Page 143 of Cursed

“Yes,” I managed.

Lucian’s fingers squeezed my shoulders, and I wanted to twist out of his grasp. “What did she do to you?”

“She— It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.

“It does matter,” Lucian hissed. “She humiliated you, taunted you—abused you in ways you can’t even talk about… didn’t she?”

Clara’s eyes widened as I stared down at her. She could hear every word Lucian was saying, and the whispers in my mind clawed at my senses.

Shehadhurt me.

In countless ways.

“Don’t you want to punish her? She could have stopped anytime— but she didn’t.”

“No—” I whispered. “I don’t—”

But I did.

The grimoire’s whispers wrapped around my thoughts and twisted them toward Lucian’s words.

Revenge.

Jusssstiiiice—

Clara’s once haughty expression had twisted into a grotesque mask of fear. Her lush hair—hair that I’d been so jealous of—was snarled and full of tiny sticks and fragments of dead leaves. Mud and grass stained her nightgown.

Pathetic. Weak.

Every word she had once used to describe me.

My memories of Messana Academy were filled with her cruelties… But despite everything she had done, every humiliation she had inflicted on me…

“No,” I said firmly. “I won’t.”

A thunderous silence echoed through the chamber as the council members exchanged uneasy glances amongst themselves. Clara’s mother let out a shaking sob and then clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound.

Lucian’s hand tightened around my shoulder, his nails biting into my skin like talons. “Are you rejecting my gift?”

Oh, gods.

His words hung heavily in the air, cloaked with an unspoken threat.

If I didn’t do as he asked—would I be sacrificed in her place?

Against the wall, Valen stepped forward, but Bastian held him back with a subtle motion.

“She thinks you’re weak,” the whispers said.

Maybe I was.

After all the power I had taken—after all the risks, and all the blood I had shed—maybe I was still weak.

“No,” I replied, but my voice sounded small and frail.

“Good girl,” Lucian breathed. He lifted his hands from my shoulders and I could finally take a full breath. But his body still pressed against my back, hips and thighs and—

“Take off your gloves, Avril—” he commanded.

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