Page 52 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

“Did you come up with anything?” Abriella asks later that evening as she and Pretha join us in one of the palace’s more comfortable sitting rooms. I’ve

been telling Natan everything I remember about the day I made the bargain for the ring, and Kendrick’s been by my side the

whole time, willing me to remember as much as possible.

“Nothing yet,” Natan says, “but I find our minds work on these problems in the background if we give them what they need.

Something will come to me.”

Brie’s quick glance in my direction is all I need to know that she’s thinking the same thing I am. His mind needs to work

it out quickly. We only have one more day.

“May Pretha and I join you?” Brie asks. “I’ve been wanting Pretha to talk to you about your phoenix power. So you can be prepared.”

“Of course,” Kendrick says, waving to the armchairs across from us. “Please have a seat.”

Pretha smooths the wrinkles in her skirt before looking at me.

“Since Kendrick and his friends teamed up with us months ago, Natan and I have been working together to sort out everything we know about the gift of the phoenix, Eloran blood magic, and everything else related to this unique situation.”

“I appreciate that,” I say softly. I hate to think how much time has been dedicated to fixing my extraordinary mistake, but

it’s making me realize that even through my dark years holed up in my bedroom here, I was surrounded by people who cared about

me.

“In any other circumstance,” Pretha continues, “I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to tell you about this power. It’s one you need

to discover yourself—to join with it without searching for it.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Brie says. “She needs to know how to wield it.”

Pretha sits back in her seat. “The gift of the phoenix is rare. The ability to wield it is even more rare. We don’t know for

sure, but many suspect that only a small percentage of those born with the power of the phoenix live to use it.”

“Why?” I ask.

Pretha holds my gaze. “Because in order to wield it, you have to be willing to burn, to feel and endure the pain of the flame.

Most people are more afraid of pain than they realize.”

“So suffering is inevitable?” Abriella asks. “There’s no way around it?”

That’s my sister. Always trying to find a way to save me from hurting.

“Think of the werewolf and the agony of his transformation,” Pretha says. “Once he becomes the wolf and has its power, the pain is gone. But the process—the metamorphosis from human to wolf—that is excruciating every time. The weakest wolves don’t survive the pain.”

“So you’re saying that even though I have this power and I could become flame itself, I could just as likely die trying to

use it.”

“You will die,” Pretha says. “The process of the phoenix—burning to ash and rising again—it’s a small death.” She looks at my hand again.

“Well, not so small, I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why would I ever burn myself to ash if there’s such a high risk of dying?”

Natan pushes his glasses up his nose. “It might not be you,” he says. “We’ve seen Mordeus take over from time to time, and

he will have to use your gift to take over your body completely. You need to be prepared.”

“We’ve dedicated a lot of our time in the last few days trying to work around the bargain—to get you out of it entirely,”

Pretha says. “Even if you find a way to be released from your deal with Erith, Mordeus may still have access to take over

your body through the power of your phoenix. If we don’t find a way out of the bargain, he will take over on your eighteenth

birthday by burning to ash and rising again. If we do find a way out, there’s no guarantee he won’t still take over.”

“How?” Brie asks.

“Through the blood magic Mordeus used on her,” Natan says gently. “So long as he lives in any form, they are connected. Every

one of those scars is evidence of that.”

“He has to be stronger than you—in will and in desire.” Pretha folds her arms across her chest and hugs herself tightly. “I imagine that’s why he worked so hard to break you. So that letting go wouldn’t just be a relief when you were faced with the flames, it would be a gift.”

Tears brim in Brie’s eyes and one slips from the corner. “This isn’t fair.”

The despair in her voice rips through me.

“The moment you decide”—Pretha taps her temple—“that life, that your very existence isn’t worth the pain, that it would just

be easier to stop existing, you lose to the phoenix. In any other person with this gift, that would be it. That would be the

end. But in your case, if you surrender and he doesn’t...”

“Then he wins,” I say, my blood turning as cold as it did when I first got the ring. “And if Mordeus wants to claim my body

as his own, if he wants to steal my life, then all he has to do—all this male who has already died once has to do—is make

me burn and endure the pain better than I can.”

“That’s right,” Pretha says. “You have to want to live. Want it so much that every moment of suffering and agony is worth

it.”

