Page 51 of Hellfire to Come
It was my belonging they had weighed.
And for now, they had allowed me to stay.
Chapter Twenty
ALICE
It wasn’t sleep.
Sleep didn’t claw its way through your thoughts, or hum like a thousand wasps caught beneath your skin. It didn’t taste like blood and iron, or echo with voices that sounded like your own but spoke in tongues you didn’t know.
This was something else. A prison of magic.
I existed in the dark.
There were no walls, but I knew I couldn’t run. There was no sky, but I felt like I was falling, perpetually, without end. The curse Frederic had spun through me moved like smoke and barbed wire, curling tight around my mind, burrowing through my memories. I could feel it feeding. It tore through who I had been, distorting the shape of myself in ways I didn’t understand.
Sometimes, I would catch glimpses, small flickers, of my own reflection in the black: my eyes too wide, my skin cracked like porcelain, my mouth stitched shut with golden thread. And somewhere far off, like wind brushing through the bones of a ruin, I heard laughter.
His laughter.
But lately… something had shifted.
The darkness still clung, but it didn’t fit right anymore. It scratched. It thinned. Like a snake shedding its skin, resisting, then unraveling. The threads of the spell writhed within me, pulling tighter the more I tried to resist.
And I was resisting.
I didn’t know how, not truly. But something inside me, a tiny shard, a sliver of defiance maybe, refused to bow. Maybe it had always been there. Maybe it was something I learned from Brooklyn.
Dear Universe, Brooklyn.
The moment I thought her name, pain sliced through me. Not physical but deeper. A truth.
An ache.
She was doing something.
I felt it like a pulse beneath the surface of this nightmare, like a call through water. Something was tearing at the curse from the outside. Gently, but with intent. I could feel her persistence and loyalty to me like a fire being held against glass. Warming. Cracking. Daring me to come back.
Damn, hope was a dangerous thing.
But I knew my friend too well. We were very different but very much alike. If I could feel her as if she stood next to me, then she had to be close to me in a way she shouldn’t be. She must have gone to someone. Done something. Promised something. I should know because I would’ve done the same thing.
My anxiety screamed through the dark.What did you do?
The curse hissed at that. It didn’t like the intrusion. It didn’t like the crack in the wall. The space where light had begun to bleed through.
Suddenly, everything shifted.
It was like being ripped through the fabric of a dream. The sensation wasn’t kind or clean. It felt like falling through a mirror, glass shearing through every limb, until…
Heat.
Not flame. Something older. Something alive. It curled around my heart and lungs and bones. Itrecognizedme. And more terrifyingly, it recognized Brooklyn.
Somethinghadchanged. I knew it. Felt it. The curse, once so embedded in me I couldn’t tell where it ended and I began, was retreating now. Not destroyed, but folding in on itself like a beast wounded in its den.
The pressure broke. I gasped.
