Page 17 of Cursed (Court of Isles #1)

Chapter 17

“This is killing you.”

I slapped a weary hand over my head, dragged at my hair. I felt like a siren—wet, vacant, weary. Bloody gouges ran down my arms. The skin on my legs felt raw, ripped to shreds from evil magic and stinging with lake water. Silas healed me after every crystal I destroyed, and it still wasn’t enough to keep up with my wounds.

We’d managed to destroy three of seven crystals so far. Every time I broke a crystal, the magic snapped off like a rubber band, and I was always its first target.

Silas tried to shield me from the curse with his sphere of magic, but his power was split in holding up the water and protecting me. Silas was able to hold off the worst of it, but not all of it.

“The next one will bring us over the halfway point.” My breath huffed out of me like a steam train. My body trembled. I felt cold and hot, wired and drained. There was no stopping now. “What’s happening on the island? ”

“Comms have gone down.” Silas shook his head. “Who the hell knows.”

I glanced at the dark expression on his face. We knew that breaking the crystals was having an effect of some sort on the island—we could see it. Lagoon-blue water mixed with dirty-black lake water in a tangle as the magic and mortal worlds united.

I glanced into the distance away from The Isle. “What happens if a human gets too close to The Isle before you guys can put up new wards?”

“I don’t think we have to worry about being discovered by humans,” Silas said. “If a mortal wanders into our waters, the curse will kill them before they get far.”

I reached for his hand, squeezed it. “Let’s finish what we started.”

We continued, unlocking each crystal with the dagger, until we faced the final one. I met Silas’s gaze as I turned the dagger one final time, forever releasing the wards that had protected this island for millennia. Nobody knew what would happen next, least of all me.

Silas bowed his head, I yanked the dagger to the right, and with one final click… the curse went free.

With all power sources to the curse destroyed, the evil magic was no longer bound by the magical rules set by the Spellbinders. Wicked and wild, reckless and without remorse, the water around us turned black as the curse leeched out of its carefully curated boundaries.

“Silas,” I murmured weakly, before the water captured me and pulled me under.