Page 4 of Awakened Destiny (The Dark Ascendant #3)

Brigid

I watch through eyes that aren ’ t mine anymore as Stacy Nangreaves gets out of her expensive car and adjusts the collar of her cream blazer. She ’ s parked in front of her parent ’ s real estate agency where she ended up working after high school. She works alongside her mother, a former beauty queen who wound up back in Newton after a few years in L.A., despite her best efforts. They advertise themselves with signs pasted on benches and stuck into front lawns, both of them brilliantly blonde with impossibly white toothy smiles. Neither of their smiles reach their eyes.

Stacy angles her head and watches as the Morrigan—as I—approach. Her coral-glossed lips curve into the same practiced smile she used when tripping me in the cafeteria sophomore year. "Well," she says, clicking her tongue against her teeth. "If it isn't... "

Her sentence dies. Confusion flickers behind those frost-blue contacts she started wearing after graduation.

Too late, I think. She smells the rot in the air even if she doesn ’ t know its name.

"Brigid Ryan?" Stacy recovers, tilting her chin up. Her diamond tennis bracelet catches afternoon light as she adjusts the leather portfolio under her arm. "You look different."

The Morrigan stretches my vocal cords into an unfamiliar purr. "Do I?"

It ’ s not my voice. Not really. This sound slithers like a serpent.

Stacy ’ s scent clogs our nostrils—vanilla and desperation. She steps closer, heels tapping on the asphalt. "Your aunt said you ’ d finally taken the hint and left?" Her laugh tinkles like shattered stemware. "Wait, no—last I heard you were in the city, busy getting arrested for—"

"Your crown ’ s crooked."

The Morrigan reaches out. Stacy flinches but stands paralyzed as our shadow-stained fingers brush the filigree pin clipped to her platinum hair. Real gold, probably. Still warm from salon-styled hair.

Stop. Please.

My mental whisper dissolves against the Morrigan ’ s amusement.

Stacy slaps my hand away. "Don ’ t touch me." Pink blotches bloom across her throat. "I don ’ t know what trailer park makeover you ’ re trying here, but you ’ re still just—"

"—A freak?" The Morrigan tilts my head. My blackened nail traces the air beside Stacy ’ s temple. "Poor lamb. You ’ ve been telling yourself that story for so long you almost believe it."

Stacy ’ s nostrils flare. Her gaze darts to the agency windows where her mother stands silhouetted behind blinds. "Excuse me?"

"Like mother, like daughter." The words drip saccharine poison. "All that plotting to marry up. All that practice with men who never called back. And still you ’ re here. Selling split-levels to divorcees. Folding your prom queen sash under mothballs. Or do you take it out when you ’ ve had too much wine and pretend you ’ re still that girl?"

Stacy ’ s knuckles whiten around her portfolio. "You crazy bitch."

Three crows land on a nearby STOP sign. Their synchronized croaks slice through the night air.

No. I press against the edges of my consciousness.

The Morrigan smiles wider. "Tell me, Stacy. When you look in mirrors now, do you see how ugly you are? Do you see your true self?"

Black vines unfurl beneath my skin. I feel them threading through muscle, curling around bone. Stacy ’ s pupils dilate. She rubs her sternum.

"I ’ m calling the police." Her voice rises half an octave. She fumbles for her phone, a manicured thumb jabbing at the screen. "You ’ re clearly off your meds again. Everyone knows about your little breakdown."

"After you leaked those photos?" The Morrigan releases a laugh that vibrates in my teeth. "Such a small, pathetic attack. Let me show you how real queens play."

Shadows pool at our feet. Alive. Hungry.

Stacy ’ s phone slips from trembling fingers. Her breath comes in shallow sips as the darkness climbs her ankles.

That ’ s enough! I scream soundlessly. You ’ ve made your point!

The Morrigan pauses. For one fractured second, I glimpse Stacy at thirteen—laughing as she poured bleach on my gym clothes. Then Stacy at twenty-two—still laughing at me. Always laughing.

The Morrigan's satisfaction washes over me like warm honey, sweet and sticky. I want to resist, to push back against the rush of power, but it's so tempting to let go. To let her continue.

"What... what are you doing?" Stacy's voice quavers, her bravado crumbling. Her eyes, wide with terror, dart frantically between my face and the writhing shadows at her feet. "This isn't funny, Brigid. Stop it!"

The Morrigan's laughter bubbles up from my throat, rich and dark. "Oh, but it is funny, little one. Can't you see the joke?"

I feel the Morrigan pushing images towards Stacy ’ s mind, phantoms of her past failures, a torrent of dark energy that floods Stacy's mind with visions. I see them too, each one a knife twisting in Stacy's psyche.

Stacy staring at her reflection, pinching the flesh of her stomach and thighs. The mirror cracks, showing her distorted and monstrous.

Stacy watches helplessly as her mother's disappointment plays out in vivid detail, each pursed lip and sneer an indictment of her worth.

Stacy ’ s father, telling his daughter that her bright pink lipstick made her look like a whore.

Her mother, offering her nothing but lettuce and a glass of water for dinner—because she ’ d looked chubby in her cheerleading uniform the night before.

Reading her fianc é’ s texts to another woman, the texts that said how much sexier the other woman was, how much more beautiful she was, than Stacy.

Stacy getting caught shoplifting by the store manager—a middle-aged man with a wife and a terrible comb-over—who kept it quiet and didn ’ t call the cops or her parents, but for a terrible, unforgettable price.

"Stop," Stacy whimpers, her voice barely a whisper. "Please..."

But the Morrigan is relentless. She peels back the layers of Stacy's carefully constructed facade, exposing every insecurity, every fear.

The shadows slither higher, wrapping around Stacy's legs. Her perfectly manicured hands claw at her own face, leaving red trails across her cheeks as she tries to escape the visions the Morrigan forces into her mind, a barrage of every humiliation, every rejection, every moment of self-doubt, and every last drop of emotional pain the girl has ever felt.

All of it at once, in living color. She ’ s experiencing each incident as if it was happening in real time again. No one ’ s mind can withstand that.

"Do you see now?" The Morrigan's voice drips with false sympathy. "Do you understand how small you truly are?"

Stacy's knees buckle, and she collapses onto the pavement. The portfolio she was clutching spills open, scattering glossy real estate flyers across the ground. Her painstakingly built image of success lies in tatters around her.

I struggle against the Morrigan's control, horrified yet mesmerized by the display of power. Part of me—a dark, twisted part I've tried to ignore—revels in Stacy's anguish. Years of torment and ridicule flash through my mind, and in that instant, I want to let the Morrigan continue.

But then I see the pain in Stacy's eyes, the way her body trembles uncontrollably, and I want it to stop. This isn't justice. It's cruelty.

My stolen hand twitches. The shadows recede.

Stacy falls onto the curb. Her silk blouse gapes where buttons popped loose. Tears streak her carefully applied makeup, leaving dark trails down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she sobs, her words barely audible. "I'm so sorry, Brigid. Please make it stop."

For a moment, I feel a flash of triumph. This is what I've wanted for so long, to see Stacy broken, to hear her beg. I wanted Stacy to feel the kind of pain she caused me, with the torment she put me through. But as quickly as it comes, the feeling sours. This isn't me. This isn't what I want to become.

No more .

I push against the goddess's control with all my strength. "Enough," I whisper.

The real estate agency door slams open. High heels clatter on pavement.

The Morrigan turns my face toward the crows, and they take flight in a whirl of black feathers.

When I blink next, we ’ re three blocks east. My knees buckle against a bus shelter wall, and distant sirens wail.

She lives, the Morrigan whispers inside my skull.

For now.