Page 42 of Too Dangerous To Die

I slam myself backward so hard I nearly fall. I stagger, panting, my hands shaking violently.

She stares at me, eyes wide, her hand pressed to her throat.

I don’t see fear in her face this time.

I seebetrayal.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” I rasp.

“You weren’t going to stop either,” she says, voice hoarse.

She turns and walks off into the night.

And I let her go.

Because if I follow, I won’t stop next time.

Because this hungeris winning.

That night, I can’t sleep.

Even when my body tries to pull itself into stone, I fight it. I don’t want to dream.

But Protheka is cruel. Magic here has a memory longer than life itself. And it always remembers its debtors.

When the dream finds me, it’s not mine.

It’s Medea’s.

I’m on my knees in a throne room carved of obsidian, a circle of stone warriors surrounding me, their faces hidden beneath ancient helms. My wrists are bound in chains that glow with runes I recognize now. Purna magic. Hers.

She stands before me, not with guilt, not with grief, but with resolve.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, you’re not.”

“I never wanted this.”

“Youchoseit.”

She steps forward and presses her hand to my chest. To the space where my heart once was. “You’re too dangerous.”

“You made me dangerous.”

Her magic pulses into me, and I scream—not from pain, but the terrible intimacy of it. Of knowing her power. Of craving it. Of being created from it.

“I won’t kill you,” she says. “But I’ll seal you.”

“You coward.”

“You love me,” she whispers, tears in her eyes. “That’s the problem.”

The chains pull tighter. The stone rises. My body turns heavy.

And her voice, Medea’s voice, shakes the world as the seal falls:

“You are mine. And I destroy what’s mine.”

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