Page 329 of The Curse Trilogy

I creep to the steel door holding me in this room, and I try to use my gift once more to open it. It refuses to move though.

I know there’s only one way out of here. I know if I force my savage up, it won’t go down without Hale, but I don’t care. The only one I’m looking to protect right now is the one not able to take care of itself.

I start to pull forth my savage when the door creaks open. I tilt my head curiously, and I freeze when I see the new hybrid blues staring at me through the crack.

“Well?” she prompts. “Are you going or staying?”

I slip through the door, and I lean against the wall to face her a little more head on.

“You didn’t think your gifts worked without my permission did you?” she snarks.

“Symphony, please listen to me,” I say with a coaxing tone.

“What’s going on?” a man says while bobbing out of the room beside my prison hole.

Igor.

“Go back inside Franco,” she instructs.

“Absolutely not. Is this her?” he gasps, and then suddenly his neck snaps as he drops to the ground.

“Oops,” she menacingly releases, her eyes still burning into mine.

I apparently still don’t have my gifts, and she’s so damn strong.

“It’s just you and me now,” she eerily murmurs while circling me without fear.

My breath rushes from me when I’m sailing through the room without warning - the wind slapping my back and slinging my oily, unwashed hair to my face. My back cracks against the wall, and I slam into the concrete with more force than my lips can take as they split open on impact.

Too fucking strong.

“Symphony, please,” I plead, and I see hesitance in her eyes as a fleeting moment of sanity surges through her mind.

Her eyes show me a glimpse of true hybrid blue, but then they turn back to the new hybrid color before I have time to grasp a hold of hope.

“Hurts, doesn’t it? I felt like that once. Every time I took a breath, there was someone there to knock it out of me. I was in Chestnut, but no one talks about the hell it was. Everyone speaks only of Cheyenne, as if there weren’t others suffering. Chestnut sounds like a harmless name, doesn’t it? The full bloods there beat, raped, and damn near killed me before bringing me back to life to do it all over again. But, we don’t talk about Chestnut. It’s always about Araya. Poor, poor Araya. The things she endured,” she snaps with sarcasm dripping out of her mouth.

“Symphony, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I utter through painful breaths, and then I feel my body crashing through a wall as she slings me around again.

I taste the dust that shakes from my body when I try to stand. My hands are torn up now, and my body is trembling in weakness with no power exuding at all.

“It’s rather obvious you didn’t suffer the way I did. You would have never been fucking a full blood if you had.”

“Brazen is good. He’s not like them. Ty is like them though. Don’t you see what he’s doing? He tortures our kind,” I murmur through strain while desperately trying to make her understand.

I feel as though someone has just slapped me with a car as I go barreling through the roof. My body breaks through the numerous levels of concrete as she forces me up to the surface where the sun is in full glow, barely finding its way through the thick branches and heavy leaves of the trees that only grow in places like this.

I roll around, grimacing in pain while gasping for air. I’ll show more pity on others from now on when using my gift against them. If I survive.

The wet ground beneath me soaks through the ragged dress meant for a happy day. Now I’m worried I’ll wear it to my funeral instead of my wedding. I try to stand, but my body gives out beneath me. I have to go savage. I have to risk it. It’s the only way I can beat her… I might not stop in time to save her though.

“Don’t even think about it,” she growls while feeling me trying to pull forth the strength to turn. “I have a hold on that too.”

No you don’t.

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do then,” I strain out through the harsh breaths evading me.

My baby’s life means more than her life. Hale, Clay, Brazen, Angelica, Grayson… they all mean more to me than she does. I don’t like what I have to do, but I care more about them. My life has been coiled around the rod of right and wrong and the thin line in between. I’ve never felt like I was straddling that line as much as I am right now, but I know what I have to do.