Page 61 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

Pain surrounds me. Consumes me. Becomes me.

There were no blades in Mordeus’s dungeons that hurt like this. There were no moments when my hope for tomorrow was this bleak.

My mind tells me not to fight. Begs me to surrender. My body has nothing left to fight with. I am agony and flame and despair,

and I don’t know how to rise.

“Wake up, little human. Open your eyes and look at me.”

I recognize that voice from my memories—from my nightmares.

The room spins, and even with my eyes closed I know it’s dark. Even without obeying that horrifically familiar voice, I know

that the only light here will be from the unnatural glow of his silver eyes.

“Come, little pet. Wake up so we can play.”

The stone floor is ice cold beneath my cheek, and I focus on the sensation as I try to pull myself from the heavy grip of

sleep. Wake up.

Darkness. Stone floor. The whimpering of the woman down the hall.

I’m back in Mordeus’s dungeons. The knives and cuts and blood and pain.

I’m in the dark. And I’m all alone.

I can’t make myself look around. Can’t make myself confirm what I knew the moment this place appeared around me.

I can’t stop the sobs that tear from my chest. Because of the pain consuming every inch of me. Because of the terror. But

mostly because I’ve come this far, and I still don’t know how to win.

This is just another one of Mordeus’s games.

No. Abriella killed him. I was freed from that horrible place, and Mordeus is nothing more than a rotting corpse now.

I open one eye, angry with myself for the way I’m already shaking—a trembling that starts in my gut and radiates out to my

fingertips.

His boots are in front of my face. How is he standing? How is that body supporting him? Was it healed? There is nothing weak

about that voice or about the presence of the male in front of me. And I know as surely as I knew it back in his dungeons

that he could obliterate me with his magic if he wanted to.

I push myself off the floor and force myself to look at him—to face the male I fear most—but before I can get my feet beneath

me, a wave of shadow sweeps through the room and grabs me by the throat. I gasp, choke, splutter. The grip is too tight and

when I claw at my neck to pull the squeezing hand away, my fingers sweep through nothing but air.

The shadows throw me against the wall. My head snaps back against the stone and pain sears the backs of my eyes. Burning. Why is everything burning?

Ignoring the ringing in my ears and the terror in my blood, I meet his eyes. The maggots are gone, and the silver is back.

The decay is gone, his face as healthy and unmarred as it was the day we first met.

“Such a sweet little human. So full of power. So ignorant of how to use it.” His repulsive chuckle sends a dozen spiders crawling

up my spine. “This doesn’t have to hurt,” he murmurs, stepping closer. And closer. He lifts his fingers to my cheek, and I

am frozen. I am paralyzed like I was during all our visits. Unable to control my own body like I was when he forced food and

water down my throat. “I don’t need your suffering any longer, little human.”

I need to think . Where are we? What’s happening?

His soldiers captured me, and I pretended he was in control, and then...

“Let me help you,” he says, and the hands of the shadows that hold me ease up a bit. “I don’t need to hurt you anymore.”

I don’t bother to control my glare. “Then why ?”

His eyes flash. “I didn’t say I won’t hurt you. I said I don’t need to. Not if you make this easy for both of us.”

“I don’t understand.” Where we are. What he means. How this is even happening.

“Don’t you? All you need to do is surrender. Surrender and there’s no more pain. Surrender and all of this goes away.”

Because he’ll take it. He’ll take my body and my life. “Never,” I breathe.

“Never?” He laughs. “Says the girl who was all too eager to hand over her life to the Eloran witch. Says the girl who prayed to her gods’ deaf ears for death when she was living in my dungeons.” He scoffs. “ Never. You don’t have the backbone for never .”

But that’s just it. We’re not in some stony dungeon, and Mordeus isn’t up and walking around in his old body. He hasn’t been

magically healed and we aren’t truly in this room.

None of this is real. Except maybe this unceasing agony.

