Page 88 of The Cursed and the Broken
“Come now, pet. I see the cogs turning in your mind. Say it. Say my name.” Her lips curled back from her teeth, her eyes darkening with glee.
Two breathless words wormed their way from my tongue and I almost choked on the name, the countless lies built on the term. “Baba Yana.”
The witch picked at her nails, feigning boredom, but I knew it thrilled her to see my despair. To watch me squirm. “Yana is dead. It’s Baba Yaga now.”
A sob escaped my lips. How long had this gone on for? How many souls had died for nothing? Of all the hateful things I wanted to shout at her, my mind just kept coming back to one question. “Why? You had family, prosperity, love. Why join the cultists?”
Baba Yaga sneered, an ugly, cruel thing that distorted her face, making it appear almost inhuman in the flickering firelight. The cultists still hummed around us, bowing and scraping at the earth. “I’d always been fascinated by the darker magics. I grew up in your village, did you know? Before Sándor swept me away to Mistvellen, I was educated under Caitlin Vargo herself. Oh, how she despised my power. That old wretch always knew I was stronger than her and to keep me in my place she ridiculed me, made me look the fool in front of the other witches. No one ever helped. No one offered a kind word.”
Her fingers curled into fists, shaking with her anger. A pang of sorrow speared through me at her pain. I knew what it was to be laughed at and shunned. To be feared for being different. But that didn’t excuse the choices she’d made. The terrible things she’d done.
“Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?” I spat, my words dripping with venom. “You found a way out. Started a new life.” I stared at her in disgust, shaking my head. “What happened to make your heart so hateful?”
She smiled, flashing me her filed teeth. “When the cultists came to Mistvellen, my life was forever changed. They showed me a new world—one where I could harness my power to do unimaginable things. They taught me dark magic, showed me the Dark Queen’s teachings. Not once did they judge me or hold me back. This is where I belong—not among the mindless sheep of a coven. These people are my family now. This is the true path, child.Her path. I’ve never felt stronger, more in control and, when the Dark Queen rises, we will reclaim this world as our own.”
I stared into her eyes, watching them cloud over with wonder, withlove. She was mad, I realised. Brainwashed to believe what she and the cultists were doing was good—that murder in the name of religion was holy or just. And that’s what this was. This cult was a religion based on power and lies, and they were wholly devoted to its cause.
“So you harnessed your power and used it to seek revenge on the coven?” I scoffed. “Even someone as powerful as you couldn’t have acted alone. Who helped you?” I asked, writhing in my chains. “The witches in our village believe in the good banya. Of her so-called protection. So who betrayed us? Sold the girls like cattle to slaughter?”
She raised a perfect brow. “The banya is a lie, girl. Baba Yana is a myth—a bedtime story spoon-fed to you for so long, your precious elders aren’t even aware of the untruths they spill. They believe in the banya because it makes them feel safe, helps them sleep better in their beds at night. The truth is, there is no single entity that becomes the banya. Many cultists have worn that cloak over the centuries and it is my turn now to pose as your gods given saint. We are all around you, child. We have always been watching.”
Oh, mother of mercy. All this time, we’d blindly believed in a falsehood that had eaten away at our coven for years upon years. How easy it must have been to sew such lies. That it “was an honour to be chosen by the banya as her apprentice”, that “her holiness must not show her face, for it is too divine for a witch’s eye”. We werefools.
I clenched my fists so hard the nails drew blood in half-moon circles. “How could you leave your son?” I shouted. “How could you kill innocents for this? You’re a monster!”
She smiled softly at me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. I spat on her face as she pulled away, but she only laughed. “Who said I ever really left? Your precious lordling has been helping me this whole time. Right from the moment you met.”
Panic flooded through me, icy and paralysing. No, he couldn’t have helped her. He wouldn’t stand for this. My lips trembled, my hands shaking from anger.
“You’re lying. Dante wouldn’t do that to me,” I said, the words cold and flat, but she’d burrowed into my insecurities, had already begun spinning her web.
Gifting me a knowing smile, she cocked her head at me. “No one is innocent, Kitarni. We’re all monsters deep down, we’ve just learned to embrace it.” She ran her hand down my arm, ripping the tattered shirt even further as she leaned in.
Pain seared through me as she sank her teeth into my flesh and I screamed as those daggers sent tremors down my arm. When she rose, peering into my face with cold, dead eyes and a face painted red, I felt helplessness take hold. For the first time since waking, I was truly afraid.
“Delicious. I can taste your power,” she said, wiping my blood from her lips with delicate fingers and turning towards the cave. “My dutiful son. You performed your task well. Perhaps too well, in fact. It seems our guest has quite the soft spot for you.”
I swivelled to find Dante walking into the clearing, his expression darkening. “What have you done?” he said coldly to his mother. “This was not what we agreed on.”
My heart sank at his words, plummeting to the cold, dark depths of my stomach. “You knew,” I whispered. “You were working with her all along. Everything was a lie.”
His beautiful face flickered for the briefest of moments before an emotionless mask slid into place once again. “Not everything. What I shared with you about myself was true. I—”
Betrayal seared through me, poking red-hot holes where my heart should be. My anger bled from me in waves and I drowned in it, the sorrow of letting him in. I should never have been so trusting, never have made space for that monster.
Unwanted and unloved.
My eyes burned, but I refused to bend. I was a cursed and broken wretch, but I would pick up the shattered pieces of my heart and I would get through this. Setting my jaw, I took that pain and used it to harden my heart. To solidify that melted steel and make it something stronger.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said, raising my chin as I stared at him. “When I get out of here, I am going to rip your heart from your chest, Dante Sándor.”
He blinked and I thought I saw a glimmer of surprise. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said softly. “She was going to kill him, Kitarni. I had to protect Lukasz, I had to—”
“Wewere supposed to do that,” I shouted, spearing him with every ounce of my pain. “I gave myself to you. I committed to the cause. We could have saved him together.” The agony I felt was unbearable, like my insides were being picked apart, the threads tearing loose. Why? Why did ithurt so much?
“Would you have done anything less for your sister?” he said softly.
My breath caught in my throat, the anger flooding my system retreating just a little, because he was right. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Eszter.Nothing.His eyes bored into my own, pleading, full of all the things he couldn’t say. I opened my mouth, but his mother cut in before I could say anything.
