Page 75 of Owned

How deep were the spells I needed buried?

My blood pooled on the ancient pages and it seemed to pulse with its own life before sinking into the parchment.

The blackened silver dagger gleamed in my hand, a hungry suggestion, but I dropped it to the ground. The clatter echoed in my ears, and then everything went quiet.

Just the rain on the windows.

Just my erratic breaths.

Dark spots danced at the edge of my vision, but I clenched my teeth and leaned forward.

“Come… on,” I hissed.

Magic pulsed at my fingertips as I pressed my bleeding hand against the pages.

Blood flowed in thick, warm rivulets and the world spun as an unfamiliar chill burrowed into my bones. I gasped, but forced my eyes to stay open.

The pages absorbed my blood eagerly.

Hungrily.

But no words appeared.

Frustration tightened my chest. “Why— Why won’t you—”

A dark smudge appeared in the center of the book, and I leaned closer.

“Finally.”

But as the darkness spread across the pages, my initial surge of victory faded as an unsettling energy swirled around me. Panic gripped me, a primal instinct that clawed at my throat, but I couldn’t move.

Black tendrils spawned from the smudge and flowed over the pages until it reached my arm. A low whimper escape my lips as the tendrils crawled up my skin—beautiful patterns like frost on a window—

Terrifying patterns etched in black on my pale flesh.

I tried to snatch my hand away, but the book held it fast, and a sharp, burning pain shot through my arm as blackness seeped into the cuts on my wrist and hand. Feeding off me.

“No—”

Terror froze the words to the roof of my mouth as the blackness swallowed my hand—was I imagining it?

Was it trying to pull my arm into the book?

I struggled briefly and tried to flex my hand.

This wasn’t happening.

It couldn’t be.

I was hallucinating—

I pushed forward with my magic, but nothing happened.

How—

The whispers in my mind grew louder, more frantic. My pulse raced with fear, and the deeper my panic burrowed into me, the tighter the darkness wound around my arm. I struggled wildly against it, pulling with more desperation than strength.

Let me go!

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