Jessa Slade - Darkness Undone

“I don’t hate—” He bit off the protest. It wasn’t going to convince her. He continued, each word more clipped than the last, “When my sword hand was severed, the impairment left me out of step with my demon. I need a partner to rejoin the battle.”

Her gaze ticked over him, from his boots to his face. “Maybe you just need to learn another dance.”

“A tenebrae tango,” he agreed. “We will fight together.”

“You said there are others like us? Go fight with them.”

“I have. For a very long time.” Bitterness rippled through him in ragged waves, the same way the teshuva’s thwarted energy swirled and jammed in his gnarled scars without escape. “It was for one of them, I was maimed. And now I can’t …” The phantom muscles in his missing hand cramped, sending spasms along his reven . “Now I am even less than I was.”

She tucked in her chin with a dubious look. “Less? Really? So you were, like, Superman before?”

“I could never fly.”

“But the anklet, the demon weapon, gives you superpowers?”

“No. Without you, the anklet means nothing. But your demon is uniquely aligned with mine, in ways we can’t understand.”

“Can’t understand?” She huffed. “You mean, ‘don’t want.’”

“Wanting isn’t a consideration.”

She peered at him. “It’s always a consideration. You just have it sealed up tight. Which is bad, because when that one wanting hits you—and it will—it’ll be worse than if you wanted everything.”

“How very … voracious of you. Meanwhile, I believe together we can drive the horde into hell.”

“Oh, you just want me to be your new right hand.”

Said aloud, in her mocking tone, he realized accusing her of mercenary tendencies had been unfair. Now that his perfidy was revealed, he saw no reason to conceal the worst of what he was. “You’ll be the other half of my damaged soul.”