This is some sort of limbo. Some between one future and another. The fact that I’m with him and not dead proves I just might have more backbone than he ever anticipated, proves I wasn’t too late, proves I have a chance .

All I have to do is take it.

“None of this is real,” I snap.

“What is real , little human?” A shadow darts out and wrenches my arm behind my back, twisting until my shoulder feels like it might bust

out of my skin. “Is this not real? Or do I need to make you bleed to believe it?”

The pain isn’t just in my shoulder. It’s everywhere. And it burns and I want it to stop— need it to stop.

I don’t know how to wield this phoenix that lives inside me, but I’ve been taught how to shield by the best. If none of this

is physically happening, maybe, just maybe, I could use those mental shields to gain an advantage. I gather my power, coiling

it tight, until it’s too big to hold, until it’s vibrating with the need to be free. Then, like attacking with a shield, I

scream and release it, shoving it toward his shadows.

The invisible hand releases from my neck, and I drop to the ground and gasp for air.

Every inch of me burns and I’m not sure I have the strength to stay on my feet through the pain.

Mordeus licks his lips. “ There’s the power I’ve been waiting for.”

“The power you’ll never touch.”

He stalks in a circle around me and looks me over. “I don’t think you understand what’s happening. There are two of us here—two

souls entangled in a battle for a body that cannot hold us both. Not fully. And I am unable and unwilling to live on scraps

anymore.”

“If you want a second life so badly, you’re going to have to live it in that rotting corpse.”

Shadows dart forward and shove down my throat, so much like the food he forced me to eat to sustain me. I choke and gag. “This

is not a battle I will lose, little human.”

I hurl my shields— my power —toward him. It’s energy and I feel it, feel its potential and its magic, but all I can do is blindly shove it in his direction.

His shadows surge to deflect as easily as swatting a fly, dancing around his fingertips as he circles me, but I’m no longer

the little mouse who can do nothing but run. I circle him too, hands raised in front of me, open and ready to strike.

“You are a disgrace to faekind,” he says, sneering. “Rejecting your magic, rejecting your immortality, hiding from darkness.

Mab must be rolling in her grave to have the world connect your weakness to her strength.”

“You’re the disgrace,” I say, letting my power fill me. “You were born with great gifts. Magic that could change the world

and you used it for greed and power.”

He strikes, a ball of darkness plunging into my belly. The air rushes out of me as I’m thrown back. I teeter, struggling to

find my balance when my lungs refuse to take a new breath.

“You’ve come a long way.” He looms over me. “The little girl from my dungeons would’ve been begging for death by now.”

A jerky inhale finally gives my lungs the air I need, and I roll to dodge his next strike. Anger boils inside me, and I hurl

amorphous power at his face, completely missing when he spins away. “I’m not that little girl anymore,” I shout.

“What do you want to live for anyway?” he asks. “I watched what was happening at the palace. Everyone you care about is dead.

There is nothing and no one left for you.”

“ Liar. ” They aren’t dead. Not yet. I can’t believe that. “They are going to fight and they are going to survive. Unlike you .”

Shadows swirls around his feet as he cocks his head to the side. “Your pretty Eloran male is dead, is he not? Because you

drove your blade into his chest.”

Grief and panic steal my breath—the memory of Kendrick on the ground, blood oozing from his chest. I shove it aside. Mordeus

is trying to make me give up. If I have nothing to live for, he wins. “If he’s gone, I fight for him. I will defeat you to

honor him.” I gather my power, preparing for my next attack.

“That’s so sweet. And your sister too?”

I freeze. “What about my sister?”

He waves a hand and an image appears behind him. Abriella’s body, strung up at the gates of the Midnight Palace, her neck

snapped, her head hanging limply at an unnatural angle. “While you’ve been here, fighting for a life you don’t even want,

my army finished the job. The revolution is here. You’ve already lost.”

His shadows fill the room, stealing all the air and pressing in on me. Darkness deeper than anything I’ve ever seen. This is the darkness that will swallow me. This is the night where I’ll meet my end.

