s still warm body. Finally, she set Melyssa beside her cot and closed the woman’s sightless eyes.
    “Wherever you are, I hope you found Torn.” Jyllith raised the bloody dagger. “Five guard your soul.”
    It took some time to saw through Melyssa’s neck. Most daggers balked at bone and when it was done her hands were slick with blood. Numb and messy, she took her gruesome trophy and left the library for the first time in a week.
    She was all alone now.
    The gloss-stone walls surrounding the academy were charred and cracked. The plain white cobblestones that formed the ground were broken and choked by hard black scrub. Brilliant clouds roiled in the sky, the spectral storms Torn had summoned raging still.
    It did not take Jyllith long to find supplies. No looters had ever reached Terras and the belongings of the departed dead were bountiful. She found a bucket and heated some pitch. Then she lifted Melyssa’s head by its long white hair and dipped it.
    The pitch smelled terrible. She whispered an apology. Then she went inside to pick up Melyssa’s headless body.
    It took her an hour to dig the grave and another hour to put Melyssa to rest. She had no time to leave a marker. It was already mid-afternoon and with only two weeks before this Demonkin curse consumed her, she needed every hour.
    Even with a horse, the journey out of the Unsettled Lands and then to Pale Lake would take eight days. More than half of what remained to her. Her demon’s whispers would grow louder all the while, and listening even once would be the end of her.
    Any mage who dared scribe demon glyphs, as she and Sera had done on the journey to Terras, allowed the Mavoureen to latch onto their souls. Those demons consumed them, slowly driving them mad, until nothing was left but a demonic shell and endless hate.
    That was the Demonkin curse. That was her fate if she did not kill herself before two weeks elapsed. It would be Sera’s fate, too.
    Jyllith gathered a heavy oak quarterstaff, a travel pack with a blanket, flint and steel, and coins of various denominations. It was enough for a horse and supplies at the first town she reached. By the time she finished foraging, Melyssa’s head was ready.
    She dropped the pitch-covered thing inside a waterproof sack and tied the top tight. Her final task was to pen a note for Sera and