Page 70 of WitchCurse
“I let the darkness reign,” I whispered, not wanting to replay those memories and shine a light on what I really was.
“And what happened?”
I sucked in a deep breath, not ready to sort through the heavy weight of emotions tied to ancient history. My mind attached the idea of those few days of stolen joy as a catalyst. A curse turning my happiness into destruction.
“You are not a curse any more than Toby is misfortune,” Nick said. “Two sides of a coin, and both in need of healing and home. I think that’s why fate put him in our path. Not because I’m useless, but because he is a piece of the missing puzzle that binds us together.”
“I would never think you’re useless,” I said.
“But I am,” Nick said. “I can’t give you strength in this world, and can only sort of reshape your magic here.”
“That is more than enough.”
Nick shook his head. “I think there is more, answers that are just out of reach. But I need to know it all. Which means, you need to stop hiding from me.”
My heart flipped over at the thought of revealing everything to him. Would he hate me? In truth, most daysIhated me. “You don’t know what you ask.”
“For the truth? Don’t I deserve that much?”
He did, and more. I sighed, wondering where to begin. He’d already glimpsed my childhood, and knew some vague things about my time at court. Would putting it all together and giving him the worst, finally give him reason to want to be free of me? No matter how much the idea of that hurt, it was only fair.
“I fought dozens of battles before.” Even been granted thegodkillersword that I thought meant I was finally gaining acceptance among the fae. It had appeared one day in my room, and never left my side. I thought my mother had gifted it to me. Now I wondered where it came from at all. I shrugged, thinking it mattered little now. “Until that last battle of the courts.”
“How long had they been feeding on you before that last battle?” Nick asked.
“Centuries?” I shrugged, time passed differently in Underhill, and I’d spent many years locked away in the castle with no one for company. Only set free when a battle warred that they thought I might win, whether or not that meant I sacrificed my life. Many times I sustained wounds I thought would kill me, but never died, even when sometimes I prayed for an end.
“You fought a dragon. Or the fae equivalent to a dragon. It devoured the wild magic and became something you’d never seen before, out of control, not unlike what Sebastian became in Underhill, a mix of beasts, magic, and nightmares.”
I thought back to that battle, as I’d not been near the front having been sent as support rather than the initial ranks, and didn’t know how any of it began. The battlefield teaming with blood, golden in the fading suns of Underhill, much death occurred before I’d arrived, legions vanishing before the beast even entered the field. Then the beast had swooped in and drank down all of the magic, wild energy stolen in a vortex of blood and death.
We fought, claws gouging new rivets in my flesh to prove my blood ran gold, and then his death, my own life fading from the injuries, triggering something. An awakening of the darkness as I recalled the stirring in the depths, beneath the walls of wards, long buried, asleep, but rousing as the power began to fill me.
I’d devoured the power from the battlefield that day. Fallen unconscious and only barely realized I sucked down the very life magic that had created the dragon who had once been a lover. Thousands of dead fae, and all the dragon had consumed had become mine as I’d passed into what I’d thought was death’s oblivion, my kitsune spirit latching onto the strength it needed to survive. It was why I’d woken in a cage, skin dark, blazing fire burning deep within me, to the disdain of my mother. I’d become everything the fae had feared, a devourer of worlds, without trying.
“You think I only killed the leaders of the high courts, like some sort of fae Robin Hood, only you’re very wrong,” I said.
The monster in the dark lifted an interested head as I struggled for control, barriers broken, and soul flayed raw from the change, from starvation to overfeeding, and the hunger became its own beast. I remembered heading to my mother’s court, rage darkening my vision, heat turning to ice as every ward I’d ever erected had shattered, grief giving rise to something that called for an end to everything. That was when the darkness took over, insanity, a polite term for the madness that ensued. The hunger, rage, and pain giving life to the demon which ripped free of all the bindings, scattering rational thought, memory, and leaving me a raging beast.
In some ways, having lost control meant the memories were faded, some missing completely, others, burned bright with agony. Underhill had been alive and thriving, filled with magic, teaming with children of all types including kitsunes. The upper echelons spent their time scheming for war and creating endless pools of fae children they would use as pawns, all glowing with magic and little more than food to the darkness that took control of me.
I’d stalked the children of the court, devouring them as they cried, the wailing of their sires still piercing the back of my memory, long vanished in reality, but forever burned into the strands of time. I’d killed the entire next generation of fae, their delicate and bright light of magic a beacon to the monster that had been unleashed. Magic had rolled off me in waves, corrupting everything it touched, shifting all of Underhill.
My unraveling had been the beginning of Underhill’s demise. Waves of extra energy poured off me, corrupting and twisting everything it touched, fae, Underhill, everything. How long had I trolled the courts, wolfing down magic, destroying all who crossed my path, brainless, not unlike the zombieHuntlet loose on this realm. Had it been decades? Centuries? Lost in the dark, buried beneath the ever-churning waves of wild hunger, magic, and madness, I had no idea until I’d found myself in that ice castle, suddenly bound, the monster shoved back into the dark and my mortal form wrapped in hundreds of curses to contain the nightmare.
Mortal witches enacting a spell that made me hunger in a way I couldn’t recall since my childhood. The craving also brought back some sense of self, an awakening from the dark, though I slaughtered a dozen witches searching for that honeyed bite of fluffy wild darkness lost long before in the mortal realm. Not unlike the princess, those mages belonged to this world, brought to Underhill to try to quell the beast, only to meet a brutal end. I’d almost forgotten that I’d slaughtered mortals too, their flavor fleeting as their magic barely existed in Underhill.
Reliving the memory made me sick, tired, and want to finally end the pain. What I became had been a nightmare, death to likely millions, was that what Nick wanted for this world? I would wish that madness on no one, and would die before I allowed it to escape again.
“I’d have devoured you and not remembered at all,” I told him. “You claim the violence of your childhood doesn’t taint your heart, but I know otherwise, and I am a thousand times the monster those who killed your parents were. I am death.”
Nick’s arms tightened around me, his cheek pressed to mine, though I could feel the heat and moisture of tears between us, I didn’t know if it was him crying or me, probably me, as the pain ached like a wound cut bone deep, never healing. I couldn’t remember most of their faces, there had been too many, the entire existence of the fae decimated by one maddened kitsune. No wonder they hated us, sought to cage us, and it was all my fault.
When Nick had freed me, I’d been a shell of myself, emptied of the greatest power by centuries of the fae trying to control the beast, and what remained, that hollow echo of strength, I’d given to Nick. A hope that he could keep me from turning again, that giving him everything would be enough to hold back the monster. Even while Underhill had changed, becoming feral, monstrous, corrupt, everything they all feared happening to the alpha’s child. The well of darkness began to refill, drip by drip, coalescing into the abyss of nightmares that always lived inside.
All my fault.
“You didn’t know,” Nick said quietly.