Page 308 of Cursed Evermore
“I wish I were. But I’m not,” he murmured, voice cracking.
“You are to me.”
“I’m not there yet, Ziyka, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of you.”
My throat tightened. “Oh, Wolfe…”
“I come with a lot of baggage,” he admitted, “and it’s fucked with my mind more than I’d like to admit. But for you, I’ll fight it. I’ll try.”
“Maybe you could share the burden with me,” I whispered, “and we can fight it together.”
His thumb traced over my hand, a shiver following the path it left behind.
“Some wounds,” he said quietly, “aren’t so easily given away, my love.”
My chest ached. “Is this about… Zyrra?”
His gaze faltered. “Yes.”
The single word hung between us, and my heart stuttered. “What happened to her, Wolfe?”
He straightened and sat next to me, but he gazed ahead at the window. “You said she told you about what happened to my mother, so you know they had the blight.”
“Yes. She told me your mother sacrificed herself and gave her a potion that could have extended her life by a hundred years. She said she wanted to live her life the way she wanted and even told me about a boutique she ran with her sailor.”
He glanced at me, and I could see from the pain in his eyes that he was struggling. He looked away again.
“That was all true. Except the potion didn’t work and she never got to live that life. She became what we call Hollowborn. Remember when I told you about the undead on the ship?”
How could I forget? “Yes, I remember.”
“It’s worse than that. The blight devours your soul and leaves only a shell—a vessel for anything to take root. By the time we realized what had happened to Zyrra, she was already too far gone. She’d hidden it from us. We were so focused on my mother that we didn’t see… until it was too late.” He swallowed hard, his voice breaking. “We lost my mother, and to make matters worse, Zyrra… Gods. The potion accelerated her demise. It clashed with the magic she used to hide it, and it consumed her faster.”
“Is that what killed her?”
“No.” His jaw tightened, every muscle in his body going rigid. His eyes fixed on some point beyond me, as if he could escape what he had to say. “It was me.”
My heart stopped, cold and heavy in my chest. “Wolfe…”
His gaze snapped back to me, unflinching. “She began killing. There’s only one thing you can do when someone becomes Hollowborn.”
“Kill them?” The words scraped out of me, barely audible.
“Yes. Kill them.” His breath shuddered. “The sailor was the first to die when she changed. He loved her and refused to leave her side. I found him in her bedroom ripped to shreds. Ten more were dead within hours.”
The image carved itself into my mind before I could stop it. Zyrra’s room drenched in blood, the man who’d loved her ripped apart by the very hands he worshipped. My stomach churned, bile rising in my throat.
“Gods, Wolfe…” My voice fractured. I reached for him, threading my fingers through his.
"We chained her in the dungeon, hoping to find some way to slow the corruption. To buy time until we could figure out what to do. But she escaped and killed more.Manymore. The decision was made for us." His voice broke. "My father had just lost my mother, and Alaric... I had to be the big brother. I couldn't let him carry that choice. So I did it."
“I’m truly sorry.”
“I killed my baby sister. She was the youngest. Barely a hundred, and I had to take her life.”
I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. "The blight took her, Wolfe. If she was Hollowborn, she was already gone. What you did saved everyone else."
"I know that's true. But I'll never forget the way she looked in my arms as she died. It was still her. My sister." His hand shuddered beneath mine. "That last time I went to the Luminaire Festival with my family, I wished my mother could be cured and that we'd all be together again for the next one. Butnot even the moon could grant such a wish when the blight had already infected two of them."
