Page 27 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

“Tell me what?”

Brie moves slowly as she steps back into the room. “Jas, you need to understand something about your powers.”

I close my eyes. I don’t know what it’s going to take to convince my sister that I’m not like her. Even now, knowing what

I gave up, she still wants to believe I’m more fae than human. “I don’t have powers, Brie.”

“You do, though. I asked Pretha to look inside your mind, and she saw them there. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want

to scare you.”

“Why would my power scare me?”

Brie pauses for a long time before answering. For so long I’m not sure I want to know what she’s about to share. “Because

you’re a phoenix, Jas.”

I stare at her, waiting for this to make sense. “Is that supposed to mean something to me? Because you just said I’m a magical

bird, and I am confident I would’ve noticed something like that.”

“It means you have the power to burn to ash and arise again reborn.” She holds my gaze, as if willing me to accept this. “That’s why Mordeus needed you. The phoenix is rare, and if he can have it for himself, he can return.”

“No,” I breathe. I look to Kendrick, ready to see him argue with my sister, but I see the truth on his face. This power of

mine can bring Mordeus back for good. I hear Fherna in my head. With your blood you can overcome the flame. “I gave up my magic when I gave up my immortality.” I shake my head, willing it to be true. I can’t stomach the idea of one

more part of me helping that monster come back.

“You still have it inside you.”

Kendrick moves close and nods to my hand. “You said the sword burned you, but where are your burns?” When I don’t answer,

he brushes his fingers across the inside of my wrist, where the circular scar used to be. “And of all your scars, the only

one that has suddenly disappeared is the one that was in the flame.”

I stare at the smooth skin.

“You’ve been made new where the fire burned you,” Brie says. “Just like a phoenix.”

I feel like I’m falling and everything I grab ahold of disintegrates in my hands. “Fire almost killed me when Brie and I were

children.” I turn to her. “If you hadn’t come for me...”

“We don’t know what would’ve happened in that fire if I hadn’t come for you, and I’d never choose to find out. But I need

you to understand what I’m telling you. If you don’t harness the power of your phoenix, Mordeus will. And he will use your body to lead this realm, and we will have lost

you for good.”

“Lead the realm?” I frown. “I’m not the queen. Don’t act like you’re going to die, Brie. I won’t hear it.”

“What better way to have the access he needs to kill me than to come at me as my beloved little sister.” She gives me a sad smile. “It’s not like he hasn’t already tried.”

“And that’s exactly why I shouldn’t be here.”

“You aren’t stuck in that ring anymore,” Kendrick says.

I bite my bottom lip. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

“I can’t .” She flexes her fists, then releases them. “I can’t fail you again,” she whispers, and her voice is ravaged. She lifts a

shaking hand toward my face before dropping it again, and I realize she’s looking at the scar that hooks around my eye. “I

took too long getting to you. I thought you were safe. I... I didn’t know.”

She means when Mordeus had me imprisoned in his dungeons. My chest aches. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“But I shouldn’t have been so na?ve. I should’ve realized you were so haunted for a reason.”

“Tell me what you mean. How is Mordeus going to use me to rule the realm?”

“You already know,” she says. “You’ve known for a long time that he’s using you. That you do things during your blackouts

you’d never choose to do if you were in control of yourself.”

“Yes, but what does this have to do with my supposed powers?”

“We don’t believe his plan was ever to be resurrected in his own body.”

The words knock me in the chest, stealing my breath. “That makes sense.” I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering the smell of

rot and the way his flesh hung from his bones. “Because I found him. He’s a corpse. A breathing corpse. I couldn’t kill him

because he’s already dead.”

Brie flinches, almost as if she’d hoped I’d argue.

“We’ve been operating under the assumption that at some point, probably the moment you turn eighteen and.

..” She clears her throat and shakes her head, as if she can’t bring herself to finish that sentence.

“At whatever moment his physical vessel fails, his spirit will have to take over your body completely.”

“I don’t know how. I don’t...” Numbness creeps over me, inch by inch, saving me from feeling too much. “I tried to kill

him and I failed. If I can’t kill his body, how can I...” The idea of him inside me makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

“How do I get rid of him? How do I make sure he can’t use this phoenix?”

“Right now, he’s using that rotting body to hold his consciousness because he can’t claim yours yet, not completely. Maybe

he’s not ready. Maybe you’re not. Maybe the deal you made when you got that ring was part of the equation that brings him back and he can’t take you until

the moment the years you handed over begin. We don’t know why, exactly, but we do know how much time we have left to figure

this out. How much time we have to stop him.”

“Tell us everything that happened when you saw him,” Kendrick says. “You said you told the sword to take you to Mordeus and

then used it to escape him. Where is it now?”

Slowly, I turn to him. “Erith has it.”

He schools his expression, but not before I see his face fall. “You saw Erith?”

“I told the sword to take me to Mordeus, and it dropped me into this place that looked so much like his dungeons, but it wasn’t.

Erith was there. I tried to use the power of the ring on him, and it didn’t work. Erith said he’s the one who made the ring.”

Kendrick and Brie exchange a look. “They are working together,” Kendrick says.

“We just need to know why,” she says. “What does Erith stand to gain from all this?”

“He said he’d been waiting for me to bring him the sword. Told me to go home and that Mordeus wasn’t ready for me yet. And

when I tried to kill him...” I turn toward the windows and lean my head against the glass as I let the memory replay in

my mind. “I plunged my dagger into his chest and he didn’t even try to stop me. He didn’t react, didn’t bleed. Nothing happened

until he pulled it back out.”

“Your blade is made of adamant and iron,” Brie says. “If you struck his heart...”

I wrap my arms around myself. “He said, ‘Isn’t it fun when prophecies come to pass? 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.’ He pulled the blade free and

there wasn’t even a mark where I’d stabbed him. Then he showed me our childhood bedroom and tried to convince me to rest there.

I wanted to so badly, but it wasn’t real. It was an illusion made from my memories—someplace I wanted that was made to trap

me.” I blow out a slow breath as I remember how hard it was to resist the call of that space.

“So how did you end up at our old house?” Brie asks.

“I was able to get the Sword of Fire back long enough to create a portal out of there. When I used it I must’ve been thinking of home, so that’s where the portal took me.

” I make myself look at Kendrick when I say the rest. “At the last minute, he wielded his magic to take the sword back, and I couldn’t hold on. I lost it.”

Kendrick pales, and he drops into the chair Abriella was sitting in earlier. When he tips his face up to the ceiling, I can

practically see him trying to process what I’ve just cost him and Elora.

“I’m sorry.” I look back and forth between him and Brie. “I failed you both—by letting Mordeus live, by losing the sword.

And now I don’t know where or how to find either.”

“Don’t think like that,” Kendrick says, snapping his gaze to me. “You never should’ve felt like you had to take any of this

on alone.”

“This isn’t your fault, Jas,” my sister says, and the words are so patently untrue I nearly laugh. “I mean it. None of this

is your fault—if anyone’s to blame, it’s me for not getting you out of his dungeons sooner, for believing the lies I saw in

that mirror.”

“You aren’t responsible for what he did to me.”

She comes closer and lifts her fingers to hover above the scar on my face. “And neither are you.”