I fight to breathe, but there’s nothing there. My lungs ache, compressed and empty and desperate for air.

“Surrender.” The word is a scream that comes from between my ears. It’s a plea that comes from the little girl who didn’t

know how to fight the monster who was torturing her. It’s there before me, a path, after so much pain and suffering and fear,

to the peace I’ve craved.

And I don’t want it.

I strain to push my power back against his darkness, but I can’t. There’s nothing for my fire to feed on. There’s nothing

but shadow and night and fear.

You can’t win unless you accept who you are. Karmyn’s words come back to me. Not the phoenix. You’ve always appreciated fire. You have to be all of who you are. Even who you don’t want to be.

I thought she meant I needed to be fae, but maybe she means I’m more like Brie than I ever thought. My sister embraces the

darkness and manipulates shadows like they’re her own personal infantry. I, on the other hand, have always run from the shadows

and cowered from the approaching darkness.

I don’t need to fight Mordeus’s shadows to win—not when I can command them for myself.

This time, when I breathe, I invite the shadows into my lungs, into my core, into my very essence. I don’t need to be the

Enchanting Lady to face the darkest parts of myself. They’re still there, even when the ring is gone. I am not just a scared

child, and I’m not just an avenging girl with a magical ring.

I am anger and vengeance.

I am love and acceptance.

I am power and strength.

I am grace and wrath.

I am fearful and fearsome. And I can command the shadows that I’ve spent years running from.

When I invite the shadows in, they swirl into every corner of my mind, my self, and my soul, and they wait for my command.

The room clears and Mordeus looks around in a panic. “What did you do?” he asks, and now it’s my turn to smile.

“You created me,” I whisper. “Everything you did to use me, to defeat me, made me into who I am today.” Flames flare to life

around the edges of the room, licking up the sides of the walls, igniting the wooden beams in the ceiling, crackling all around

us.

There’s too much heat. It’s melting my flesh, and I know the scream piercing my ears is my own.

The flames were never something I could wield, but they are something I can endure.

I feel him pulling at his shadows, calling them back. “We’re connected,” I say. The pain slices through me, willing me to

surrender, but I tighten my hold on the darkness. “Your power is my power. You did that.”

The flames crawl toward him now, catching on his robe and racing up his back. I feel my own clothes burning. I don’t let myself

look.

His scream pierces the air and tears through me.

I feel his pain because it’s mine too. There is no his body and my body .

There is only this one body we are wrestling over, and the white-hot burn of the flame eats away at flesh and bone, ripping into my soul.

It’s destroying him. It’s destroying me .

Instead of hiding from it, I wrap my arms around the torment and invite it closer.

I close my eyes. We’re connected. I cannot destroy him without destroying myself.

Abriella’s gone , a small voice whispers between whimpers of pain. You’re too late. Don’t do this. Surrender and the pain can end.

I open my arms and invite the flames to feast. It doesn’t matter if I’m too late for Brie. I’m not too late for the rest of

the court, for the people who would suffer under a wicked king’s rule.

Kendrick is gone. You will have to live with knowing you killed him. That pain will make this look like nothing.

But he can’t be the only reason I endure. Neither can my sister.

The flames race up my arms. I let them engulf me as they fill the room. Let them engulf Mordeus .

His screams fill my ears. They become my screams.

I won’t surrender to the monster, and I don’t hide from the suffering. I let it hurt. I invite in the pain until I am nothing

else. I am melting flesh and bubbling skin. I am charred bone and the glowing embers at the root of the flame.

I am the danger in the darkness. I am the scream of the nightmare.

I leave my body long before it turns to ash, but I see it, like I’m watching from a distance.

“And then what happens, Mama?” Abriella asks. Her hand squeezes mine.

I look down. I do have a body. I’m a little girl again, tucked into bed, night stars twinkling through the window.

“Then the little princess knew she’d destroyed the monster,” our mother says, and the sound of her voice, after so many years

without it, is like a balm to my aching soul, “but her fight wasn’t over.”