Page 37 of The Cursed and the Broken
Had there ever really been a choice? I sighed. “Fine. Under the condition you will include me in war talks. I want to know all your offensive and defensive strategies. If the cultists are coming for my people—for me—I will be included in our plan of attack.”
Farkas raised a brow. “War is no place for women.”
My skin heated as I placed my palms on the table, breathing deeply to keep calm. I let him see the determination in my eyes. “If I am to live among wolves, then the world shall know my claws.”
“If I were you, Father, I would heed her words,” Dante remarked. “She is no lamb. I mentioned a pack of wolves attacked us in the woods. Well, Kitarni took down the lot of them.”
I folded my arms, surprised and perhaps a little guarded to hear such praise. He said the words so simply, without a hint of animosity or embarrassment. My stomach did a little flip of gratitude, but Dante was a predator. It wouldn’t do to forget that. To forget he wasn’t without other games to play.
Farkas’s eyes lit up. “Interesting. Your magic, I assume?”
Nodding, I straightened my spine, recalling the image of those wolves turning to dust. Only remnants of flesh had remained, still clinging to the bones. As if everything else simply scattered like ash on the winds.
I had felt the gentle nudges of that magic since, but nothing close to the primal instinct that had summoned my power that day. It thrived on anger and despair. If I felt cornered, threatened, the magic would surge to my palms, red and raging. If I lost control …
I didn’t want to think about the consequences.
In the woods, I’d felt desperate. Wounded, scraping for a chance to survive. And the magic—Sylvie’s magic—had simply exploded.
There a second and gone the next, just like my enemies. It frightened me still. More so now I knew whose veins it had once surged through. The thought of that power was no longer freeing. Instead, I felt like it tied me to Sylvie and every treacherous and foul thing she had ever done.
If my magic derived from a monster, could I tame the beast inside? Or would it bite and claw and rip the throats of anyone who cornered it?
I didn’t know. And that scared me more than anything.
I dreamed that night. Feverish, I tossed and turned as images flashed one after another. A blackened forest, the leering faces of dead cultists, the ashes of those wolves. And blood. So much red spilled in crimson waves, pooling before my feet. When I looked down at my hands, scarlet stained my palms—every inch of my skin until I was bathed in it.
I begged for it to stop, for those images to go away, but still they flooded my senses until my mind began to fray and my bones began to break from the pain of it all. I was crumbling, my body deflating as if all the world feasted on my flesh. My own blood being sucked from its veins.
And right before the nightmare would come to an end, I would kneel before Death’s outstretched hand, his black robes billowing, nothing but a void where a face should be.
“She calls for you,” he would say. “She comes to claim her debt.”
I knew, even in my nightmare state, that he could only be referring to Fate. Every time I tried to speak, to question their intentions, the dream would fade, the clock would reset, and then it would start all over again.
One hateful, horrid sequence after another.
SIXTEEN
Of all the places Icould go, I found myself bound for the temple the following morning. While the sun still slept and the crisp cold of pre-dawn crept up my toes, I shuffled down the stone floor, past the barn and out into darkness.
I wasn’t sure what spurred my feet. Perhaps it was the memory of claws still clutching at my shoulders, or the endless waves of blood breaking against me again and again. My thoughts kept returning to Death’s words—a warning, or a threat.
“She calls for you,”he’d said.“She comes to claim her debt.”
A flash of pain speared down my back and I hissed in discomfort. My scars burned as if confirming those words. Dread sluiced through my stomach, tying my innards into knots. Fate was coming for me. The Weaver, the Seer, Death’s scorned mistress.
But what did she want? I wracked my brain, searching for answers that wouldn’t come. Since Death came to our door three years ago, we’d not been disturbed again. If it weren’t for the ugly scars streaking down my back, I might have been foolish enough to forget that night.
Unfortunately for me, such musings were passing dreams and nothing more. Fatewascoming, and I had a feeling that, whatever she would ask of me, the price would be steep.
I trawled through everything I’d learned in the last week. I was a cursed daughter. The last witch—or so my mother and Farkas believed—of a broken bloodline. Sylvie herself had once dared to claim Death’s gifts as her own. Perhaps Fate was involved too?
Maybe she planned to make me pay for such a slight. Or maybe she sought to use my gifts to destroy the remaining scourge of cultists. Wipe them from the face of the earth for good.
I sighed. Until Fate blessed me with an unpleasant visit, I doubted I’d find out. But I would be stupid to ignore my dreams. The message within.
Lost in my thoughts, I strode through the square. Many witches and táltosok had continued the festivities for a second day. There were several witches who’d never made it back to bed—some still stumbling around the square, mead wobbling precariously in clumsy fingers. Others had face planted in cobblestones or the prickly fingers of bushes.
