Page 50 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

No. My lungs burn like I’m running out of air, and for the first time since I sank to these dark depths, I’m conscious of the

water surrounding me. I need to breathe, but I can’t go yet. How do we stop it? When does this happen?

But it’s gone. The vision and the oracle—that feeling of presence faded as quickly as it appeared.

Big hands grab me beneath my arms and I’m yanked from the water, pulled out of the watery tunnel and onto the rocky plateau.

The sky blurs in and out of focus above me as Kendrick stares down at me, panic lining his blue eyes.

I open my mouth, but my lungs refuse to take air.

“Breathe!” he commands, shoving me onto my side. “Please, Jasalyn! Breathe!” He squeezes me hard around my rib cage, and I

gag and sputter as water lurches out of my lungs.

I stay on my side and curl into a ball as I force myself to take one breath after another.

“That’s it,” Kendrick says. He rubs my back, his touch soothing and gentle. “Easy now. Slow and steady breaths.”

Only when my breathing has evened out does he pull me up and against his chest. He strokes my hair. “You scared me. You were down there too long. I couldn’t get to you, and then suddenly I could, but you were kicking and flailing—fighting me while I tried to pull you out of there.”

I bury my face in his chest. Just one more moment , I tell myself. I’ll let myself find comfort in his presence for just one more moment.

I breathe him in, and I don’t want to move. I don’t want to give him up. I don’t want to give any of this up. But I have nothing

to offer Erith. All I can do now is protect my sister.

I count to three and make myself let him go.

“What did she say? Did she tell you where we can find the witch?”

I shake my head, confused. It feels like days have passed since I was searching for the witch, since my first priority was

finding her. “Erith,” I say. The ground feels like it’s tilting left to right beneath me, so I drop to a crouch, hands in

the dirt, close my eyes, and focus on the rocky earth beneath my knees and palms.

“What about Erith?”

“He’s an Echo,” I whisper. “He was the witch. And the oracle said I have nothing to offer that he wants.”

Kendrick’s jaw hardens. “We’ll find another way, then. A new deal isn’t the only path. We can find a way to trick him out

of it. We can—”

“We have to get home.” I need this numbness to pass so I can act, but right now it’s the only thing keeping me from breaking

down. “Mordeus’s legions are going to storm the Midnight Palace and crucify my sister.”

“She showed you that?” Kendrick stoops to his haunches, studying me. “We can change what’s to come. We’ll go back and warn your sister. We’ll help her strengthen her wards and then we’ll find a way to get you out of this deal with Erith.”

I blink up at him. “Erith wants the Wild Fae territory. He wants to rule over fae, not just humans. Misha is in trouble too.”

He mutters a curse. “We’ll warn him, and we’ll warn the queen.”

My sister. Every time I close my eyes I see her on that gate, blood spilling from her lips.

Kendrick offers me a hand to help me stand and I take it.

As his gaze shifts to the steep path I traversed to get here, I realize what he’s thinking—that we’ll have to find our way

to a ley line that can get us back to the closest portal.

I grip his forearm. “Kendrick, we don’t have time. We have to trust my goblin.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust him , Slayer. It’s that anything he knows, they all know.”

“How long to get back to the shadow court if we don’t use goblins?”

He draws in a shaky breath. “Half a day’s hike to the nearest ley line that can get us close to an open portal to the Unseelie

Court. From there, we’ll have to find our way back to the Midnight Palace.” He shakes his head. “Late tonight at best.”

“We can’t afford to lose that much time.”

He scratches his beard and releases a breath. “You’re right. I don’t like giving them anything, but I know you’re right. I

don’t want to lose that time either.”

“What if we get as far from the oracle as we quickly can? That way they don’t know for sure that we saw her.”

He stares down the mountainside and I can practically see him tracing potential routes in his mind. “There’s a ley line maybe

ten minutes down this path. It won’t get us anywhere near a portal to Faerie, but we’ll be far away from the oracle when we

call for your goblin.”

“Good. Let’s do that.” I move to crouch back onto the ground so I can lower myself off the plateau and back onto the path,

but Kendrick catches my arm and pulls me back up.

He studies me for a long time, his expression solemn. “You aren’t allowed to give up on me. Just because she couldn’t tell

you something you could offer Erith doesn’t mean there’s no way out of this.”

The grief in his eyes breaks my heart. I take his face in both hands and hold his gaze. “There is no point in me surviving

all of this if everyone and everything I care about are destroyed along the way.” I drop one hand to his chest to feel the

steady thud of his heart. “We start here, with protecting the people we love and a future worth fighting for, and the rest

will work out as it should.”

“What about me? What can I say to make you find a way to survive for me ?”

My mind flashes to the battle the oracle showed me. The bodies littering the corridors of the Midnight Palace. Was that Kendrick

among the fallen or is my mind playing tricks on me? Is my panic making me imagine he’d been part of the carnage?

“I have to warn my sister and Misha, but I promise I won’t stop looking for a solution. Not until this body is no longer mine.”

He draws in a breath, and I realize he hasn’t since he asked his question. “Thank you.”

I swallow. “Kendrick, I need you to make me a promise too.”

I can feel how intently he’s thinking, plotting, planning a way to get around my fate. “Anything.”

“The moment he takes over and I’m gone, I need you to end it. To end me.”

He drops his hands from my face and steps back. “Anything but that.”

“I know it’s not fair to ask you, and if we weren’t so close to my birthday, I wouldn’t. But there’s no one else here right

now, and in case something happens and we can’t get to the others in time, I need to know it will be taken care of.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to do that.”

I close the distance between us and this time I take his face in my hands. His facial hair tickles my fingers. “I’m not asking you to kill me. It won’t be me in here anymore, and when that moment

comes—when he has taken over this body, I need you to kill him before he can use me more than he already has.”

