Page 59 of Unraveled (A Kingdom of Beasts and Ruins #1)

Ash shrinks a couple of inches, and when the light dims, he’s back to his fae form, breathing heavily and holding his body with shaking arms. He stares at me with something so pure and wonderful my heart skips a beat. Then his expression turns to devastation.

Because, in breaking his curse, I outed myself and my alliance with the fae. Losing any of the support I previously had. Loving him—admitting it out loud—could mean my death.

Chatter explodes around us as the scientists behind Skylar talk. Someone shouts, “Fae whore,” but I can’t tell who said it.

The same red-haired man steps forward, crossing his arms as he glares at the others.

“This is Irene’s sister and Killian’s daughter.

These are people we have been working with for years.

Let’s not act like she’s a villain because she fell for a fae.

She’s not the first human to do so, and she won’t be the last.”

“Plus, she’s clearly cursed. What if the beast has her under a spell?” another one says. “Let’s take her to Irene, and I bet she will keep her safe until this whole thing blows over.”

Another person agrees, and the environment shifts.

“Or perhaps we shouldn’t be using the king in the machine at all,” says another louder voice. This man is older, with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a balding head. “This feels wrong.”

A shot is fired, leaving my ears ringing. The man who spoke last falls to his knees. He presses his hands over his heart, and dark blood spills between his fingers before he collapses. Dead.

Skylar trains his gun on the redhead, his expression severe. “This isn’t up for discussion. We are part of the guards of Penumbra, and we will defend it. If anyone else is ready to die for the fae, speak now—or walk yourself into a cell and save me the trouble.”

The man who injected me with the sedative picks me up from the ground. My head sags, and all I’m able to do is stare at the dead man on the floor. His blue eyes gaze at nothingness as his blood halos around him.

“Gale and Heath, take the body to the mortuary. I’ll run the report,” Skylar says.

The toxin doesn’t take away my conscious state, just my ability to move my arms and legs. Is this what they use on the fae before putting them in the machine? Horror sinks its claws into me as a group drags the body away.

How many scientists have been killed for speaking against what goes on here?

A dull prick of my power pokes from under my skin, but it’s so muffled I can’t seem to grip at the threads to wield it. The darkness covering my arm remains, and the slimy shadow inside me stirs, still palpable if I probe hard enough.

Ash is free of his curse, but I’m not.

Harper watches stiffly as they drag me back into a dark cell in the circular room, but she does nothing to stop them. I can’t blame her after what happened.

“My father helped build that machine, and Irene works with you all. This is how you treat their family?” I scream to anyone who would hear me.

“You’re tainting their name,” Skylar sneers. “Siding with the fae over your own people. Wheel the king into the machine room.”

I’m left speechless as the scientists pour out, dragging Ash’s cage on a dolly. Harper remains behind, not meeting my gaze.

“I’m sorry Mia, I just—?” She hesitates, following the shapes moving down the long tunnel with her eyes. “I don’t want to die. Skylar will kill me, like he did Kyle. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

And then she turns to leave me alone in the darkness of this cave.

“Wait, Harper,” I say, attempting to crawl over the wet rock, over the filth I’d rather not know the source of.

She pauses, not lingering too close as Skylar awaits nearby, his gun still in his gloved hand.

I lower my voice so he can’t hear me. “Where is Nera, the princess? Where are you keeping her?”

Harper hesitates, but then her eyes shift to where the rest of the group is headed. “The fae siblings are always together.”

Skylar lets out an exasperated breath and steps in. “Enough chatter. Go on, librarian, I’m running out of patience with you.”

Harper shakes visibly and leaves without looking back.

He steps closer to my cell, and I try to lift my body so I don’t look like a trembling child while he stares down at me from above.

“You thought yourself so smart,” he croons.

A cruel smile graces his features. I once thought him handsome, but truly, he is the most horrid being I’ve ever seen.

“So you freed him from his curse, and you thought people would change? You see, Mia, when fear is present, it drives most of our decisions. Whether they fear a beast or a gun, it makes no difference.”

There’s a blur that could have been a figment of my poisoned mind, but when Skylar smiles, he’s no longer the man I know—but a woman with golden hair and familiar features. I’ve seen her before. Where?

A shape-shifter? No , a glamour. Cold grips my chest as I stare at him with a wide mouth.

He loads his pistol slowly, making sure I see every brass bullet.

“We laced these with iron and salt. A perfect combination to kill fae and hybrids. Except I can’t kill Ash.

I’ve tried so many times. The night he took you, I had no reservations.

But tonight will be different, and I’ll be free at last.”

“ Morla Skye ,” I say.

His gaze flashes to me, and his smile is knowing and wicked. “In the flesh. How did you learn about me? Ash wasn’t allowed to speak my name.”

The contents of my stomach curdle as Morla’s glamour falls back, revealing her fully to me for just a moment. She thinks I’m going to die here.

“Why curse all the fae if you only hate him?”

