Page 87 of The Cursed and the Broken
Everything about these people was wrong. Sickening. I gasped as they lifted their heads all at once. Not only had many of them removed their tongues or threaded their mouths shut, but others were missing eyes. Their organs replaced instead with ugly red crosses seared into their skin.
Bile threatened to erupt and I forced myself to look away—anywhere but at the height of desecration. I knew they had defiled themselves for her, sacrificing mind, body and soul for their dark leader.
A body swam into view and I blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the source. “Awake at last,” the voice crooned. A woman’s. Lilting and elegant but underlined by a hardness too. She wore a red gown that clung to her hips and thighs, the fabric cutting a sharp vee, exposing the curves of her breasts.
I craned my neck to peer at her groggily, wincing at the shooting pain in my head, but she placed a hand on my cheek, pressing down hard. The cool surface seeped into my flesh and I squirmed under her touch. Cold, hard metal bit into my wrists as I struggled and panic flooded my senses upon realising I was chained. Not trussed up like a hog but bound to a cold stone slab instead.
Just as Margit had foreseen.
“The more you struggle, the harder the metal will sink its teeth,” the woman whispered, almost pitifully, but I could hear that cruel delight again. She wanted this?wanted me tohurt.
I hated her already.
“Who are you?” I croaked, moistening my lips. My skin was cold as ice, the clothes clinging to my body still soaked through from the faeries’ magic. It plastered the hair to my head, clung to the swell of my breasts. Shame washed over me. They’d ripped my shirt open, bearing my nakedness to the world.
I caught András’s eye from across the clearing. His handsome face twisted with rage. He was bloody and bruised, purple and yellow, but he was not otherwise hurt. I was thankful at least that he looked at me, not with pity, but murder in his heart. Fury that his future lady had been so shamed.
The woman ignored my question. “Poor child. You might have been my daughter had Fate’s threads been weaved differently.”
I tensed, muscles straining taut as a bowstring. My blood mother? But she was dead, rotting beneath the ground somewhere. So who …?
The woman withdrew her palm, stepping around the slab to stand before me. Long brown hair streaked with russet, bronzed skin and a slender frame, but it was the set of her eyes and lips that had me jolting. The familiar features of one I knew so well.
I’d seen this face before. Twice now. I’d learned every line of that canvas, relished in every secret, sexy look or word from his mouth. But this face, though older now, had stared back at me from a portrait in Dante’s bedroom.
“My gods,” I whispered. “It can’t be. You’re supposed to be dead.”
She laughed, clapping her hands in delight. “Is that what he told you? Oh, how delicious.” Snapping her fingers, she motioned one of the cultists over. “Bring him.”
Fear fluttered in my stomach, my hands turning clammy. I craned my neck to watch her minion disappear into the mouth of a cave just beyond the clearing.
I called my magic but found myself blocked by an invisible wall. The power lay dormant, coiled just out of reach. Sweat beaded my forehead as I concentrated, the muscles in my neck straining with effort.
The woman watched me with eagle eyes. “It won’t come. The chains binding you are fused with magic. Your power is all but useless to you now.” She ran a nail down my cheek and I jerked away from her touch.
“Don’t touch me, or I swear, the second I’m free I’ll ram my fist down your throat and burn you from the inside out.”
She smiled with closed lips, eyes flashing with amusement. A single dimple cut the sharp angle of her cheek. Pain filled me, disgust surging at the familiarity of that smile—of the golden ring in her eyes. “It’s a shame to waste such power, such spirit. You might have been my best student if things were different.”
“What are you talking about?” I spat. “Whoareyou?”
“My dear girl. Do you still not see?” She raised her thin arms and smiled widely. My belly flipped at the sight of teeth filed into fangs—fashioned like a fucking vampire’s.
Bile climbed my throat, realisation sinking in. A vision of Hanna flashed before my mind’s eyes—the image of her deflated body, the strange teeth marks on her skin. They matched this woman’s teeth perfectly. “You’re the one who’s been killing the girls. You fed on Hanna like an animal!”
She flicked a tongue over her teeth. “Yes. I devoured them, body and soul. I took only what was rightfully mine. A blood sacrifice in exchange for my protection from the humans.”
I failed to suppress a shudder, the chill on my back sinking deeper beneath my skin. This woman was insane. Drinking the blood of her victims and no doubt getting high off their magic. Bloodmorphia, only she didn’t need the drug. She took it direct from the source.
My stomach roiled. The worst part was that she was still a witch, not a vampire or something other, but a witch driven mad by her cult. And she thought she was owed sacrifices in exchange for—
“Protection?” My brows knitted together. “What the fuck could you possibly—”
My words trailed off as it all came tumbling into place. The strange disappearances of the girls, the sacrificial rituals, the fabled warden of the woods, whom no one had ever laid eyes on in the flesh.
There was only one person charged with protecting my coven from the humans. Only one who was said to have erected the wards protecting our village from wandering eyes.The banya. My coven’s beloved Baba Yana.
It was her. All along, this witch, thisthing, had us worshipping her like fools. She was a false prophet. A killer of her own kind. And we’d all been stupid enough to believe her lies.
