Page 83 of WitchCurse

“Mommy issues for another day,” he said. “She’s not your mother anyway. But I’m happy to die ending that bitch.”

My hand on his face had turned gray again, skin withering and dying. That fast they were draining me of life even after all the work we’d done to remove the curses. Had they all returned? Nick cussed, catching my hand and examining it. I would be too weak in this form to fight, and pulled away to shift. If turning into a dragon meant I got to kill those monsters for good, so be it.

“For once, we are agreed,” Nick said, his gaze roaming over me as I changed into my kitsune form. He ran a hand down the back of my head, through my fur, the edges of my flank turning gray. I wouldn’t have long before the continued suction of my life made it hard to walk. I’d only ever fought them in human form, except the years of madness when I had been a beast in body and mind. Was this what we needed to turn the tide?

Nick put his hand to the door of his room where we had retreated, his eyes blazing gold as the lines etched on the wood changed. Would he drop us in the middle of the court or outside of it? I shoved more strength into my scion, his gaze going molten, and I thought,inside, willing to drop a nightmare on their head if need be. Nick pulled open the door and I leapt forward, ready for battle, but not expecting to be dropped in the center of the winter court, at the feet of my waiting mother.

Everything was coated in ice, gray and lifeless, like time had been frozen. There were trees and flowers, but everything crystalized, stuck in the loop right before true death. Including theHunt, which spread around us in an array of monster puppets, dead eyes watching us. They, too, were being stuck right before death, forced into an endless nightmare, I realized. Not dead, but teetering on the brink of it. Torture. A mercy then, as I planned to send them all to their permanent end.

My mother stood above them, on some raised platform of rock, which glistened with ice. Behind her were a dozen fae, former generals, or courtesans, including Zephyr, but nothing else stretched around us for miles, only ice and forest. At least that I could see. It seemed strange for the winter court to be open. The queen had always loved her castles. Why here? Was it all for show? Once I would have found it all beautiful, the land coated in freshly fallen snow, flowers frozen in ice like gems.

Lies, it’s all lies.Nick said.Nothing is beautiful. It is all dead, not sleeping, but frozen right before the final release from this world. My senses shifted, Nick slamming his own sight over mine and I could see walls, a large space, but not endless. We were inside a mortal dwelling? And my mother was layered in something…a visage of a hag, like many nightmares I’d had as a child.

The pretty is the lie, Nick informed me.The hag is the truth.

I blinked, trying to process everything in that half second as she raised her hand and the battle began. TheHuntattacked, monsters with a thousand eyes and limbs leaping at us with giant maws ready to rip us apart. Nick cut into them with ease. I leapt into the first batch digging claws in deep and tearing them apart until blood poured over me. The blood of theHuntwas cold, not the gold of the fae, which I had thought strange since they were fae before passing. Death making them spill ice from their veins rather than blood. Because they were unseelie, or the fact that my mother stood nearby lending them strength and ripping magic from me?

I slashed through the monsters aiming for Zephyr first, watching them all topple like chess pieces beneath my fangs and Nick’s sword. I’d kill them all if I could.

Where was our wolf? I could feel him, still lost in the dark, wolf inside gone, but couldn’t see him among theHunt. Most of these monsters were things dragged over from Underhill, or the few remaining of the court? Zephyr’s image wasn’t overlaid like my mother’s. He was still attractive, broad, and huge, disdain clear on his face, though he didn’t wade into battle, instead standing with his arms folded across his chest, like he couldn’t be bothered.

Asshole. I wanted to end him, irrational, and maybe not my emotion as much as Nick’s. But Nick was somewhere behind me, fighting as the amazing warrior he was. Few ever got to see the one everyone brushed off as a meremortalfight like a demon. Part of it was long buried rage, which swirled around him in red and orange like my long-snuffed fire. TheHuntcouldn’t get close to him, his reach and the long blade of thegodkillersword giving him a sizable distance. He moved not like the warriors in movies, slow and clunky, but fast and graceful, like a dancer, sweeping through one attacking horde by slashing them all in half.

I didn’t worry about Nick as he faced theHunt. I’d trained him well, and it was my plan to take out the sidhe before they could reach him. I leapt over a batch of theHunt, leaving them for my scion to rip to shreds, and not bothering to feed on any of their cold dead magic. They would rip it all from me anyway. My goal was to tear Zephyr’s head off, then my mother’s right afterward. I landed on the platform, claws gripping and digging into the ice only a few yards from him.

That was a boon I could grant the little fox in the end, rending that monster from all the worlds. The one the fae had planned to bind him to, a man who would have abused the little fox until there was nothing remaining of the warm omega inside.

I leapt toward Zephyr, but he stepped aside and a new batch ofHuntbeasts slammed into me. Knocking me backward off the platform and digging in claws. The pull on my energy intensified. One of the beasts caught me deep on the side, and I felt my stomach ripped open, blood gushing from the wound. I snarled, slashing at them, claws sliding through them like a hot knife into butter. The last dredges of my feeding with Toby earlier beginning to fade, heat cooling as they dragged more energy from me. I could see the fucking strand, much as Toby had said he could. Standing this close to my mother and the rest, it might as well have been a straw and me the milkshake.

