Page 85 of The Cursed and the Broken
Dante sighed, grinding his teeth. I knew that look—the frustration it would cause me. “I might have dragged my feet at first, but I suppose there’s no hiding it any longer. We’re lost. The trail just … vanishes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned. “Fuck me, this is bad.”
He raised his hands in supplication. “Any other time, any other place, darling, I’m yours. But as it stands, your assessment is apt.”
My nostrils flared. “Táltos ass.”
“Stubborn witch,” he said.
András stepped between us. “If I could just—”
“Insufferableoaf,” I snapped.
András lifted a finger. “If I might interject—”
We both turned on him and snarled, “NO.”
The word seemed to echo in the wood, harsh and loud.Too loud. An uneasy feeling skittered down my spine as I stared into Dante’s eyes. The browns were so dark they appeared black in the gloom, if not for the golden ring encircling his irises. His own trepidation blinked back at me and, slowly, his hands reached over his back to the twin blades sheathed there.
From the shadows beyond the firelight, flashes of silver-blue gleamed through the foliage. One by one, they popped into view, the orbs shining with a madness akin to the lidércek and the wolves we’d faced. They stepped from the darkness, bright white dresses dragging on the ground, catching on the teeth of trees.
My heart soared into my throat, the claws of anxiety digging deep into my stomach. At first glance I’d thought them cultists, but as they stepped closer, my gut twisted with fear.
“Tündérek?” Black crept up their fingernails, pulsing in their veins. The faeries had fallen to the cultists’ corruption, their minds no longer their own. I wondered if their power still lingered, or if that, too, had been stripped from their bodies.
András uttered a world-weary sigh. “I tried to warn you.”
“Shush,” I hissed, tilting a head at the faeries as they approached. Defeated, he lifted his hands in the air, but I ignored him. They were beautiful in a classic, yet strange fashion. All sharp lines and symmetry, hard and yet heartbreakingly mesmerising. Their white gowns were brown and bloodied, their nails jagged and sharp from the gods only knew what. All had long hair that tumbled to their waists or lower still, and all looked on with blank expressions. Except two.
A woman with sable skin, the other with flesh pale as her namesake. One with tight black coils, the other with flowing white hair. Both were tattooed with flowing vines and flowers. Both wore veils covering their faces, but I knew immediately who faced me.
My faerie friends. Jazmin and Lili. “Not you, too.” My voice was little more than a whisper, heart plummeting into a well of despair. “Why didn’t you get out? Why didn’t you leave?”
They lifted their veils in unison, peeling back the delicate cloth to reveal blank faces. Their eyes were not the silver-blue of their kin, but blackened pools, the surrounding skin streaked with the corruption that had infected them.
They didn’t answer, only outstretched their hands, beckoning me to take them. My body moved of its own volition, even as every instinct prickled with awareness.Danger, it screamed.Run, run, run.
I gritted my teeth at the sensation of my hands being pulled on puppet’s strings. Were they using magic against me? Was the wood itself urging me forward?
“Let her go.” Dante’s growl was pure command, dripping with warning as he ushered me behind him.
The sisters blinked, their focus turning to him, lips pulled back over their teeth. They hissed, the sound echoing as their brethren changed their stances, like snakes uncoiling to strike.
Dante raised his swords, the blades glinting in the firelight. For the first time, I caught the text engraved on those blades.‘Be not the shepherd of sheep but a leader among wolves.’The scripture struck a chord deep inside. A bell named clarity.
I had been that shepherd. A girl devoured by the opinions of many, consumed by sorrow and loneliness. I would not make the mistake of bowing before sheep again. I was a wolf now and I’d found my pack.
He caught my eye and I nodded my head just once. Reluctant at what duty asked of me. “Do not kill them,” I said loudly, my voice radiating authority. “We will not spill the blood of innocents today.”
Dante paused, warring with the killer within. But whatever he saw in my eyes, it softened the hardness to his face, the mask of the soldier. “As you wish.” The whine of swords unsheathing answered as the scouts pulled their blades and it shocked me to realise their lord had given me power. They answered tome.
Lili struck first, her fist colliding with Dante’s chest, sending him flying backwards into a tree. He fell to the ground, the air wheezing from his chest. I didn’t have time to attend to him, ducking under a swipe of Jazmin’s jagged nails. Her face was empty, soulless, and it hurt to look at her this way. To see no sign of the friend who’d once welcomed me among her people, supped with me, shared the secrets of a forest once gilded in sunlight.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I breathed. The sisters ignored me, converging on both sides, water pumping from their hands just as András lunged for me, heaving me into his arms and spinning. I lashed out with a boot, landing a blow square on Lili’s jaw, another on Jazmin’s nose, the latter resulting in a loud crack.
I cringed at the pain I was causing, but I would not go down without a fight. Water crashed upon us from all directions, drenching every soldier fighting. Theirs was a storm of fury and we were its target. Soldiers flew back one by one as the faeries’ magic blasted with the crushing weight of waterfalls, surging again and again, tempestuous and unforgiving.
András, the crazy bastard, laughed as we battled side by side, using the hilts of our blades to clock our enemies in the head and render them unconscious. “You know,” he said a little too cheerfully given the circumstance, “I think you need to work on your hospitality. Why is it we’re always butchering our guests?”
