Page 79 of The Curse of Ophelia

I was still within the Spirit Volcano. Something had gone horribly wrong.

Chapter Thirty-Six

My boots padded on the rock floor as I turned in a circle. Unease spread a cold pool behind my navel, creeping along my bones.

Ascended warriors were relinquished to the temple once completing the final phase of the Undertaking. The scene was one of legend: a warrior rising up from the flame pool atop the mountain like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

But I remained within the mountains, spit into a different cavern than the spot where I dove into the Spirit Fire. Smooth rock floors held me up, and cracked walls and ceilings towered over me. There were no veins of fire running through these surfaces. It was all gray stone and an aura of blue from the small puddle of flame that spit me into the cave.

As I watched, that circle receded into the floor, taking with it most of my light, leaving only the faded orange glow in the distance. I waited for my heightened sight to adjust to the nearly pitch-black air around me, panic ebbing further into my veins with each passing second.

I ran my hands over my torn leathers, feeling for any new discrepancies. My belt at my waist was still strung with Starfire, my dagger was sheathed at my thigh, and at my back, Malakai’s spear was still a steady presence. A reassuring hand in this uncertain moment.

“How in the Angel-guarded hell did this happen?” I whispered into the cave, my voice bouncing off the walls and slithering around me. I wrapped my arms around myself at the sound and sank to a crouch on the balls of my feet.

The feeling of failure settled into my bones. I was trapped by the malfunction of our sacred ritual. The one thing I had always been certain I was destined for had betrayed me. Was fate all a great joke? Because it seemed to be making a comedy of my life. Loss and grief and guilt had been my constant companions; it only made sense that failure now mingled with them.

My fingers dug into my sides, gripping torn leather and flesh. I breathed through the tightness in my chest, through the crushing weight of disappointment, of inadequacy darkening my vision.

No, I thought, straightening my spine much more quickly than my reflexes were used to. It didn’t matter how I ended up in this cave, but I did. Panicking wouldn’t save me. This was not a failure; it was a redirection. I’d survived the Undertaking, was deemed worthy of the blood in my veins, and this was only a new challenge I must face.

I am Ophelia Alabath, and I am anything but inadequate.

The voice speaking in my head was mine, and yet it was different. It was sturdier, more assured than I had ever felt. This new echo was more than confident. It rang with infallible power and light, igniting the dregs of shadowed hope I clung to.

I stretched my limbs, and that was when I noticed the shift that my fear had previously hidden. It was subtle, not so much a reconstruction of self as it was an emphasis of everything that had already existed within me. The power in my blood—that birthright gifted to me by my ancestors—had been fed. I had honed my body for twenty years. I’d been denied the chance, but nurtured that power. When fate said no, I fought, and now the stirring strength inside of me was prepared to step into its legacy.

My muscles were firmer, control more eloquent. I unsheathed Starfire and sliced her through the air with deadly precision. Even in the dark, I knew the sweep of my blade could cut a hair on a man’s chin.

I moved through the tunnel swiftly, twirling spear and sword around me in my usual training regimen. I had been skilled before, but now I moved as smoothly as a breath of deadly wind, ready to consume what stood in my path with silent vengeance.

The feel of my weapons—particularly the spear—was glorious. I had not known true weapon work until this moment. A grin bloomed across my cheeks, because I was an ascended Mystique Warrior, and the power within me was in endless wealth.

My sight grew stronger by the minute—better than ever in memory. My hearing, too—the dull roar echoing through the chamber felt like it came from within me. A silent beast breathing, and…something else. A sharper sound, like metal thrashing against rock. A shiver danced along my bones, ghostly fingers trailing down my spine, but my stomach swirled in anticipation.

I returned my weapons to their homes and braced my arm against the wall of cool rock, resting my forehead against it. “I did it,” I mumbled to myself, tears threatening to overflow my eyes. This moment I had dreamed of and strived for…so many obstacles tried to keep me from it, yet I had survived.

I was alone, but I was whole. When the Goddess of Death finally greeted me, I would go as a warrior.

Death…I slowly raised my head to look at my wrist, having forgotten about the affliction lying in wait there.

The Spirit Fire had dissolved the linen wrapped around my arm, revealing the thin lines of gray-and-green webbing that still wound their way through my veins and branched up my forearm. The heart, where the pain had been the most excruciating, was still an orb of solid black against the inside of my wrist.

But I could not feel the Curse within me.

My arm no longer felt heavy—it felt restored. The pain, both the subtle residue of it and the agonizing throbs, were gone. Sucked from my veins along with the burden.

The Spirit Fire had wiped the Curse from my blood.

My body loosened, like a tension I hadn’t realized I held suddenly lifted. The dark lines now resembled a tattoo—a symbol, a reminder, but not a threat.

I was healed. Tolek could be healed—that realization was like dunking my heart in gold and watching the relief shine through my pores. This knowledge could change everything should the affliction ever appear again. If the Undertaking had never been suspended, we may have known years ago.

Though the webbing on my skin lingered, I looked at it with an odd affection. I couldn’t quite place it, but fondness spread through me at the sight. The Curse had changed my life in an unexpected way. I had been prepared to greet death, but found something worth fighting for. Had cowered so long in darkness, but was pushed to become who I was meant to be. The delicate webbing—uniquely beautiful now that it wasn’t poisoning my blood—was a mark of the hope I’d held on to and would continue to nurture.

I stood tall in that dim cavern and looked ahead. Something had certainly gone wrong in the Undertaking to deliver me to this spot, but so many things had also gone right. I would find a way out of here.

My steps were featherlight as I moved to the edge of the cavern, my hair swinging forward when I peered around the corner. I was in an offshoot of an intricate set of tunnels—how long these had existed, I had no idea. There was not a person to be seen in this stretch of gray walls.

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