Page 60 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Forever Changed

Rayze

The Truth, Pt. I

Let me be clear: I’ve lied to you. Omitted. Truth to a Shard Daughter is sacred. Releasing our pasts is releasing power. We can’t just let shit go, and if we plan to, we do so strategically, ensuring the hurt we unleash causes maximum damage to the ones who deserve it most.

That’s why I knew, until I was left with no choice, I had to hold this in. Nurture it. Build it. My truth. Hallie’s truth.

Have you ever had a moment where you’re standing across from someone, and you just know they’ll change your life? That feeling like your life was never wholly yours and you’ve finally found someone holding the pieces you’ve been searching for?

I was thirteen when I first felt that. I didn’t know about magic, but I had it buried deep inside me, waiting to awaken—and in deciding to keep that person in my life?

My power reached for them, tangled with them.

Knotted.

I was shooting arrows in Squallspire’s garden. Prop arrows, really. Wooden and dull. Even when I hit dead center on my makeshift target, the arrows didn’t embed.

My perfect shot rebounded, and the arrow thumped to the grass.

“That was pretty good,” a low voice murmured at my back

I spun around. Heart in my throat, I stared wide-eyed at a boy leaning between hedges.

Warrick Ivor .

He was muscular and tall, but lean in a predatory, graceful way, even at only fifteen. The white streaks through his dark hair glowed bright beneath Rathem’s early morning sun, the day’s storms an hour out from rolling in like clockwork. His black shirt and pants were soaked with sweat.

“You’re Hallie, right?” he asked.

I blinked at him. “Yeah,” I said, soft and unsure. I knelt to the grass, plucking my fallen arrows into my grasp. “Shouldn’t you be on the beach training with Ruel?”

Warrick glanced over his shoulder, then turned back with a sheepish grin. “I’m hiding. I may or may not have kneed your asshole brother in the balls.”

A snort ruptured from me, and I slapped a hand over my mouth.

He grinned and strolled forward. “Here. Let me see one of those.”

My throat worked as I placed an arrow in his palm.

Warrick twirled it between his fingers. Then he unsheathed his Serpent blade and settled on one of the large rocks nearby, balancing an elbow against his knee.

He took his blade to the point of my arrow and whittled away, sharpening it. His brows drew together in concentration before he straightened and twirled it again with a winning smirk.

“That should do it.” He tossed it to me, and I caught it, my lips parting as I analyzed the far more lethal head. “Go on,” he said and gestured to my target. “Show me how it’s done.”

I dropped my other arrows back to the grass and lined up his modified one with my bow string, pulling my elbow back and aiming.

Inhale . I closed my eyes, the sea breeze tangling through my loose hair and canvas skirts. Exhale .

One breath.

One shot.

Forever changed.

“Damn,” Warrick muttered. He moved behind me, his breath skirting over my temple as I lowered my bow.

My arrow pierced the center of my target.

I turned to him with a smile. “Can you sharpen the rest?”

The blue in his steel gaze was bright. “Sure thing, angel. Just do me a favor and don’t fucking aim them at me.”

Gods, he was pretty.

“No promises,” I whispered.

His smile grew wider. “Not an angel at all then, are you?” He took a step back and bent at the waist dramatically. “Please, vicious,” he said, peering up through the hair stringing over his face with his low bow. “Spare me.”

Just like that—I was consumed.

He stopped by the garden every week for a year to sharpen my arrows or present me with new ones. Every smile he gave me and each I returned, I drew him to me. I became obsessed with him, adoring how he was wrapped around my finger.

For any other girl, it would’ve been harmless. A burning crush that would sizzle out as she grew up. It would’ve been hormones, puberty, just shifting into her own skin.

For me, one crush became forever, intentional or not.

I was helpless to my heart, my magic nurtured to life by my desire for him.

I was so young. I didn’t know what I was doing.

When I begged him to stay just ten minutes longer when he visited, or when I demanded he bring me more arrows despite him showing up with a new bruise when he did—I was commanding him. Knotting his threads.

Chaining him to me.

Then—the feast.

Hallie

14 Years Ago // 13 years old // Squallspire

I’m bathed in my mother’s blood. Remade. Sharp with the promise of death, the brutal warmth of her last breaths skitter across my toes, my hands clasped around my baby sisters.

“You fight,” our mother bites out as one of my arrows thrusts between her breasts, The Serpent’s emblem of a snake carved into the lethal point of its head. Her eyes sear into mine. “You taste their blood before they ever taste yours.”

