Page 106 of Iridian

Now, I was going to set them free once and for all.

The curse wasn’t long. That man had been a monster, true, but he’d put together a curse of this magnitude with just over a hundred words, which was unheard of. Fucking genius—if only he’d used it for somethinggoodinstead of this.

As it was, I chanted the words and I released every ounce of magic I had in me into the circle while I looked at Rosabel, at the fire in her eyes, the brightness of her own soul. Her pureness. By now I was sure that Goddess had made her for me, just as she’d made me for her. She completed me in ways I never knew I needed to be completed.

I smiled at her as well as I could so she’d be at ease.

But when the pain began, I wasn’t able to keep it up for long.

It came slowly at first, from everywhere, every line of blood Rosabel had drawn, every soul connected to me, every word of the curse that Titus created.

Then, with the last word, it came all at once and crushed me under.

Gritting my teeth, I held back from making a sound when the pain tore me wide open, sliced me right across the chest. My legs gave and I fell to my knees, hands fisted tightly as I forced myself to be still, to take every ounce of pain I was going to have to take, to get this over with once and for all.

Taland, look at me, baby. Keep your eyes on me.

Rosabel’s face was in front of me, just there, almost close enough to touch if I had the energy to raise my hand. She was there, kneeling with me, always with me, taking care of me—even when I didn’t know it. Even when I thought she’d betrayed me.

Then the souls began to break the bond to me, to set themselves free.

I felt the first tearing off me like a page off my book. Painful, bloody,loud.

He screamed, the soldier, one who’d died in the War of Mages seven hundred years ago.

Then came the others.

The pain was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I forced my eyes down for a moment, just to look at my body, to see that my skin wasn’t being peeled off me—how is my skin not being peeled off me? I could have sworn that it was.

Rosabel called my name. I tried to hold onto her, tried to focus on her, to endure the pain, but it was impossible.

A muffled scream left me when my skin tore, too, for the first time.

Blood exploded. My clothes were in pieces. Rosabel screamed louder.

But the souls didn’t stop.

Something’s wrong.

Titus didn’t feel an ounce of pain when bonding these men to himself.Ididn’t feel any kind of pain or discomfort while I chanted the necromancy spell from that mountain the day they ordered Rosabel killed. Reversing a curse should be the same as creating it, yet now, something was wrong, I was sure of it.

I just couldn’t figure outwhatuntil the twentieth soldier tore himself from me.

I was dying.

Andtheywere being unraveled.

No time to regret or to panic or to think. There was only time to feel the pain of them as they separated from me,notfree in the least, no. They were being undone instead.

Whatever our souls are made of, theirs were beingunmadebecause Titus was no fool. The only way out of his traitorous deal was complete annihilation, it seemed, and the worst part was that I could do nothing to stop it now.

I’d chanted the spell, had given it my magic. Now as they came out of me, they tore me apart, too—not just my soul, but my body as well.

Pieces of me died with them.

Then there was Rosabel.

“Look at me!”

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