The Broken Ones (The Malediction Trilogy 0.6)(49)

“I shouldn’t want it.”

The anguish in her voice was like a knife to my gut. “But you do,” I said. “I know the risks. I know there is every chance that this pregnancy will kill me along with you. But I’d rather live a short life bonded to you than an eternity without knowing what it was like, because all it would be is an eternity of regret.”

Her fingers crept toward mine, latching onto the vial that held our salvation. Our damnation. And I was afraid to let her take it lest she shatter it against the stone, leaving all our wants and dreams scattered in pieces among the broken glass. I was afraid.

But I also refused to be a coward, so I let her take it.

Sitting on her heels, she pulled out the stopper, letting it drop from her fingers and roll away into the darkness.

My heart slowed to a crawling thump, thump as I held my breath.

“To selflessness,” she said, then drained half the contents in one gulp.

Excitement and terror rolled through my veins, but I took the vial back from her. “To selfishness.” Then I swallowed the rest, the liquid sticky and sweet on my tongue, burning its way into my stomach.

The world trembled and blurred as the magic stole into my veins, and I pulled Pénélope into my arms, lifting her onto the platform right as the edge of the moon crept across the opening, spilling its light into the cavern. The mirrors caught its brilliance, and it seemed we were not buried beneath curse and rock, but kneeling in a field surrounded by sky and stars.

Pénélope’s fingers interlaced with mine, and I kissed her, her lips tasting like salt and dreams and desire. Everything I wanted. Everything I was willing to die for.

Then she was there. In my mind. In my heart. I gazed into her eyes, knowing for the first time with certainty that she loved what she saw. That she would not change me. And I wouldn’t change her. What souls we fey creatures had were now bound by the greatest magic known in this world and the next. It was the greatest joy I’d ever known, something that nothing – nothing – would ever make me regret. But it was also the greatest heartbreak.

Because I knew it wouldn’t last.





Chapter Nineteen





Pénélope





There was no less to fear as we crept back through the labyrinth, yet my heart and mind were free of that malignant emotion for the first time in what felt like an eternity. For, perhaps, the first time in my life. Because Marc was in my heart and in my mind, and no one – not my father, not the King, not Tristan or Ana?s – could do anything to change that. It was a magic that could not be undone by anyone and, to me, that was like a castaway coming across a raft in the open seas. A chance. A hope. And I intended to cling to it, to fight for it, with all the strength I possessed.

We made it back to Trollus without incident, Marc concealing us with magic as he locked the gate, his hand immediately returning to mine after he’d tucked the key away in his pocket. My face ached from smiling, and though his hood concealed his mouth, I knew he was doing the same. The knowledge, the feel of it, made me giddy with delight, and I tugged on his hand, wanting to drag him at a run through the city streets until we were back in his home, in his room, in his bed. I wanted that intimacy: not just to know what he felt when we were together, but to feel it.

But rather than allowing me to hurry him forward, Marc pulled back on my hand, his unease flooding my heart. “Something’s happened.”

Turning my head, I scanned the city. It appeared as it always did, with no sign that the tree had failed and rocks had fallen. Yet there was no mistaking the charge of magic in the air, roiling and excessive and… dangerous. A sign of angry trolls, great either in number or in power, and my skin prickled with the certainty that the unrest had been caused by us.

On silent feet we picked our way down the stairs and through the streets, the anxious eyes peering from windows causing my heart to pound a rapid beat and making me glad we remained hidden under the cover of illusion. Marc avoided my family home, but the presence of magic only grew as we approached his family’s manor, and before we rounded the bend, he pushed me to a stop. “Stay here.”

My fingers did not want to let his go, but I satisfied them by gripping the wall, peering around the corner to see what – and who – awaited him. At the sight of Ana?s pacing before the gates, I almost followed, but there were other powers nearby, so I held my ground.

The magic concealing Marc vanished, and though her back was turned, Ana?s went still.

Too still.

“Where. Is. She?”

Each word was punctuated with a tremor in the earth, steam rising from the fountain in the center of the street.

“She’s safe,” Marc said, and I wanted to scream that his confidence was misplaced, that his belief she wouldn’t hurt him was wrong, wrong, wrong, because my sister wasn’t just angry. There was no doubt in my mind that my father had told Ana?s about me. And she believed she’d been betrayed.

I moved to intervene, but collided with something hard. A wall, invisible but strong as stone, blocking my path. I tried to backtrack, but came up against more of the same. “Bloody stones and sky,” I snapped, more panicked than angry at his attempts to keep me from harm. Because he was going to get us both killed.

“Safe?” Ana?s’s voice was so quiet, I barely made it out. But the tone of it turned my hands to ice. “You call what you’ve done to her keeping her safe?”