ItCP48

## Chapter 48

SPOILER WARNING*Selestra foresaw that the page "ItCP48" may include spoilers about a number of topics covered on Alexandra Christo Verse, She warns you to proceed with caution.*
**Chapter 48** is the final chapter of **Into the Crooked Place** it is the first in the franchise following the character **Zekia**, ending on a cliff hanger.

## **About**

### **Characters**

* **Zekia Akintola**
* **Wesley Thornton Walcott**

## **Full Version**

AT THE AGE OF SEVEN, Zekia Akintola discovered she was destined to be Liege of an entire Kin. At the age of thirteen, she became left hand to the Kingpin of an entire region.

She considered it an improvement.

Not that her amja would see it that way. Nor her dead mother and her magic-fearing father. Saxony definitely hadn’t.

It didn’t matter.

Zekia shouldn’t care.

She *didn’t* care.

She had a new family and a new purpose to go along with it. The Kingpin was going to pave the way for a place where Crafters weren’t the hidden minority, but the feared leaders of a new world.

Zekia would help make that future a reality. It was one of the only futures that was clear to her anymore.

The shadow demon licked the blood from its claws and turned to Zekia with its teeth bared. Behind the creature, her prisoner was slumped on the cold gray stone.

Zekia had healed him too many times to count.

She’d let the demon rip him apart a dozen times more than that.

Shadow demons were nothing but darkness. Forged from the evil left behind by cursed spells: those that stole a mind, those that stole a soul, and those that stole a heart. Shadow demons couldn’t be killed because magic could never die, but they could be hurt. And anything that could be hurt could be controlled.

Zekia knew that better than anyone.

The demon howled a low, guttural sound and lowered its head. Zekia held out a hand and it prowled forward. When her skin touched the demon’s, it whimpered and bowed, returning to all fours. Nuzzling under her touch.

Zekia stepped forward.

Wesley Thornton Walcott, the most dastardly of all underbosses, was bleeding again. The boy become a crook become a man. Just speaking his name these days struck as much of a chord with some people as speaking the Kingpin’s.

And yet here he was.

Bound and blindfolded and caked in as much dirt as he was blood.

The lacerations on him were deeper this time.

Zekia was impressed that he was still conscious. Impressed and a little disappointed. It would do him well to take the opportunity to rest. He didn’t have many chances for sleep.

Wesley was not pleading. They hadn’t got to the begging part yet, but Zekia was sure they would. Everyone begged in the end. Even men like Wesley Thornton Walcott. Perhaps, especially those men.

Zekia placed her hands on either side of Wesley’s temples, holding up his head as it dropped with his consciousness.

In and out, up and down.

Zekia stroked Wesley’s cheek and even in his drowsed state, he flinched from her touch.

She kept her hand on his face.

He was very beautiful and Zekia very much wanted to keep him. As a brother, or maybe even as a pet. She wasn’t too fussy with which, as long as he got to be hers.

“Come now,” she said. “I need to see what’s inside that pretty mind.”

She let her magic surge, tapping into a connection with Wesley that could never be broken. She wondered what thoughts would be inside him now.

Wesley’s jaw shuddered as he held in the screams.

Zekia smiled.

She would break him if it took her the rest of her life to do it. She’d break him so they could forge a new family and a new world, and if he resisted, then she would break him for the fun of it.

Zekia pressed harder, forcing herself into Wesley’s mind.

She took the memories she didn’t need and buried them somewhere deep, then replaced them with some of her own for good measure, real and imagined. Futures that wouldn’t happen and ones that could someday come. She read every thought he had and saw every treasured memory he kept hidden away.

Wesley did not treasure much, but what he did, Zekia found. It took longer than usual and she bled for it, but once she was inside, there was no going back. It was when she ripped those memories from him that Wesley Thornton Walcott finally screamed.

The shadow demon cawed behind her.

The stars blinked.

Zekia plunged deeper.

*To be continued …*