Read Online The Demon's Revenge (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 4) by Katherine Sparrow - Free Book Online Page A

man.
    “As I got better at navigating through the realms, slipping in and out of different realities, a certain door kept showing up. Unlike the other portals, it showed up often and easily, and seemed to want to be opened. I was wary but interested. It was a well-made door with oiled mahogany wood, carved with a thousand symbols, and no signs of aging upon it. I did not know where it led and one day I put my hand upon the doorknob, and as soon as I touched it….” He paused and shook his head. “A wizard is sensitive to magic. I felt more power and darkness than in every other realm combined. I knew there was a place for me within, where I could shed many parts of myself and lose all of my morose and modern feelings. I felt a part of my nature rise up, long bound within me. I had finally found what I was searching for, and I wanted to go in.”
    “So you opened the door?” Lila asked.
    “He’s Merlin, of course he opened it,” Adam said.
    Merlin frowned. “The door opened all on its own when my fingers brushed against the doorknob. Wild energy and darkness came out as the door inched open, and I longed to see the land within. At first there was only darkness, but then I saw a three-headed dog across the river standing beside a gate. I recognized Cerberus, the guardian of Hell, and knew where this door led. I also felt that were I to step inside, everything could change for me, in a more profound way than in any other realm.”
    “Because you would die,” I said.
    He nodded slowly. “Yes and no. I would enter the realm of death and have nothing more to do with the living, yet I would continue to exist. For in every story of that place, existence continues on even if one becomes a miserable shade of what they once were. A shambling parody. I admit to a deep curiosity about that realm. I can still feel the call of its deep magic on my skin.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “I stood there for a while, giving myself time to decide if I truly wished to enter this last realm. Just as I was about to step inside, someone came out to meet me.”
    “Who?” Lila and Adam asked at the same time.
    “A man,” Merlin said. “Or I should say, he looked like a man. With wings.”
    His father, I guessed but didn’t say.
    “He told me one day I would be welcome there, but today was not that day, and that when I did finally go to Hell, he would welcome me.”
    “Why didn’t you enter?” I said, curious despite myself. “Why did you choose to stay here?”
    He looked at me sharply. “There is no sunshine there. Were I to enter, I decided I would need to take my own sunshine with me, and therefore I must find it again.” He almost managed to not give me a reproachful glance.
    I stood and paced toward the window, to take in the gray world outside and still the torrent of words I wanted to shout at him. Merlin knew nothing. Yes, he had suffered for my terrible decisions. The massive weight of that always sat squarely on my shoulders. There would be no forgiving the cowardly and afflicted being I’d let myself be. Unlike him, it wasn’t a lack of suffering I yearned for, but a rectifying of a wretched life lived too long. Immortals should earn their years, and I had done nothing to earn mine.
    “So then what?” Lila asked. I turned and saw odd blue tendrils of magic gusting up around her aura like sun flares.
    “Things were terrible for many decades more, though perhaps that was the nadir of my troubles, for slowly, here and there, I found my joy and purpose again.”
    I wondered at those decades. Of how he had found a way out. I noticed the paper cut on my hand was bleeding again. Strange.
    Merlin watched me hawkishly. He wore a knowing, almost mocking look. “You know, if you had let me speak to you over the last two months, there are things that I could have told you that might have given you some perspective.”
    “I let you speak to me,” I said, and let a cruel smile cover my face. I hated the idea of him