The hand around the arrow— Warrick .

I stare into his eyes, and all I feel is rage. White light sparks across my fingertips.

“What was that?” a crony orders.

My breath hitches, and the tablecloth hiding myself and the twins lifts.

Then my sisters and I are wrenched apart.

“Please,” I scream. “Stop.”

“Hal!” Warrick shouts, but Serpents tow him away. He bucks against their hold, and they shove him out into the hall, his frantic fight disappearing with the close of the kitchen doors.

You fight –I thrash and kick. You taste their blood –I snap my jaw down on a snake-tatted bicep before I’m slammed to the ground, a heavy palm against my cheek– before they ever taste yours .

I spit the crony’s blood to the floor with another shriek, driving my boot into his shin. The tangled mess of my dark hair sticks to the corners of my lips as I twist and shout.

My sisters’ terrified howls of pain echo mine, the two of them dragged by their hair from beneath the table. Armor reflects more snakes and my breath stalls with panic.

A gag thrusts into my mouth before my temple slams against the soldier’s back plate. Pain pulses through my skull. I hang limp, stunned, as I’m hauled from the kitchen like garbage.

The tile swims below me, tilting sideways. Die , the word echoes—not a thought, not a whisper, but something clawing up my throat desperate to be spoken. The word lights up the air with spiraling color, fractals of green and gold webbing over the walls.

I grab them. In my mind, in my gut—I clutch them like lifelines and pull.

“Die,” I choke, voice muffled, fists pummeling the crony’s spine with what little strength I have left. A numbness hits, bone-deep and burning. I push through it, because of it, in denial of it. I am not done. They have not finished me.

“ DIE ,” I command, and the colors swarming my vision go taut.

My palms flush with heat. Pressure tightens in my skull. A shriek explodes behind my eyes.

Then I fall.

My shoulder nails into the hallway tile. I hiss in pain and blink in confusion.

Everything is quiet. No rattle of armor or barked orders.

No screams from my sisters.

I shove to my feet and stumble from the soldier who carried me.

His eyes stare above, lifeless. Dead .

I trip over another body. My pulse hammers and something feral leaves me. A screech. A sob. A scream.

All three, all at once.

I drop to my knees and shake my sister, Lori, before I look a few bodies over and find Meredith silent, too. I lift my hands above my head before I bring them down in a fist upon Lori’s chest. Again and again, I hope to see a breath sputter from between her small lips.

Nothing.

I drag myself to Meredith and try the same.

Nothing. There’s nothing.

“Help,” I sob and stumble over bodies into the dining room. “Please, someone help.”

But there’s no life here either.

All of the cronies, Serpents and Kraken pirates, are collapsed along the perimeter. At the dining table—

“No,” I cry and move to my older sisters.

Lined up like offerings, they sit limp and naked.

Metal rings tight around their necks, digging into soft tissue, black bolts screwed down into the skin.

Wires crawl up their spines like veins, threading into ports drilled behind their ears.

Jagged headpieces latch across their skulls, shattered at the temple—fragments of glass embedded in their faces, the burn pattern still glowing faint red.

Their mouths are open, lips peeled back in a frozen cry for help, teeth stained red. Every collar is shorted out, melted into their throats revealing tendon and bone.

Their faces are hollow. Blank. Eyes stuck in place. A few still have makeup smeared under their lashes, painted on before they were drugged, stripped, locked into the rigs.

I shake their shoulders. Rush from chair to chair. Rip and pry at their collars between heavy sobs.

Rylie.

Loraine.

Heather.

Kara.

Nave.

Sissy.

Lori.

Meredith.

Dead . They’re all dead.

I look for Ruel, but his body isn’t among the snakes and pirates who fell victim to my command or among our sisters lost to the rigs.

Blood gushes from my nose, thick over my lips. My gut writhes and swirls, something desperate lying within. My bare feet echo against tile. My shoulders smash from curved archways to the hard edges of the front doors as I sprint out of Squallspire, veering recklessly in panic.

My toes hit grass and dirt. The sea breeze kisses my cheeks.

Then I see them.

Cronies stand with The Kraken and The Serpent. My father yells at Russell. Warrick paces in the center of a circle of guards. He strikes forward, trying to get through, but cronies hold him back, keeping him from escaping their blockade.

I ram forward, wildflowers crushing beneath each stride. My fists clench, and the desperate thing in my gut shakes with wrath.

