Page 22 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)
The three-headed beast snarls, long streams of saliva dripping from its lips.
Die before you can fix what you broke or die taking Mordeus with you.
I don’t let myself think. I plunge my hand into the flame and grab the Sword of Fire.
Flames snap at my flesh, devouring it and incinerating skin, but I force myself to hang on.
“Take me to Mordeus,” I demand of the sword with the last of my will.
A swirling black vortex opens as the beast lunges toward me. I hurl myself into the darkness and the old blacksmith’s hut
disappears.
I drop the sword to the stone floor and clutch my ravaged hand to my chest. It’s bright red and raw and already covered in
blisters and pustules. Seeing it makes the pain scream louder in my head. I tear away part of my shirt and wrap it up.
Blood oozes from my thigh onto the stone floor and my hand pulses with pain. The agony and the despair work together, trying to pull me under, but I fight it. When I draw in a breath, putrid rot hits my nose, and I jerk into awareness, blinking as I look around.
The smell is sickening, a scent so thick it shoves itself into my nostrils and clings to the back of my throat, threatening
to make me lose the contents of my stomach.
I’m in a dark room open to a long corridor, and moonlight pours in through a high window, illuminating a corpse on a stone
bed. Mordeus .
I push off the ground, stumbling when I try to put too much weight on my injured leg. Weakness from blood loss threatens to
pull me back to the floor, but I limp deeper into the room, following the scent every instinct tells me to turn away from.
The sight of him is worse than the smell. His flesh hangs from his skeleton as if it’s no longer properly attached. The bone
of his left arm protrudes from where the flesh has been cut away—or maybe even eaten.
His cheeks are gaunt and when I get close enough to look, there’s nothing but squirming maggots where those horrible silver
eyes used to be.
He’s not resurrected. This body is the picture of death. How could any magic, great or small, bring him back in this vessel?
The moment I’m convinced that’s impossible, I realize his chest is moving. Barely. But slowly—lifting and falling with the
telltale movement of shallow breath.
He lives.
A shudder racks my shoulders. He lives. How can such a horrific, pathetic creature make me want to run? Want to curl into myself and hide?
I don’t let myself back away or even take my eyes off him. Because his hands are folded across his stomach, and on one finger
is a ring that’s a match to mine.
He orchestrated all of this. He’s been using me and manipulating me every step of the way.
I reach for my blade with a shaking hand. Maybe I should go back for the Sword of Fire, but I don’t think I’m strong enough
to pick it up, and I can’t risk sacrificing my remaining good hand. There’s no way a body this ravaged, this weak , could survive my iron-and-adamant blade.
I might not understand how this corpse can ever become the fearsome faerie who will steal the throne from my sister and rule
the shadow court, but I don’t need to understand. I will end him before he has the chance.
Every muscle in my body trembles as I lift the blade over my head, prepared to strike, to cut out his wicked heart and toss
it into the sword’s flame so it can never be used again.
I swing the blade down, and it sinks too easily through rotted flesh and decaying bone.
Laughter sounds behind me, low and devious.
I yank my dagger from Mordeus’s chest and spin around, blinking as the shadows part to reveal a laughing fae male. His face
is so familiar, but I can’t place him. He strides toward me, gobbling up the ground with his long legs until he stands before
me.
“You can’t kill something that’s already dead,” the faerie says, nodding to the corpse behind me. His white hair is tied back,
and he smiles as he watches me clutch my blade, adjusting my grip on the cool metal hilt, preparing to strike.
An eerie wind swirls around me, wrapping around me and lifting me from the floor before returning me to my feet.
“Look how pretty you are. A face that will win over the masses.” His smile is so patient, almost grandfatherly. I struggle
but can’t escape the hold of the wind.
I’m wearing my ring. How could I forget my greatest strength?
“Back down,” I command, infusing my voice with every bit of the Enchanting Lady I can muster. “Let me go.”
“Not yet. We should talk first.”