His face crumples, and he squeezes his eyes shut and leans his forehead against mine. “How am I supposed to know that you’re

gone for good? How am I supposed to be sure that you aren’t still in there somewhere?”

I thread my fingers into his hair and hold him close. “You’ll know. I trust you to know.”

“I can’t.” He cups my face and drops his mouth to mine. His kiss isn’t tender or giving. It’s hard and demanding. This is

the kiss of stay with me , the kiss of please don’t go , and it fractures something inside me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his mouth. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt my sister. But none of that mattered when I made this deal with the witch—with Erith. I just wanted...”

“You wanted to stop hurting.” He nods, and when he brushes a kiss over each cheek, I realize tears have slipped from my eyes.

“I wish we could go back. I wish I could change so much.”

I search his face—taking in all the emotions living there. The love and sorrow and fear and desperation. I recognize each

one because I feel them myself. “But we can’t. The only moment we can change is this one.”

Gommid is his usual grumpy self when he deposits us on the back lawn at the Midnight Palace. “More wards are about to go up,”

he says, sniffing like he can smell them in the air. “You’ll have to go beyond the gates if you call me again.”

“Thank you, Gommid.” I reach into my pocket and hand him the nail clippings I gathered from the trash at Amelia’s. I shuddered

in revulsion as I did it, but I knew they’d come in handy.

As soon as he disappears, Kendrick and I head into the palace and straight for Brie’s study, where we find her—as I thought

we might—poring over the Grimoricon.

Her head snaps up as if she senses me. She hops out of her chair and runs around her desk to pull me into a hug. She squeezes

me and I squeeze her—so tightly that I believe, perhaps more than ever, that if love were enough, we wouldn’t have to carry

a single worry for what’s to come.

“I’ll be just out here if you need me,” Kendrick says, and I nod into my sister’s chest, not bothering to release her as Kendrick leaves and the door shuts with a soft snick behind me.

“You’re back.” Brie strokes my hair and keeps herself curled around me. “You came back.”

“I came to warn you,” I say, pulling away so I can make sure she’s paying attention. “Mordeus’s militia is going to attack.

I saw the oracle and she showed me.”

She closes her eyes for a beat. “I know.”

“We can’t let them get past the palace gates. They will come for you first.”

She gives a pained nod. “Our friends from the Eloran Palace are planning to help.”

“ Friends from the Eloran Palace?”

“Turns out we’re not the only ones who want Erith and Mordeus out of the picture.” Her throat bobs. “I promise to catch you

up, but tell me what happened. Did you find the witch? Did you get out of the deal?”

I wish I could lie to her. Wish I could protect her from what I’m so sure is coming. Instead, I just say, “I saw the Banshee.

She sat on my chest and I couldn’t breathe. My ears are still ringing from her screeching.”

Brie flinches—she knows as well as I do what a visit from the Banshee means—but when she schools her expression, she morphs

it into a lighthearted smile. “I keep telling her that’s no way to make new friends.”

I huff out a laugh. “No kidding.”

She tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, smiling when her fingers graze the short buzz of my undercut. “You’re saying you didn’t

find the witch, then?”

“Erith is the witch. He took an old woman’s form, but he was the one I made the deal with.”

The blood leaves her face but she holds my gaze. “Surely there’s something we could offer him?”

I let myself squeeze her one last time. “According to the oracle, I have nothing to offer that he wants, so I’m choosing to

focus on what I can control. Tell me how I can help you prepare for this battle.”

She looks stricken. “You can’t give up that easily.”

“I’m not giving up. I plan to fight to the end.”

“Natan said there are other ways. He said if we find a way to trick the witch—Erith—we might be able to get you out of this.”

“Trick him how?”

“What if he didn’t fulfill his side of the bargain?” she asks. The hope in her voice weighs heavily on my heart. “Didn’t you

say it was supposed to take the fear from your heart, but the magic stopped working? If the ring didn’t do as promised, maybe

the bargain is already nullified.”

I am going to break her because of what I’ve done. “That wasn’t the wording. There was something about ‘so long as the magic holds.’ I remember that because I remember wondering

if that meant the ring wouldn’t work forever.”

I skim my eyes and fingers over the Grimoricon. “I was hoping you’d find a solution in here.”

She steps around me and stares down at the book, as if the words are a puzzle and she’s sure she’ll know how to fix this if

she just looks closely enough. “I still might.”

Everyone around me is hanging their hopes on might and maybe .

In the hall, Kendrick’s low voice mixes with two others. There’s a knock at the door before it creaks open and Misha ducks his head inside. “Apologies, Abriella, but we should meet up with Kendrick’s people and bring them up to speed.”

“Misha, I’m so sorry.” The words are out before I can stop them. I’ve made so many terrible decisions and he’s yet another

person who could lose everything because of it.

His expression goes shuttered. “The oracle told you something.” He doesn’t sound surprised.

“What?” Felicity asks, stepping up from behind Misha and placing a hand on his arm. “What is it?”

I take a breath, not sure if I’m the right person to reveal this information, but Misha gives me a subtle nod. “It’s not just

the shadow court that’s in danger.” My words are tripping over each other, so I force myself to slow down. “We’ve been wondering

why Erith has been helping Mordeus and she explained. Mordeus promised to help him take the Wild Fae territory as his own.”

Felicity pales and looks to Misha. “That’s not possible, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Misha says, his gaze shifting to the window beside my sister’s desk.

She pulls back as if she’s been struck. “You already knew?”

His jaw ticks. “I’ve been warned that he’s a threat, yes.”

Brie flexes her hands at her sides and shadows dance up her arms. “The best way we can protect Misha’s court is to keep Mordeus

from taking this one. Tell everyone to gather in my meeting room in twenty minutes.”