Page 8 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

I feel the spell holding me under and fight against it. Fight with my mind and my magic until I’m working my sticky eyes open

and seeing flashes of the room around me. The stone walls. The figure watching me from the corner. The thin mattress under

me.

My mind is a collection of puzzle pieces that don’t fit together. My childhood in the palace. Running through the fields with

Kendrick. My mother’s adoring smile. The paralyzing fear of knowing how quickly my father will kill me if he ever finds me.

Misha’s breath on my neck before he kisses me good night. Misha spitting words at me as I’m dragged away.

I’ll let you rot in my dungeon for a few days before I listen to more of your lies.

The last has me gasping for a breath that pulls me back into my body. Back to myself.

I jump off the bed and fall into a heap of weakness on the stone floor.

A figure in the corner moves toward me. “Easy now. The body grows weak after months of sleep.”

Who is he? Where am I?

Misha will come for me , something says from the corner of my mind, and I have to shove it away. Misha hates me.

Misha wants to marry me , another part of my mind protests.

That. Isn’t. Real.

The figure takes another step forward but he’s still too cloaked in shadow for me to identify. “Go back to sleep. It’s better

there. I promise.”

“You got into my head,” I say to the stranger, but the words slur together, slow and sticky as molasses. “You planted a whole

life there.” And it wants to pull me under again. To pull me back into that dream reality where I have a family and a future

and a home.

I didn’t realize quite how lonely I was until I was made to know a life where I wasn’t.

“I was merely showing you how things could’ve been,” the stranger says. “Perhaps how things could still be if you let them.”

Kendrick bleeding out at my feet. “I’ll pass,” I say, voice raspy, like I haven’t used it in ages. Sleep and dreams call to me, promising refuge. How long have

I been a prisoner of these dreams? How long have I been a captive? Months, like the stranger said?

“You’ll pass ?” His dry laugh echoes off the stone walls of the room—no, cell . “Yes, because your life pretending to be anyone but yourself was so much better?”

Better? No. It wasn’t better. And the idea of sinking back into that world where I had my mother’s love, where Misha adored

me for being myself and no one else? Yes, it’s so tempting to return to that. But my survival depends on me resisting it.

A torch on the wall flames to life, illuminating the stranger as he crouches in front of me. The sight of him makes my heart twist. Blond hair and ice-blue eyes just like mine. Just like the male in the illusion. Just like my twin brother.

“Konner.” I say the name like it’s precious. Like he means something to me. And I hate myself for it.

He must see the push and pull of conflicting emotions on my face because he smiles. “Hello, sister.”

I squeeze my eyes shut against the wave of affection threatening to drown me. He taught me how to wield a sword and shield

my mind. He held my hand while we stood at our mother’s sickbed. He—

No.

Our mother was murdered by our father and all those childhood memories are nothing more than strategically placed fantasies

to confuse me.

“Why?” I ask. And I hate myself for how much I like having him here. Hate myself for how much I want to talk with him. To

know him.

My real family.

“Why what? Why show you the life you could have? Why try to make my sister—the twin I once shared a womb with—see the truth?”

“Why haven’t you killed me?” I have to force the words out. Have to remind myself that’s the real question here.

“Maybe I want you alive,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You think you’re the only one who had a lonely childhood?

I could’ve used a sister. A friend.”

“Or maybe you want to ascend into the Seven and you can’t kill me if you want to survive the fire portal.”

“You think I have an entire palace at my disposal and not a single person who would get blood on his hands for me?” He shakes his head.

“Besides, I’ve been doing our father’s slaughtering for years.

He never intended to allow me to ascend.

” Sighing, he studies me. “I’m not so different than the brother in your dreams.”

I can’t just sit here and listen to him, so I scan the walls of the cell, searching for a door, a window—anything I could

potentially use as a path to escape. “Except that you want me dead.”

“I know that’s what you think, but you’re wrong.”

“You and Erith want me dead. That’s why he killed our mother when he found out about me. That’s why he sent his soldiers looking

for me.”

“You are assuming so much.”

“Do you deny the oracle told our father that his daughter would kill him? Do you deny he wants me dead?”

“I don’t, but I am not our father.”

“And yet here I am. In some dark cell with no way out.” I push off the floor—I need to get away from him—but I have to cling

to the side of the bed to help myself up. I’m too weak.

He stands and cocks his head to the side. “Have you tried asking nicely?” He waves a hand, and I feel strength pour back into

me. I gasp as I’m able to straighten. “There,” he says. “A gift from your loving brother.”

I cough out a laugh. Legs that can hold me up are a start, but they won’t get me out of a doorless, windowless cell. “You’re

just going to let me go if I ask? It’s that simple?”

He shrugs. “Maybe not. But not for the reason you think.” He studies me for a long time and I study him right back. All those illusions he planted in my mind are so strong that it’s hard to see him for the enemy I know him to be. “You’re stronger than I expected. I’ll give you that.”

I glare. Stronger? He just had to use his magic to give me the strength to stand.

