I open my eyes.

  The first thing I see is the ceiling.

  The same impossibly high ceiling, carved with intricate patterns and traced with faint golden lines that reflect soft, unnatural light.

  The sight alone crushes any fragile hope I have that everything until now has been nothing more than a strange dream – a dying hallucination born from the trauma of hitting the rocks at the bottom of the ravine.

  So it wasn't a dream.

  Even if I try to convince myself otherwise, my senses betray me immediately.

  There is this intoxicating scent in the air—sweet, heavy, and strangely comforting. And then there is the nonstop poking against my cheek, persistent and annoyingly precise.

  "I'm awake," I say, my voice ft, lifeless.

  "I know," the sweet, melodic voice replies.

  "Then can you stop poking my cheek? You're going to put a hole through it." Irritation fres in my chest, sharp and hot. It's a new kind of anger—more votile than the mild frustration I used to feel back on Earth.

  "Don't want to," Velora replies. I can hear the smirk in her voice. She continues to pinch and poke, her fingers cool against my skin.

  "Stop it, dammit!" I snap. I lunge to grab her hand, but she's faster than any human could be. She pulls back with a blur of motion, her ughter echoing off the obsidian walls.

  "Fufu! I'm just seeing how perfect I've made you," she ughs.

  Even her ugh is a weapon. It's like a physical vibration that strikes my chest and travels straight to my groin.

  My desire for her is becoming a wild, uncontrolble thing, fueled by the scent she radiates.

  I turn toward her, intending to give her a piece of my mind, and find her watching me with a gaze that looks deceptively innocent.

  But I'm not the same shy kid anymore. My new senses see the truth: I am sitting in front of a predator. A beautiful, lethal creature that could end me with a flick of her wrist.

  Thinking about death brings the Jones brothers back to the forefront of my mind. Rage, cold and bck, fills my veins.

  'SIGH,' what's the use of thinking about them now.

  If I really died and she turned me into an incubus, then she must be—

  "Yes, you're right. I am a succubus," she says, cutting off my thought before I can even finish it. "And not just any succubus. I have the purest bloodline you could ever hope to find."

  She puffs her chest out slightly, looking immensely proud. But I look at her head and her back. If she is really a demon, then where are the horns? And the tai—

  "Oh, I masked them. I didn't want you freaking out the second you opened your eyes," she replies casually.

  "Come on! Can you stop reading my mind?" I sit up, feeling a wave of vulnerability. Being "naked" is one thing, but having your very thoughts stripped bare is another kind of exposure. "I feel like a specimen in a jar. And what do you mean by masked them?"

  "Fufu."

  Instead of an answer, she gives an eerie, knowing ugh and snaps her fingers.

  The air ripples. Suddenly, a pair of bck, spiraling horns erupt from her head as if they had been there all along, hidden by a veil.

  I feel a sudden, heavy movement at my own lower back. I look down and see a bck tail with a sharp, spade-like tip twitching restlessly. It looks dangerous—lethal, even.

  "You have them too," she reminds me.

  I immediately move toward the mirror wall, my gait strange and animalistic. I stare at my reflection. The horns on my forehead are smaller than hers—sturdy, dark, and sharp. They look like the crown of a prince in a nightmare.

  "What did you expect? I am a demon of the highest order," she mocks, sensing my comparison.

  "You're just a newborn."

  "Ugh, whatever." I give up on trying to block her out. If she wants to read my thoughts, she's going to see a lot of things she might not like.

  "I have to say," Velora says, her tone shifting to genuine surprise, "you're accepting your new identity very easily. Most humans would be screaming or cwing at their own skin if they found out they were a demon."

  I look at my new, pale hands. "In a few months, I was going to die anyway. I guess I just checked out a little earlier than pnned."

  I try to keep my voice nonchant, but a pang of grief hits me. I think of Chloe. I think of Olivia, my stepmother. The thought that I'll never see them again—that I died without saying goodbye—is a dull ache in my chest.

  "I think there's a mistake," Velora says, interrupting my thoughts, her head tilting in confusion.

  "Who said anything about dying?"

  I freeze. "Ehh?"

  "Ehh?" she repeats.

  ""Ehhhhhhhhh?"" We both blink several times.

  I scramble back onto the bed. "Just to be clear... I am alive?"

  "Yes. Very alive. Why are you—" She stops, her eyes clouded as she probes my memories. Then, she bursts into a fit of hysterical ughter. "HAHAHAHA! Oh my god, hahahaha!"

  I feel the heat of shame rising into my cheeks. I'm beet-red, sitting there naked with a tail twitching in embarrassment. But how is this my fault?

  I remember everything clearly now —the beating, the pain, the fall. I remember the moment I was pushed off the cliff, the terror, the certainty that I wouldn't survive.

  There's no way a normal human lives through that.

  "Hahaha! I haven't ughed like that in eons. Velora wipes a tear of mirth from her amethyst eyes. "Well, I was sleeping for ages. Pffft, hahahaha"

  She straightens slightly.

  "So, you thought you were dead."

  "Yes," I reply.

  "HAHAHA—oh, right, you did." She ughs again, shorter this time.

  I just stare at her.

  "Sorry, sorry," she says quickly. "My bad."

  "No, please," I mutter. "Go on. Don't let me stop you."

  She rolls her eyes.

  "Alright, don't be a child."

  "I'm the child here?"

  "Yes! You're a newborn demon! Now… where should I start?"

  "You already read my thoughts," I say. "So stop pretending and just fill in the missing pieces."

  "Fufu. Fine." She doesn't deny it.

  "The locket your father gave you—the one you thought was a family heirloom—is actually mine. Or rather, my family's. One of its abilities is to form a gateway between realms."

  Surprised and shocked, I reach for my neck. The bckish silver chain is there, but the crystal is gone.

  "Before you ask," she says, raising a hand to stop me from interrupting her. Her expression turned suddenly serious, "You aren't on your pnet anymore. You aren't on Ervium.Humans call us demons, so I suppose you could say you're in Hell. The locket also has another ability. A life-saving one. It can heal any injury or break any curse pced on its holder… But it has a price."

  "A price?"

  "Yes, it uses the wearer's vitality as fuel," she says, her face turning like stone. "It sensed you were about to die, so it drained your remaining life force to tear open a portal to this realm.Once you got here, however, it didn't heal you. It sensed my pure bloodline and chose to awaken me. In exchange, I had to heal you with my own blood to keep you from becoming a corpse on my floor. There. Expnation complete. Happy now?"

  She bounces back to her bubbly self, but I can tell she's holding back. She did not just "heal" me. I can feel something more.

  Before I can press her for more answers, a sudden, sickening heat begins to spread through my abdomen.

  It's not like the lust I felt before; this is heavier, thicker. It starts to cloud my thoughts, making the room feel like it's spinning.

  "I think we should move back to your pnet," Velora says, her voice suddenly urgent. "The 'Ojas'—the spiritual energy—here is tainted with LUST. For a newborn like you, it's too much. You'll lose your mind before you can even walk."

  She snaps her fingers, and a crystal identical to the one from my locket appears in her palm. It floats into the air, expanding and swirling until a familiar amethyst portal rips open the space in front of us.

  Velora grabs my hand. Her grip is like iron, but her skin is soft. "Hang on, little incubus. Let's go back to your old world."

  And without hesitation—

  She jumps into the portal.Taking me with her.