“Hate is such an ugly word, and I didn’t hate him for such a long time. Quite the opposite, darling. But if he refuses to be mine, then he will be no one’s.” Skylar’s eyes turn manic, the glamour keeping her looking like him shifts, and for another moment her beautiful face is revealed to me again.

I reel back. “You’re crazy.”

“He makes me so,” she growls, and takes a deep breath to calm herself.

“You know what happens to those of us bonded to the fae?” She doesn’t wait for my response.

“We can’t ever move on, we’re always tethered to them.

They, however, couldn’t care less if we—their tributes—are killed. If we never return home.”

Something tells me Morla has a hard time controlling her temper, much like earlier when she shot Kyle. So I remain silent. Perhaps she won’t kill me, and waiting for her to leave is my best option.

“Was he able to tell you about the curse?”

“No.”

She laughs, like my ignorance about it is music to her ears.

“Even if he could, he doesn’t know all the details.

You see, the curse is simple. After what I did to him, and what the hybrids did to his kingdom, I was sure he would grow to loathe our kind.

So I added that only a hybrid could break it.

Of course, it was unlikely he would allow one so close to him again. ”

“Is that why you wove your roses into the curse? So they’ll send you a signal when a hybrid is nearby?”

Morgana came to me not long after I touched the roses for the first time. She sent me to die out in the halls that night.

“Yes.” Morla’s cocky expression falters before she schools her features. “I’ve been dying to know more about you, Mia. When you broke into this building during the last blood moon, you had your amulet like any sorcerer does. I didn’t expect you to be a hybrid or I wouldn’t have had you help us.”

Skylar had been curious about my necklace the night we met. My father told me to never take it off, to let no one see it. Perhaps being protective about it allowed me to sell the lie better.

“Why hide behind your glamour and your gunpowder? Why did you even need my help if you’re this powerful hybrid?” As soon as I speak, I regret my choice of words. Goading her is the wrong move.

Her lips peel back, and she snarls as she levels her pistol on me. She fires, and my ears ring with the loudness of it all. I jump back. My heart collides with my chest, but there’s no pain. No bullet.

“Pity.” She ticks her tongue, looking at her pistol with a frown. “I guess I truly can’t kill you. It must be because your soul is connected to Ash, as mine is.”

So that’s why she tried to use me that night to harm him so her people could plug him into their machine. I wonder if she tried when she came to my chambers in the castle as Morgana.

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t matter,” she says, more to herself than me. “It’ll all be over by the end of the night.”

My head throbs as I work to put everything together with my sluggish mind. “So you broke the man you supposedly loved. Congratulations. That makes you the worst person in the world.”

“He played me like a fool and made me believe there was a future where I could be more than a so-called friend of the unseelie prince. But he made sure I understood how I, the hybrid, wasn’t good enough for him.

I was shoved aside, unable to form connections with anyone.

Our kind, the hybrids, hated me, even after I cursed him.

To them, I will always be the fae king’s whore. ”

So she hid under Skylar’s glamour.

“Ash has nothing against hybrids,” I say. “That’s not why he didn’t think you were good enough for him. If you ever loved him, please stop this. You don’t have to hurt him, Morla.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you? He chose you .” She spits as she speaks, and her saliva spills like poison down her chin.

And to think I felt jealous of this woman when I learned about who she was back at the Crossroads. I thought she was powerful, and I wasn’t.

But I am good enough, even when I struggle to handle my magic. Not only for him, but for Irene and my father. I never needed to prove myself, and Ash showed me that.

“You probably think you won, but you didn’t, darling. You see, I also wove a caveat into my curse. If Ash falls for the hybrid who loves him, then she’ll die.” Morla is looking at me with such triumph it makes me sick to my stomach. “That blackness consuming your skin is his love, killing you.”

“No.” I hug my arm to my chest. My mind is quick—but my movements are slow. “That happened when I removed Nera’s curse, not because of you.”

I wasn’t about to tell this woman I absorbed the curse and every time I close my eyes I see its black face. Morla doesn’t need any more fuel for her madness.

“Do you think that’s how the curse works?

” She laughs prettily, loads one more bullet and spins the barrel of her gun.

“I crafted the spell myself, and if a human or hybrid is affected by it, they turn into monsters and die within hours. But your curse is different from the rest, isn’t it?

It’s likely that when you saved Nera, it made Ash admit his feelings for you. ”

Ash and Finley told me they’d never seen anyone reacting to it this way before.

Something dark lurks in her eyes, and when she lifts her head, the glamour falls back into place. Morla is back to being Skylar. “Time to go. I have a very important guest to attend to.”

I glare at his back as he strolls into the depths of the tunnels. When I can barely distinguish his body from the shadows, he pauses.

“Did you know Ash’s father used to starve the hybrid rebels down in the dungeons? No one came around to feed them—except for me. I hope for your sake your curse takes you quickly. I hate the idea of starving. Don’t you?”