I snarled and ignited the last raging heat curled in my gut, feeling it blow outward like an explosion, eradicating the newest batch of monsters in a bone melting inferno. But I wouldn’t be able to maintain that heat for long, and forced my way back onto the platform, which began to melt beneath my paws, and stalked toward that bitch who’d called herself my mother, determined to sever that tie if it meant ripping her to shreds.

A giant wolf zigzagged around the group, leaping for me, followed by many others. This entire batch ofHuntwere wolves, likely werewolves by the size of them. Dozens of them. I prayed the alpha wasn’t missing more of his pack, but tore into them as they launched themselves at me. They ripped into my flank, attacking me from all sides even as the heat fried the first few. The largest keeping back, watching.

My power was waning. I heard Nick’s panic in my head, felt him aching, sore, and injured but his concern was for me. He was still fighting, and trying to shove as much of the remaining magic to me as he could.

Zephyr was the closest. If I could rip him from this world, then it would be worth it all in the end.He who had replaced me, been chosen over me, by my mother, if she had been my mother at all. He who had spent centuries torturing me, using me. I blamed him for a lot, and slammed through the batch of wolves to reach him. Their icy blood splashing me like acid, sucking away more of my warmth with each drop, but I kept pressing forward, determined to tear that monster apart with my claws.

I heard Nick’s cry a half second before the biggest of theHuntwolves lunged, leaping out from Zephyr’s side, and teeth sinking into my throat, burying themselves deep, digging in as my blood spurted around its fangs. More wolves landed on me, all ripping into me, tearing me open in a dozen places. My blood ran hot, and I couldn’t breathe. Briefly I thought maybe I didn’t need to in this world, but the pain filling my lungs and brain flickering in warning said otherwise. I reached for the beast’s jaws with my claws, digging in half changed hands, fingers with razorblade sharp nails on the end, and trying to pry his teeth apart.

The beast bled gold, oozing blood around where my claws pierced it, but refusing to let go. He was insanely strong. More than aHunt beast should be. The wolf shook me, not letting go, like it was trying to break my neck. Even the fading heat didn’t affect him as I burned several of the others to a crisp. I rolled backward, kicking to bring the beast with me. We rolled off the platform a heap of limbs, blood, and snarls scrabbling to regain the upper hand. I was losing my vision to the rise of pain and darkness. I hit out with half-shifted fists and kicked, digging my back claws into its flank as we landed hard in a pile of decaying deadHunt.

The beast refused to unclamp its jaws, teeth sinking deeper until stars flickered around my sight, and I was losing the strength to fight at all. Blood pouring from the wound, slicking everything and weighing me down. Half blind I struggled, turning my hands back to paws and claws to tear at him, trying to reach his eyes. But I was little more than a ragdoll in the face of this giant beast. Not the normal sort ofHuntwolf. Their leader? One of the fae still in there? Or borrowing the power of a fae lord?

“Toby, stop!” Nick screamed, still slashing, fighting, and trying to reach me.

Toby? I blinked through the pops of black filling my sight to see his eyes glowing with my magic, but beneath that was nothing, no one home, and the tie inside told me Toby was still lost in the dark and terror. His human buried beneath waves of nightmares. A familiar cage I’d spent centuries suffocating within. They were using his physical form and my own magic to fight me.

Nick fought to reach us, but he was injured, his pain rising through the bond, knowing his strength would soon wane as my own was being yanked from me. Mere feet away stood the mess of demons, fae monsters who called themselves sidhe. Did they want me dead this time? None moved to impede the attack, all suctioning the life from me as I died at their feet. Monsters. They would kill me and go after Sebastian. That had been the plan all along, hadn’t it? I was a lure for the ultimate prize, always second best.

I stopped lashing out at Toby. Unwilling to harm him, especially since he was caged inside and unable to fight free of their nightmares. Not that it mattered, loss of blood and air crackled the darkness around me, adding weight to my eyelids and a finality to the sluggish beat of my heart. I was dying. A strange mortal thing as I’d experienced a lot of pain in my life, but always knew I’d live.

This time the pressure told me I wouldn’t wake again. Something about the mortal realm or the attack of my scion, was severing the loop of fate, sinking me slowly into oblivion. I reached for my bond to the wolf. I could have cut it, let him die, but he didn’t deserve that, nor did I want to lose him. He’d been struggling to find a place among the wolves, but had nestled himself in my heart. Those moments when he’d curled up beside me and offered warmth, hunted with me in joy, and smiled while offering cake, all flooded back and made me wish we had more time. We had been healing each other in small ways, lifetimes of abuse never truly vanishing, but we could navigate it together using Nick as our true north. Finding love and joy in the small things, wasn’t that what we had decided before the last hunt?

I sank into his mind, sliding through the dark until I felt the human side of him. His memories were like molasses, all given life a thousand times more cutting than the glass strewn shore he often thought his past was. He floundered in the dark, wolf gone, shore only on one side, with a raging ocean beyond, filled with storms. He stared at nothing with blind eyes, a silent scream on his lips.

I wrapped my arms around him, both in the real world and inside of his head, letting him know he wasn’t alone, and even if it was he who ended me, and thus us, it was all that really mattered in that moment. Freedom. No more cage. He sank into my embrace, tears warm on his face, grateful to not be alone.

Darkness oozed over the last of my sight like blood, and maybe it was blood. I kept one limb wrapped around Toby, and reached for Nick, hoping that at least in the end we could be together, my strength vanishing beneath the tide of pain, memories, and the ever-constant pull of the fae.