The fires around the perimeter of the palace lawn are spelled to enhance the wards. I stand in the back garden, transfixed

by the sight.

Abriella must’ve understood that I needed to be alone because she didn’t try to come after me when I excused myself from our

conversation with Pretha in the sitting room. I’ve been out here for hours, watching the flames dance and flicker, licking

at the night sky. For years, I dreaded the end of day, cowered at the encroaching night. Then I got my ring and I relished

it. Vengeance. Murder. Justice. I craved them more than I feared the darkness.

The soft scuff of boots on stone tells me I’m not alone anymore, and I know without looking, know even without those keen fae senses the others have, that it’s Kendrick.

He wraps something around my shoulders. I close my eyes against the warmth of it, the subtle smell of laundry soap, the comforting

brush of his hands as he adjusts the blanket around my neck. “It’s getting cold out here.”

I twist my neck to meet his eyes. “Thank you.”

“May I join you?” he asks.

I shrug, then take a breath and force myself to say what I feel instead of what feels safe. “I thought I wanted to be alone,

but I think I’d rather be with you.”

He wraps his arms around me from behind, his hands clasped just beneath my breasts, his chest warm against my back. “You never

have to be alone so long as I’m around.”

I don’t bother to bring up Crissa or the fact that I only have one day left. I know his words are a promise he’ll keep as

long as he can, and for now, for tonight, that’s enough.

“I was never afraid of fire,” I say, eyes on the crackling piles of brush before us. “I nearly died in a fire when I was a

little girl, so perhaps it should’ve occurred to me sooner that there was some uncommon connection between me and flames,

but I never gave it much thought. It’s not all that strange to find fires a source of comfort. To want to step closer when

they’re near or to find peace in the crackle of burning wood. And then, after Mordeus, I was so afraid of the dark, and fire

gave me light. It broke the thing I dreaded so deeply. So I never questioned this pull toward flames.”

He bends down to rest his chin on my shoulder. “And now you think it’s because you’re a phoenix.”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “Or maybe I just fear the thing that broke me more than I fear the thing that could have.”

“I already told you: You aren’t broken,” he says.

“That remains to be seen.” I extend a hand toward the too-hot flames and let them heat my skin. “I think I fear the darkness

because it changed me. It became part of me. Ask anyone who knew me before. I believed there was so much good in the world.

So much to look forward to. And he locked me in that cell and then trapped me in my own body, and I stopped believing that.”

My hand has gone from pale to pink to red from the heat of the fire.

“I would’ve died in that cell if he hadn’t forced me to eat, if he hadn’t forced water down my throat. I would’ve found a

way to end it if Crissa hadn’t used her magic to soothe the chaos and panic in my mind. Or after, if you hadn’t arrived. I

heard a hope in your voice that I recognized from the girl I’d been before he’d taken me—the girl I used to be—and instead

of wanting to escape my body, my life, you made me dream of escaping that cell. And that was exactly what he wanted.”

“I can’t be sorry that you survived,” he says, his voice a gritty rasp. He takes my hand in his, and when he brings it back

to our sides, he holds it there, as if he can absorb the burning sensation. “I’m sorry that it happened in a way that helped

him, but I refuse to apologize for keeping you here.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “I don’t want you to.

I get it now. I understand why you made the choices you did.

” My eyes brim with tears, but I laugh. It sounds crazed.

“He almost won. If that little girl he locked up were about to face what I am, it wouldn’t have mattered if there was a way out of the bargain.

I would’ve gladly surrendered to the pain.

He wanted to break me. He needed me to be so fragile that when the flames burned me to ash, I’d surrender.

He wanted to make me weak, but he didn’t realize he was teaching me just how much pain I can endure and survive.

I am so much stronger than he is.” I stare into the flames, imagine I am the flames.

He turns his face into me and brushes his lips at the sensitive spot where my neck meets my shoulder. “Then why do you seem

so sad?”

“I’m not, not really. Just contemplating what I want.”

“What’s that?” His voice is so soft, almost like he’s afraid he might not like my answer.

I wiggle until he loosens his grip enough that I can spin in his arms. He takes my face in his hands and brushes tears away

with the rough pads of his thumbs. “I want to live.”