Page 150 of Bite Marks & Broken Hearts

“You are mine,” Lilith purred. “You have always been mine.”

The purple fire beneath my skin flared in response to her call. For a moment, I wavered. The promise of power, of true freedom, sang in my veins like poison.

But then I looked at my brother, still cradling Flynn’s body, and saw the echo of my own past. Another soul twisted by those who claimed to love them. Another life corrupted by false promises.

“No,” I whispered. Then louder: “LIES! All of it—LIES!”

The twelve points of light surrounding us pulsed violently as my power surged. Vale stumbled back, his mask of concern shattering into fear.

“You never wanted to free me,” I snarled at Lilith. “You wanted to own me. To make me as much a monster as you.” I knelt beside Flynn’s body, placing one hand over his still heart, the other gripping the crucifix. “But I choose differently now.”

Sebastián reached out to touch my knee. “Sister—”

“Five hundred years of a half existence, watching the world from shadows,” I whispered. “You ran from your past through endless cities, while I haunted crossroads and crypts. Both of us watching time slip past like water, seeing mortals live and die while we remained frozen. But where you sought escape, I sought power. Creating cambions, corrupting souls, preparing vessels dark enough to satisfy Lilith’s hunger.”

I looked down at my hands, still bearing the transparency of something not quite alive, not quite dead.

“Five centuries of borrowed time, each decade taking another piece of my humanity. All these sacrifices. Creating monsters to serve a monster.” My eyes met Sebastián’s. “Just like they did to us. Let me do this, brother.” My smile felt foreign on my face, gentle in a way I’d forgotten how to be. “Let me choose to save instead of destroy.”

The magic surged through me as I began the transfer, but this time I pulled the power inward rather than outward. Five centuries of collected power, twelve souls worth of darkness, all of it flooding into my own essence. My skin turned translucent, dark veins spreading like cracks across my form.

“Foolish child.” Lilith’s voice scraped across my soul like winter frost. “After everything we shared?”

I poured more power into Flynn’s lifeless form, feeling my own existence beginning to fracture. “You never shared anything,” I gasped. “You only took. Like them. Like Rodrigo. Like all of them.”

The air grew thin as Lilith’s darkness coalesced around us. “Then you choose death? Again?”

“No.” I met her terrible gaze. “I choose life. His life. My brother’s happiness.” The cracks in my skin spread wider, purple light bleeding through. “I choose to end this cycle of suffering.”

Flynn’s chest rose suddenly beneath my palm—a sharp, desperate inhale. His eyes flew open, brilliant blue and full of life.

“Flynn?” Sebastián’s voice broke on the name, raw with disbelief. His hands trembled as they cupped Flynn’s face. “Flynn,mi amor?” When Flynn’s gaze focused on him, recognition dawning, Sebastián let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh—the sound of a man who had lived only in darkness suddenly finding light.

My brother looked to me. “Magdalena…” He reached for me, but purple flames erupted between us. For the first time, I saw him truly look at me—not the monster I’d become, but the sister he’d loved. The sister he’d mourned. “Gracias, hermana,” he whispered. “After everything I did—

“It’s alright, brother.” Tears left burning tracks down my cheeks as my body began to dissolve. “I’m choosing this. The way they never let us choose before.”

As my consciousness scattered into stardust, I glimpsed one final image: my brother, cradling Flynn against his chest, his face transformed. The weight of five centuries finally lifted from his shoulders—the guilt, the self-loathing, the endless penance. In its place bloomed something I’d forgotten existed: hope. The rigid lines of his face softened as he pressed his forehead to Flynn’s, whispering words I couldn’t hear but understood nonetheless. A promise. A future. The man who had spent half a millennium punishing himself for mydeath was finally allowing himself to live. And in that moment, I knew my sacrifice had truly set us both free.

Forgive me, brother. And thank you for teaching me how to love again.

33

Flynn

First came the spark—a single, electric pulse deep in my chest. Then the flood: blood rushing, nerves firing, lungs expanding. I breached the surface of death gasping, drowning on air, every nerve ending raw and screaming as sensation flooded back. Seb’s arms were the only solid thing in a world that wouldn’t stop spinning.

Fragments of reality pieced themselves back together—the damp earth beneath me, the bite of cold wind, Seb’s arms around my shoulders.

“Flynn,” he said. “Flynn, look at me.”

I forced my eyes to focus on his face. Tears had carved tracks through the blood and dirt on his cheeks. His dark curls were wild, eyes wide with disbelief as his hands cupped my face.

“You were dead.” His thumbs traced my cheekbones. “You were dead.”

Another ragged breath tore through me. My hand drifted to my chest, finally free of the cold chill that had tormented me for so long, my countdown towards death. The relief was staggering—I hadn’t realised how heavy that darkness had been. Now I could breathe again, really breathe, without that crushing weight pressing against my lungs. “What happened?”

“Magdalena.” Seb’s gaze drifted past me.

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