Page 5 of WitchCurse
It wasn’t a monster who appeared on the other side of the bars. My heart flipped over.
“Mother?” The word slipped from my lips in a confused and pain-filled breath.
Her expression stern and bitter on that too beautiful face. The sidhe always prided themselves on their slim and ethereal grace. Hair like spun ice, a mix of white and blue, flowing down her back, and eyes a clear pale gray, I endlessly looked into that face and wished for acceptance, love, anything other than the sneer of distaste like she displayed now. I was not what she had wanted. Some otherworldly mutt she should have stomped under her boot, yet I had won the battle, hadn’t I?
Slayed the monster.
Landon. My heart ached. My strength waned and I fell forward, catching myself on my hands. My hands? I blinked at them, shocked at the change. Not stained with the drying blood of my brethren, but suddenly a dark gray, as though painted in pale moonlight and darkness. I gasped at the change.
“What’s happening to me?” Had the battle somehow tainted me? Had the unseelie blood been seared into my skin?
“Your true self is finally awakening,” my mother said. She sighed and turned away. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be this.”
What? Dark fae? “Did I not win the battle for you?”
“It matters little. There is always another battle.”
I snarled. It mattered to me. Landon was dead because of me, and now I was what? An enemy of my people because the color of my skin had changed? I felt the same. Weak and damaged from battle, but nothing I couldn’t heal.
“The dragon was a fae?” Seelie, unseelie, they all looked the same to me. “It turned into a male, bled gold.”
“Did you see him devour the masses?” She asked. “Kith and kin alike?” Her gaze turned back my way. “It is whattheybecome. All of them.”
WhatIwould become? “Are you saying that is my fate? To become a monster?” I curled up into a ball, tired, in pain, and grieving a man who hadseenme, only to find out I was destined for what? Death and destruction?
Memories of my youth returned with a vengeance, all the faces and voices sneering and accusing me of being a beast, a monster, and the end of them all. I had fought hard to bury that pain, hiding it deep and waging war to gain their approval. For what? To be abandoned for winning a battle?
“All your kind eventually do,” she turned away again, disappearing down the hall outside the cell. She had birthed me, knowing what I would become? Was that why I had been banished by the court? Raised by the lesser fae and sent to a battle they expected to kill me? Not because I was expendable, but because I was a monster.
A cold fire of rage flickered to life in my gut, darkness rising to the surface as something inside shattered. Memories of Landon’s smile and teasing tone before we’d found our way to privacy, gave me a moment of pause. His sweet words of affection while he taught me love for the first time, and finally his death at my hands. Had it been a mercy to tear him from this world? Since the monster had taken him?
The fiery rage dug through me like acid. Each cut or bruise instantly healed with stinging ferocity. I trembled with the building strength of it, as it ignited every last bit of my skin, filling me until all I could see were the rainbows of Landon’s hair saturated in golden blood.
I screamed into the echoing cavern of the cells as something shifted, a change ripping me apart and threading me back together in an instant, darkness threading over every part of my being. The bars of the cell burst, unable to contain the power of my rage and grief.
For a few heartbeats I sat stunned, body tingling with the change, and a newfound roll of magic building inside. Then I shook out my limbs, more beast than male now, and lumbered toward the path my mother had taken, darkness riding me like a demon on the hunt. I was done being their pawn, caged, leashed, and controlled. Instead, I’d give them something to fear. Beyond dragons and the boogeymen of the sidhe, the fire in my mixed blood burned with the need to tear it all down.
CHAPTER2
Kiran
The insistent shaking woke me, and I opened my eyes to gaze into familiar, concerned burgundy eyes. I’d never tell him how much his eyes reminded me of that lost lover. Would he see it through our bond? I tried to keep all of those terrors locked deep inside, but the further I sank into the darkness, the more difficult that was.
“You were muttering in your sleep,” Nick said, crouched over me. His hair was getting long, a sweep of brown and red curls falling almost to his shoulders when he didn’t keep it drawn back. He knelt on the edge of the bed, never hesitant to touch, as his hand flitted over my face and down my side, careful of where the skin grayed and shriveled like death. A curse started ages before, slowly devouring me.
“Sorry,” I said with a deep sigh, tired, endlessly tired, and unwilling to get up.
“I can hunt for you,” Nick’s offer was soft, but I couldn’t help my flinch. Hunting, meant finding a fae somewhere for me to devour. Not an easy task in this mortal realm, and a bit like fading life support. Death of a species only to extend my life a bit longer seemed unfair, and I didn’t really want to play that game anymore.
“No.”
“You’re getting too weak,” Nick said.
Would the dragon take me before my body dissolved into dust? I prayed not. I hoped that keeping it starved and distant from true energy and strength would stave off that final change. What use was such a weakened mortal shell? Had I been freed when the courts were still in Underhill, I might have let myself shift and devour them all for vengeance and let the world crash down on all our heads. All that remained here were those who didn’t deserve my wrath. The fox’s mate should have left me to die in the other world. It would have saved them endless trouble down the line. Only my tie to Nick made me useful.
“I need more rest.”
Nick tugged the blanket up around me as though he could chase away the eternal chill. Pretty was my scion. Tied out of necessity rather than affection. He’d been little more than a boy, starving, alone, and without hope. I’d been caged by spells and dying magic. Who would have thought the boy would turn into a warrior. Broad shoulders and thick muscles, yet a mind full of a quest for knowledge and a sharp wit. I wondered not for the first time, if there was a way the fox could sever our bond and free Nick from my self-destruction.