Wind rips through my hair, howls alongside the beast roaring awake inside me. Thousands of voices crash against my ears, their collective wail sinking below my skin and lacing through my entirety. Darkness bleeds along the edges of my vision, and on the horizon, lightning veins across the sea.

Light crackles over my knuckles and peers from the pores of my skin, my tongue sharp. “Look at me!” I shout, and my voice carries over the cliff with electric veins of white.

Bodies wrench in my direction, eyes locking with mine before every one of them falls to their knees, hands flying to their heads in pain.

“You’ll pay for this,” I command, but as quickly as the power inside me surged, it weakens, untrained and easily exhausted.

My knees buckle, blood drenching my lips as it stings from my nose. “You will,” I rasp, crashing into the grass with a cough. “If it’s the last thing I do.”

“Magic,” The Serpent’s voice carries through the wind. “The girl has magic .”

Violence erupts, my father shouting orders before he falls silent. My sight fades in and out as I struggle to stay conscious.

Boots— they’re coming for me .

I claw at the grass, dragging myself on my stomach.

“Hallie.” Warm hands grip my waist.

I cry, tears blurring everything around me as I’m lifted from the ground. “Let me go— let me go !”

“Hal.” It’s Warrick. He’s holding me, carrying me. “Angel, I’m so sorry.”

A sob cracks out of me. “Get away from me!” I shove at his chest.

We’re sprinting, my body bumping against his.

“Hold on. We’re almost to the lifts,” he breathes against my ear.

“Put me down,” I snarl, and the thing in my gut seeps up through my lungs, drenching the air with each ragged exhale I release. Strings curl and sweep around Warrick, each of them bending as my pain bleeds forward.

“He’ll take you,” he argues. “Hate me if you want, but I’m getting you off this—”

“PUT ME DOWN.”

Warrick chokes.

I cry out, flung from his arms as we slam into dirt. Splotches of red cloud my escape, and I lift a hand, my chin trembling when my fingers pull back wet.

I’m bleeding from my eyes.

Warrick wrenches up, his face panicked as he looks over his shoulder. Dozens of cronies pursue us, his father at the lead.

“Hal,” he says, unsheathing his Serpent blade with a hard swallow. “Run, angel,” he begs. “ Run .”

“Leave me alone!” I cry, holding out my hands as he steps toward me.

We both stiffen as white cracks from my palms. Veins like lightning snap outward, striking against his chest.

Warrick stumbles back, his eyes going unfocused. His blade falls to the grass. The strings surrounding him, beautiful and vibrant—

Pieces of them burn . They flash to a stark white. Then they thin, nearly translucent, as they disappear among the woven plaits and curled wisps connected to his skull.

He shouts, his eyes squeezing shut as he drops to his knees and grasps his head.

My heart cracks, my natural instinct to fight waning to sick realization that I’ve hurt him. “Warrick?” I sweep to his side.

He was only trying to help. I know that, but pain was blinding me, and now— what have I done? I grab his face. “Warrick, please, I can’t lose you, too. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Please —”

Hands tear me away from him.

“No!” I kick as I’m hauled against an armored chest. “Warrick!”

“Shut her up,” The Serpent growls.

“ No ,” I plead, my own pretty strings shining bright with grief and pain. The power inside me reaches for my threads, for Warrick’s.

I latch to them, tugging them toward each other and knotting them into a single, tangled limb, desperate to keep myself from being torn away from the last person I have left in this realm to love.

Below, waves break against the cliffside with sharp cracks. Thunder roars, and Warrick’s tears—

They run red like mine.

Something shifts like a fault line cracking beneath my ribs. A force surges out of me, bright and blinding, pulling the realm off balance.

Serpents shout as the ground shakes, fissures erupting over the pillars bracing Squallspire. The lifts attached to the cliff rattle, gears groaning. Lightning snaps across the sky, storm clouds stretching like claws across the sun.

Tendrils of shadow curl over the lip of the cliff.

They roll across the grass. Stars winking into existence along a sprawling black veil lifting from the cliff’s end like a dark mirror, Squallspire reflected in jagged, cracked fragments. The space between Warrick and I pulls tighter, drawn closed by a blinding light.

I reach for him, but he fumbles for his Serpent blade.

“Warrick?” I whisper.

His shoulders tense. His brows pinch. He stares at me like I’m a stranger.

Dread runs cold through me, the last of my fight giving out as a Serpent cuffs my hands.

The ground rolls, the lifts screeching, and—

A syringe plunges into my neck.