Page 48 of Cursed Evermore
“You bastard. Let me go,” I muttered, but the words came out strangled. As if they were being starved of air.
“Oh no, no, no.” Wolfe shook his head. “You belong to me now.”
“Please, no. You can’t have me.” The words were barely there now. In panic I looked around for someone. Anyone. “Help. Somebodyhe…lp me.”
The bastard had the audacity to press his lips to my ear. “Sorry, Ziyka, but no one can save you from me.”
My soul sank, falling into an abyss of desolation. He’d tricked me. Lured me into a trap.
I tried to reach for the necklace to call for my grandmother, but my hands…they clung to his shirt, my fingers as frozen as the dead.
With his gaze still locked on mine, Wolfe raised one finger, swiped it across my neck and the chain loosened.
“Sleep.” He’d barely uttered the words before my body turned to stone, my lids fluttering, fighting to stay awake. I couldn’t.
I was powerless.
Shadows engulfed us, wrapping around us like endless night.
Mother, Grandmother, Emabelle. Help me…
The last thing I heard before the shadows swallowed me was the necklace clattering against the ground.
My last hope, falling away.
Lost to the dark.
Just like me.
Chapter 9
Wolfe
“Beauty in the Cage”
Elariya drifted above me like a fallen star, cradled within the cocoon of mystical energy I’d spun to keep her captive.
We were on the ship now, in the brig, a hundred leagues off the Stormfell coast, which itself lay forty miles from her home.
I’d used the Obscura to cross the land fast, moving through the shadows until I reached the sea. Within minutes, we were aboard. It had taken the rest of the night to get this far out, even with light use of magic.
By now, her family and herbetrothedwould know she was gone.
But it wouldn’t matter.
There was very little anyone could do for her now.
The only evidence of her disappearance was the necklace we left behind.
I would have taken it, but the grandmother would have been able to use its essence to track me. Leaving it threw them in a tailspin. Now they wouldn’t have a clue where their preciousgirl had gone. They’d think the wraith took her, but as to where, they’d know not.
The twilight shielding wouldn’t help, either. I’d unraveled it before I took the necklace off.
The worst-case scenario was them getting word to King Varis to get a decree to search for her in the magical realm. But that would take months.
They’d exhaust their pursuit to find her in the mortal lands first. There were plenty of criminals and savages across the land who used dark magic and wraiths to do their bidding.
Even if her family got permission to go to the magical realm to look for her, no one would dare suspect me. Why would the Prince of Galaythia need some half-mage girl from the mortal lands? As long as I kept my uncle in the dark about my lead to find the ring, neither he nor anyone else would connect me to Elariya Grayson.
