Page 64 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Cracking Open

Warrick

Her name claws behind my teeth, but I can’t form its shape. I try to say it. Try again. She’s… A voice. A scream. A sin. I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I want to rip myself open. Dig through my lungs until I find the ghost of our shared breaths and drag it back. I want to tear through my chest and shout her rage into the hollow she left behind until the echo gives me a heartbeat.

There’s only white noise now. A buzzing echo.

On the ground, a snake —slithering, crawling for something. Trying to escape me.

I growl, pivot, and drive the legs of my chair through flesh.

Metal cracks against ligaments, blood sprays my thighs, but I keep going. Keep pressing. Deeper. Harder. Crushing .

I hum.

Rayze

Cyrus Vandem tears in half. Slowly. His back splits with the gait of the chair, and he chokes.

Warrick may not remember, but he’s still such a perfect weapon. I’ll miss him. So fucking much.

Vandem howls for mercy, pleas for death. He beats his forehead into the ground in agony, over and over until—

He falls still. Quiet.

He suffered but not enough to pay the toll for all his wrongs.

For that, The Serpent will serve.

“Chain. Me.” My voice rips through the room like a blade, and my magic follows, drenched in grief.

The Serpent shakes. His eyes bulge, his hands twitching as Volt attacks him. He pulls an iron key from his pocket and unlocks my cuffs.

My chains fall.

Warrick careens toward the far wall. He drives his chair against stone, trying to break out of his restraints.

But love be damned. No man will take what’s mine. This vengeance. This kill. I’ve spent over a decade waiting for this moment.

I glare longingly at the bow and arrows against the weapons wall. Then I limp toward Russell.

My hands may be broken.

But I still have my Godsdamn voice.

“Stand,” I order.

Fall . The Serpent slams to his knees, Volt wrenching the threads of his Fate in the opposite direction.

I hadn’t been sure it’d work, but I’ve admitted it before and I’ll admit it again: Fate and her poetic fucking justice.

My heart drums in my ears. “Peace,” I breathe.

Death . His hands claw for a knife at his waist.

“No.”

Yes . He lifts the blade to his throat.

“Speak.”

Silence. He drags the steel across his neck, slow and jagged. His blood drenches his chest, crests the corners of his mouth.

I crouch and level my glare with his.

“ Live ,” I breathe. “Live as Hallie’s mother and sisters do. As the Skin you’ve imprisoned have. As innocent as my fucking childhood was . ”

Tormented.

Silent.

Forever.

Die. His shoulder cracks into pavement as he falls, choking.

“Look how small you are,” I whisper. “How weak.”

DIE. The light in The Serpent’s eyes dims.

“Live for them,” I command and lift, towering over him. I jam my boot into his spine, forcing him flat. “Forever.”

He writhes. Weak. Bleeding. Broken.

I press harder. Grind him into the stone.

Then he exhales, long and slow and shuddering as finally, he dies.

I sway, my pulse a war drum between my ears, but this fight is far from over.

Warrick breaks out of his restraints.

“Move,” I order, forcing him to a halt.

His chest heaves, the blue rings in his eyes consuming the whites. His body jerks, caught between obedience and violence. His jaw grinds, and veins throb electric down his arms as the command forces him away from Russell.

Then he looks at me, and the Bond recoils .

Sparks web across his cheekbones, lick over his lips. His breath is too fast, too shallow. Not from grief. Not even in rage. Volt warps us. All that we’ve been.

My lungs seize as silver materializes. It’s nearly transparent, a ghost of a frame, but I would recognize the scissors anywhere.

Warrick stalks forward.

Every muscle in his frame bulges with tension, shoulders heaving, sweat gleaming against neon-washed skin. His mouth parts like he might growl my name, but there’s only the flicker of electricity crackling between his teeth.

Horror and sorrow knot across the Bond, and I stumble back, forcing him to step across Vandem’s corpse. His bare feet grind through scattered flesh and blood until I’m cornered.

I need him close if this is going to work.

His hands wrap around my neck.

My back cracks against the stone wall.

“My snake,” I try.

My power scrapes through the threads of his mind. Most are frayed. Some are shredded.

One—one still shimmers.

I brush against it with my magic.

His grip loosens, the faintest bit of recognition and terror crossing over his features. “Rayze.” His strangled voice breaks through my magic, the pain in it shattering me in ways I may never mend.

Volt floods the thread. It burns it. Blackens it. The very essence of his being shatters, our relationship lost among the ruins of power.

“ Run ,” he pleads.

Gently, I lift a swollen, mangled hand to his face, Volt rupturing out from his skin and attacking my palm. Its sting tears deep, but I push through the pain, nudging my bruised knuckles over his cheek. His eyes close, a heavy breath leaving him as he leans into my touch, his shoulders sagging.

“Forgive me,” I whisper.

His lashes crack open. His lips curl into a snarl.

“ Cut ,” I rasp.

The scissors whip around us, a flash of light and hunger, diving into the narrow space between our torsos.

Our Bond rips into view, dragged screaming between the planes of Fate and mortality. No longer invisible. No longer sacred. It’s become a gnarled thing of barbs and sinew, blackened with corrosion and lit from within by Volt.

Somewhere in its center is the power I gifted him all those years ago.

Blue bolts of light arc from his core, veins of synthetic power racing down the Bond toward me. The threads between our souls spasm and shudder. They try to knot themselves, try to seal against the invasion.

Sparks writhe along its edges. Electric veins branch like cracks in glass, and my magic wrenches in fear.

“ CUT ,” I shout, and the scissors dig deeper.

Warrick snaps back, and we crash to the ground in shouts of agony.

The threads between our souls rupture. They whip outward in a violent shudder, flailing as if they might knot again, might cling to what we were, but Volt floods them. They sizzle, combust, vanish .

Gone. Every knot I ever made inside him, willing or not, finally, fully undone.

The scissors flake apart midair. Silver turns to ash. One final clamp, jagged and vicious, and they dissolve.

The magic I gifted him with every kiss, every embrace, every smile—it slams into me, and I gasp. Sparks crack from my knuckles, a silver sheen to my skin as my power rumbles low in pleasure, but I can’t celebrate its return. I don’t know if I ever will knowing what it cost.

I’m desperate to crawl to him, to kiss him, to tie him around me in a thousand knots and never let him go.

My heart breaks as Warrick pounds his fists into the floor, tears streaming down his face.

He shouts, clawing at his head, his chest, his gut.

Every place I’ve wounded him, he takes stock of, like he’s trying to understand the agony he feels if he isn’t bleeding.

Because he doesn’t remember. Any of it. Not Rayze. Not Hallie.

My eyes crash with his, a desperate plea swarming between us.

I hold onto some hope, hold onto the fact that maybe, just maybe, a new Bond will grow.

One never corrupted and beautiful in its representation of what I always believed we are meant to be.

A fresh start. A beginning. True love. Not a twisted, manipulated plait of strings binding us based purely on fear and loneliness.

But when he looks at me, I’m a void for his hate. The enemy who turned his mind against him. The girl whose silly, small crush cost him everything . His legacy. His heart. His mind.

I’ve ruined him, and he’s ruined me.

Warrick lurches for the weapons on the far wall—and I shoulder open the door of the dungeon with a pained exhale, tears burning as I dart away.