Why isn’t it working? Is it because I’m so injured? Why would the magic work any differently now? I hold his gaze and try
again. “Drop your shield for me. I need you to listen to what I have to say.”
His lips quirk and he chuckles. “Do you think I would create a magical ring and allow it to enchant me as it does others?”
Create. This male created my ring. He’s responsible for this curse. “Who are you?”
“He promised you would bring me that,” he says, nodding to the Sword of Fire blazing in the corner. “I’ve been waiting.”
I don’t know who he is, but I recognize his voice from my memories. No. Mordeus’s memories.
“Erith,” I whisper. I don’t know how I’m so sure or what memory this knowledge comes from, but I know the male smiling at
me is the Patriarch of the Seven. The male Kendrick needs me to kill.
He cocks his head to the side. “I’m dying to know, though, how you overcame the effects of the ring—how you have the strength
to be standing before me now.”
I only fortify my mental shields and glare in response. I’m not about to tell him about the wolpertinger or Fherna.
“Fate is a slippery beast, and sometimes you need to go to extreme measures to make it work in your favor.” He glances toward the sword and smiles again. “It’s been a long journey, but it’s all proving worthwhile.”
“You helped him return and now you’re protecting him.” I look to Mordeus and then back to Erith. I knew Erith was evil, but
what does he stand to gain from making my ring? “All for the Sword of Fire?”
“Don’t worry yourself, little princess. You don’t need to know the details.” He lowers me back to the floor and flicks his
wrist. A doorway appears. On the other side of it is my childhood bedroom, the place my mother tucked us in each night before
the house was burned to the ground in a fire. “Don’t fight it. You deserve to rest.”
Everything will be better if you come home , it seems to say. Step this way and the pain will fade. The fear will melt away. You’ll be safe here.
“No,” I breathe. I came here for a reason, and I’m not leaving. I’m not giving up. I won’t let the people I love pay the price
for my mistakes.
I tighten my grip on the iron-and-adamant blade in my hand, and I charge at Erith.
It’s only as the blade plunges into his chest that I realize he didn’t even dodge the blow.
“Do you really think I would’ve let you keep that blade if it was a danger to me?” he asks as we stand there, eyes locked,
connected through this blade I refuse to release.
“How?” I say the word on an exhale, my body growing weaker by the moment.
“Isn’t it fun when prophecies come to pass?
” he asks, eyes dancing with nonsensical delight.
“Make sure you tell your friend who fancies himself the king of Elora. He’s been waiting for the moment you’d put this blade in my chest.” Then, as calmly as if he were brushing crumbs from his shirt, he wraps both hands around mine and removes the blade from his chest.
I let my hand drop to my side and stare. There’s no blood. No wound .
Is this a trick? Perhaps Erith isn’t here. Perhaps this is some enchantment Mordeus set into motion to protect his corpse
from harm? Am I dreaming? Maybe I’m curled up in the blacksmith’s cottage, delirious from the pain, and all this is a hallucination.
I’m too weak to think straight and drop onto the floor, clutching the dagger as if it can protect me. This isn’t real. I need
sleep. Sleep and then I’ll be able to understand what’s happening. Sleep and then I’ll wake up and make sense of everything.
“That’s right,” he murmurs, his voice the soothing melody of an old lullaby. “Rest now. Go to bed like a good girl, and I
will make the pain go away.”
And with that, a blast of his magic shoves me toward the door. I stumble but fight my way back to my feet. I feel the bedroom’s
tug pulling me away, but I know that if I surrender to it, I’ll never come back. If I let myself sleep, this will be the end.
I lunge for the Sword of Fire, prepared to wrestle it from his grasp if he reaches it before me, but Erith flinches away from
its unyielding flame. I exploit his hesitation. Wrapping my raw and blistered fingers around the flaming hilt, I make myself
think of the bedroom at Fherna’s house. My hand is nothing but red-hot, searing pain, and when Erith’s magic sweeps in to
retrieve the fiery sword, I can’t hold on. I roll through the portal even as consciousness fades.