Page 122 of Cursed

“Maybe I don’t deserve it,” he replied, and his shoulders slumped slightly. “But please, let me try.”

The pull between us was undeniable, a silent thread that bound our fates together, even as I plotted to use him and his brothers against their own father.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

Valen nodded. “I’ll be waiting,” he said. “You know where to find me.”

He walked away and left me with the flickering candles and the fire that burned low in the hearth.

The shadows grew around me and the whispers of the grimoire fell into place just behind my thoughts.

I felt like I was living the same moments over and over— Not so long ago, each of my stepbrothers had offered me their help to decipher the grimoire’s secrets. But that was different. When they had come to me before, I’d been afraid.

But even though I could sense that they still wanted something from me— NowIwas the one in control.

Iwas the one with the agenda. An agenda that was more powerful than theirs.

And they couldn’t do anything to stop me.

Not now.

Later, as I walked back to my room, my focus remained tangled in thoughts of Valen—his sincerity, his regrets—even though I had clouded their memories with the spell I cast, and I wondered if my angry pleas had truly reached them. It was the only way to explain their sudden change of heart. Even Titus had seemed different… What it really meant was that I wasn’t helpless anymore.

Had Bastian had these same thoughts?

As though I’d summoned him from the darkness, Bastian emerged from the shadows like a specter.

In the daylight, his appearance was angelic—but in the shadows that wreathed the hallway and coiled around us, he was anything but.

Though I feared all three of my stepbrothers, Bastian was the one who was the most unpredictable.

Even with my newly stolen magic, I was still in awe of him, and I worried he could see through all of it.

He had been the hardest to subdue—and I had been the sickest and most overwhelmed by the power I’d stolen from him.

Were his memories as foggy as Titus and Valen’s?

“Have you come to haunt me, too?” I asked.

His pale eyes flickered with an intensity that made my skin prickle. He stepped forward, confidence radiating off him, yet there was an underlying humility in his demeanor that caught me off guard.

“Only if you’ll let me,” he replied, a smirk playing on his lips.

Something twisted in my stomach, but I didn’t have time to give in to such things. Not now.

“What do you want?”

Was my voice really as unsteady as it sounded?

“Just to offer my help, sister,” he said smoothly. “The grimoire can be… difficult to control. I don’t want you to struggle with it needlessly. It nearly took Valen… he probably wouldn’t want me to tell you that, but he wasn’t strong enough.”

“Until he was,” I said.

Bastian nodded. “Until the grimoire forced him to be.” His pale eyes narrowed as he looked at me, and I worried he could hear the desperate pound of my heart. “I can help, you know.”

I raised an eyebrow and crossed my arms defensively over my chest. “What’s in it for you?” I retorted.

“Look, I know I haven’t been thebestbrother,” he said as he stepped closer, and I could have sworn that his expression shifted to one of sincerity—but only for a moment. “But I’m willing to make amends. Let me assist you.”

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