Page 31 of The Cursed and the Broken
I nodded, chewing over her words. Whilst my magic scared me, it was a small relief to know its origin. If I could understand it, I might master it. But something else stood out like a beggar at feast. “What do you mean I’m the last? Why didn’t it pass to you and Eszter?”
Mama swallowed, and the dread on her face, the colour draining from her skin … I felt a million insects crawl over my skin, knowing her next words might change my world forever.
“Eszter and I cannot harness your power, my love, because it is not in our bloodline.”
I shrank back as if slapped and the agony of her words rattled in my skull, shock numbing my body as I sank into frigid waters. A darkness pulled me deeper, no matter how hard I might paddle for the shore. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Eszter held my hand with a vicelike grip, but I felt nothing beneath that crushing squeeze.
Slowly, my gaze lifted to my …
I didn’t know what she was?whoshe really was. Her brown eyes filled with tears. I used to think they looked like mine, but it wasn’t her blood running through my veins, her features on my face.
“Who?” I said quietly, one word heavy as sledgehammers in the stillness.
No one answered.
“By all the fucking gods, who is my mother?” I roared, slamming my palms upon the table as I rose.
Mama flinched and Farkas’s hand strayed to his sword pommel. Aghast, I sat down quietly, only then noticing the bloodred misting around my palms, my silhouette darkening. They were afraid of me, I realised. Threatened by the dark monster within.
Taking a breath, I willed the magic to slow, the blazing anger dulling to a gentle simmer. The threads of my sanity began to fray as I waited. Tears filled my eyes, and Mama’s—Nora’s—spilled salty drops upon her cheeks.
She took a deep breath. “You are descended from the Dark Queen herself. Sylvie Morici.”
The breath punched out of my gut, the fire filling my blood now turning to ice, chilling me to the bone. My ancestor was a heretic. A fucking bloodletting fanatic. My fingers shook, and my stomach roiled, threatening to empty over the council table.
“And my mother?” I asked quietly.
Nora lifted her chin. “I am still your mother, Kitarni. I have always loved you as my own.”
I snarled. “Myrealmother.”
Another tear rolled down her cheek as her shoulders curved inwards. “We don’t know. You were just a babe when I found you, red-cheeked and squalling in a bundle of furs near our home.”
“And Papa?”
She stiffened, smoothing her skirts and avoiding my eyes. “His blood runs in your veins. He refused to speak of her, but you were conceived while he and I …” She swallowed. “I think your father ended things with her because of me. Whoever it was, I think she wanted me to find you, so you could be raised in a coven with your own kind.”
With a sigh, I shook my head. “I have been marked by Death. I am a slave to Fate. If what you say is true, the blood of the Dark Queen runs through my veins. Who do you think the cultists will come for next? Whose power will they drain once they have claimed me for their own?”
“They might not know about you, Kitarni. And even if they did, the gods will watch over you. We all will.”
I barked a bitter laugh.
“The gods cannot protect me now. No one can.”
THIRTEEN
Tears streamed down my faceas I turned my back on that chamber and the people within it. I ran blindly, tearing past lovers in darkened corners, skirting the square filled with drunken revellers.
My feet pounded the cobblestones of the town square, the flower crown upon my head falling to pieces as the petals unravelled one by one. My leg blazed with pain and I welcomed it, the harsh bite of agony as I stumbled away from partygoers. The music and the laughter of witches and táltosok alike.
My people. And yet not.
The slice to my thigh opened again, bleeding through my bandage and staining the white of my dress. It seemed fitting, in a way. I was far from pure. A killer in sheep’s clothing. A dark and dangerous thing.
I welcomed the pain, feeling the burn as it rippled up my body, adding to the hurt in my heart. The dark creature—that child of chaos—it roared inside me. As if my newfound awareness of my ancestry gave it licence to unleash its talons and roam free.
It took everything … everything I had to force it back into the cage. To quell my wrath, the rising need to hurt something or someone. Choking on my sobs, I ran as fast as my feet could take me, blindly trying to outrun my pain.
