Page 89 of The Cursed and the Broken
“Oh dear,” Baba Yaga said, angling her head at her son, glancing between us with hungry intrigue. He gritted his teeth so hard it seemed they would break. “Now this is interesting. Could it be you return her sentiments?” Her red lips slashed into a cruel smile. “Foolish boy. The wolf cares not for the sheep. We devour it.”
He said nothing, turning away from her with a sickened expression. “I did as you asked. Hand the vial over.”
She pinned him with a look of annoyance, her lips twisting. “After the many cultists you have killed, I’m not sure I should honour that bargain anymore.” She gazed at me thoughtfully, her shoulders losing their stiffness. “Still … their sacrifices weren’t in vain. We have the vessel now. Once our queen is reborn, you may leave.”
Something glimmered in her hand as she pulled it from her cleavage. A small bottle filled with red liquid and a strange black smoke that seemed to writhe around it. Dante snatched it without hesitation, his face betraying his disgust as he looked at it.
“And there are no more spells beholding him to you?”
She raised a brow, pursing her lips. “Your bastard brother is safe so long as his blood is in your hands. Burn the vial in purified salt and the dark magic will dissipate.”
“How do I know you don’t have any spares?” he growled.
She rested a hand on his arm and crooned, “Come now, my son. When have I ever lied to you? Lukasz was merely collateral to ensure your cooperation. You understand.”
The breath shuddered from my lungs. She’d been using Dante against his will by holding Lukasz under a spell. But how? My eyes followed Dante’s movements as he slipped the vial into his pocket, and I realised.Blood magic. Whatever she’d done, it had been serious enough to force Dante’s hand.
Everything he’d done, he’d done for his brother. Understanding warred with the pain roaring inside me. I would do the same for Eszter in a heartbeat, but surely he could have told me? Surely, he could have done something,anythingto make me understand? I was at his mother’s mercy. And the fate of the Kingdom rested in her hands. He’d fucked us to the point of no return. He’d fucked us all.
Dante’s teeth gritted, but he nodded, averting his gaze as if it pained him to look upon the creature his mother had become. It was clear by the softness to her eyes, the way her hands hovered about his shoulders, that she cared for him. Judging by the shadows curling around his frame and the grimace curving his lips, the feeling wasn’t mutual.
Something I could use? But … no. He’d already begun to walk away. Anger burned through my veins, extinguishing my sorrow and replacing it with hate. “Will you not stay and watch the show?” I hissed. “Are you too much of a coward to see them bleed me dry?”
His shoulders stiffened and, slowly, he turned, returning to his mother’s side. His face was blank, utterly devoid of emotion. “I tried to tell you, Kitarni,” he said. “I tried to keep you at Mistvellen.”
My nostrils flared. He had tried to tell me something, but András’s drunken revelry had interrupted our conversation. And his little delay with the sleeping powder was obviously never going to stop me. I scoffed. Too little, too late. He’d walked me right into the cultists’ snare. I stared him down with eyes of molten fire and hissed, “You should have tried harder.”
The rippling anger fizzled into anguish as my bravado slipped. Tears threatened to fall, but I held them in—they were pointless now.
His mother pressed her fingertips together, clasping them as if in prayer. “It is time, my son. A new dawn awaits and the Dark Queen will rise above it all.”
THIRTY-NINE
The humming stopped and silenceblanketed the air as everyone in the clearing stared at me. Four cultists wearing ram heads approached, bending a knee at each corner of the slab. I could smell the death still clinging to the masks they wore, the blood dribbling down the hems of their black robes.
A girl in white stepped from the cave, her angelic face vacant and dreamy, as if lost in another world entirely. She clutched something in her hands. A simple chalice, though I had no doubt of what it would hold.
She held it aloft, bowing to Baba Yaga as she backed away, kneeling on the ground. Yaga drew a blade from her belt and I stiffened as it veered towards me, but she kept turning.
The blade flashed, her eyes like black glass as she sliced in one swift motion. The girl’s creamy flesh opened, blood pouring from a deep gash in her throat. It flowed into the cup, held now by a fellow cultist, the chalice positioned just so to catch the liquid.
Still smiling dreamily, the girl crumpled to the ground, the light in her eyes winking out as the blood spurted in small gouts, soaking the ground beneath her.
My throat bobbed. What in hell did I just witness?
The male cultist with the goblet set to work, drawing complex symbols on the ground from the girl’s blood. My stomach threatened to empty its contents on the stone beneath me and I swallowed, forcing the bile down.
I squinted at the cultist’s work. I’d seen nothing like it in the texts in my village. Once done, he scattered black candles around the glyph, as well as sprigs of herbs and tiny animal bones. At the very centre, he placed a black urn almost reverentially.
Not just any urn. Sylvie’s. Her ashes must rest inside it. But what dark magic could remake blood and bone? I turned my head to survey Yaga, whose black eyes glittered maliciously. She now carried a tome and I knew,I knewit had to be the tome Sylvie had once used to record her dark spells. The power that lay in the book, the demonic influences.
“It is time,” she said, her voice euphoric with excitement, her fingers trembling as she beheld the urn. Where her hands shook, her voice was steady, ringing clear and loud across the lake of bowed heads.
The words were unintelligible as she recited from the book. Ancient and old, dripping with power and the promise of darkness. I pulled at my restraints, my eyes fixed on the blade still clutched in one of her hands. Darkness swirled like smoke above the altar, the clap of thunder booming somewhere far above the twisted branches of the woods.
Panic seized me as Yaga’s voice rose, the firelight flickering, the earth rumbling as if readying to open the gates of the Under World and unleash the scourge that was Sylvie.
The blade shifted, descending closer, closer. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see it fall. My skin prickled with awareness, my body preparing itself for the pain. Faintly, I heard the metal slide of a sword pulled from its sheath.