“Your mind .” He rolls his eyes. “It took more energy than I expected to keep you dreaming.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to rest until it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

I narrow my eyes, cocking my head to the side as I study him. “You don’t know, do you? You have spent your life doing everything

he asks and he can’t even tell you his plans.”

I see a flash in his eyes—something like frustration, anger. “I am not his puppet.”

Thunder rumbles in the distance, and faster than I can follow, Konner is behind me, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other

hand at my throat, a heavy wave of sleepiness thrown over me like a blanket.

In front of us, a tall, olive-skinned man, the silver lines on his forehead flashing.

“I suggest you release her before I show you what real magic can do.”

Misha? Is that him or am I hallucinating? No. This has to be a dream. He hates me.

Konner tightens his hold and his magic surges, pulling me back into sleep. I cling to consciousness like a cat sinking its claws into its captor. The edges of my vision go dark.

Another crack echoes through the room, and then Konner drops his hand from my neck. He flies against the opposite wall, smashing

against it with a thud.

My knees hit the floor, then my hands. Konner falls to the ground in a heap beside me.

“Hurry,” Misha says, extending a hand.

I stare at it, skeptical. Is this another one of Konner’s illusions?

“Easy.” His big hand spreads across my back and I want to press into the warmth of it—into him. I want to go back in time

to the moment I kissed him good night before the palace was attacked. I want to curl into his arms and never leave.

The thought is so pathetic it tears a sob from me. He never wanted you. He wanted the woman he thought you were. The only place he wanted the real you was in your dreams.

“Just breathe.” He rubs gentle circles on my back. “You’re okay. I’m here.”

He slides an arm underneath mine and pulls me to my feet.

“Are you ready?”

I blink at him. “Ready?”

A hint of a smile on those beautiful lips. “To get out of here.”

And that’s the first moment it occurs to me that I don’t know how he got to me. Or even where we are.

He makes a fist and then flicks his fingers toward the wall. A spinning disc of light appears, growing larger and larger.

A portal.

But before we can take a single step, Konner surges to his feet, standing between us and that glowing portal—between us and

freedom.

“I should’ve killed him,” Misha mutters, but when he releases me to deal with Konner, another figure appears in the room, dark and menacing.

He grabs Misha from behind and puts a knife to his neck. “How does it feel to be king of a magical realm and find yourself

powerless in this one?”

“Orlen,” Konner growls. “Don’t show off.”

Powerless? Misha is anything but. And yet... I reach for my own weak, unconditioned magic and find myself grasping at air.

There’s no magic in this room.

When Konner grabs me again, I barely register it, too stunned to spin from his grasp.

Misha is locked in place with that blade against his neck. I see the anger in his eyes.

The man holding Misha—Konner called him Orlen—he’s a silencer . It’s a rare and highly valued kind of magic and so long as he’s able to wield it, we won’t be escaping through any portals.

“You think he wouldn’t kill you?” Orlen asks Konner, his blade biting into Misha’s skin.

“Everybody calm down,” Konner says, still holding me in front of him like a shield.

“I’m only protecting you, Kon,” Orlen says, and I wonder what he means by that. Who is this male to Konner? “He’s going to

ruin everything.”

A trickle of dark red blood stains Orlen’s blade, and rage boils inside me, but then I realize Misha’s staring at me hard , trying to tell me with his eyes what he would say into my mind in any other circumstance.

His gaze flicks to the sword strapped at Konner’s waist before coming back to meet mine.

“Sol will kill you with her bare hands if you take him out,” Konner tells Orlen. “We need—”

In a sudden burst of movement, Misha frees himself from his captor’s hold, and I act without letting myself think. I shift

in Konner’s grasp, throwing my weight just like Misha taught me, then grab my brother’s sword. When I lunge at Orlen, I have

only a split second to make my choice. This stranger or Misha. Only one will make it out of here alive.

I plunge my blade between Orlen’s ribs.

He stumbles back and slides down the wall. His dark eyes meet mine.

Those eyes condemn me for this choice.

With a sob, I yank the blade free before driving it home again—this time at the hollow of his neck. He gasps and gags and

then falls to his knees, then onto the floor. Blood pools onto the stone around him and bubbles out of his mouth.

I’m frozen. I can’t take my eyes off him.

The moment Misha’s power returns, the energy in the room changes. He throws out a hand toward Konner, but before his magic

can land a blow, Konner disappears.

“We have to get out of here before he comes back. Before he brings another one like that ,” he says, sneering at the dead male on the floor.

I can’t move. I took a life.

“Felicity!” Misha snaps. “Are you listening to me?”

I tear my gaze off Orlen. Off the pool of blood and those lifeless eyes. “What?”

He slides an arm around me and yanks me roughly against his side. “Just hold on.”

The portal appears and Misha drags me through it and into—a living room?

As quickly as the portal appeared, it closes behind us.

I look around, trying to get my bearings. Misha just created a portal inside what was surely a well-warded cell.

“We’ll stay here for the night,” he says, probably noting the confusion on my face. He collapses onto an upholstered chair

and looks me over, something like worry and relief in his expression. “We both need rest.”