Page 88 of The Curse of Golden Blood
He said nothing. Only stared at me with those ancient eyes that saw everything and understood nothing.
"You keep secrets from me, treat me like a prisoner, have your way with me and now you want to give up on me completely?" I shook my head in disgust. "You really are a selfish prick."
Still, he said nothing, and I found my anger rising.
"Not going to say anything? Fine." I whirled around, heading towards the door. "If that's how it's going to be, I'll leave."
As soon as I reached the door, his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. His touch was firm, but gentle.
"You wish to know the truth? The truth about the cure for the Rot?"
I looked back at him, his words catching my attention. "Yes," I said.
A smirk lifted the corner of his mouth and his eyes glittered with amusement.
"The cure is not the blood, nor is it the work of our court. They are both merely conduits."
"What is the cure, then?"
He studied me carefully. "You."
I gave him a puzzled look. "What are you talking about?"
"Your heart. The source of your power." He smiled faintly. "It needs to be taken out and studied."
My jaw dropped as I realized what he was suggesting.
"Your death, Miralyte. That is the cure."
twenty-four
Survivor's Guilt
Zydar
Iwatchedasherface drained of color. It happened slowly, like the world peeled itself away from her. Like her body understood the truth before her mind caught up. The edges of her lips parted, but no sound came. She blinked once. Then again. Her hand pressed to her chest like she had to check something was still there.
I could feel the storm building before she even opened her mouth.
"You lied to me." Her voice cracked on the last syllable. Tears streaked down her cheeks. She looked as if she wanted to throttle me. "This whole time, you knew. You knew, and you let them draw out my blood. You sat there and watched while I gave away pieces of myself. You watched them suffer for nothing. I was their cure, and you kept it from them."
I shrugged a single shoulder. "Yes."
"How could you? They're dying." She made a choking noise as if the grief rose like a current, too fast to swallow, too thick to fight. It washed out of her with a shudder. "They're all dying."
"The cure is not certain. There's no guarantee that your heart can halt this curse. None of them understand what your blood holds. They pass it between hands and pray it behaves. You heard what it did to that girl. Her veins caught fire. Her bones shifted. That was no salvation.”
Her face seemed to crumple. "You did this on purpose."
"Miralyte, there is no cure that will bring you back if your heart is taken. That girl grew two wings made of malachite, and that was from a fraction of the quantity. What do you think your heart's full power could do?"
She shook her head as if denying my words would make them stop mattering.
No cure is perfect. Taking her heart might do nothing. Be a nuisance or worse. If they took her heart and she still died, then the Rot would keep spreading. It wouldn't be a true cure. It would be death and disappointment. Nothing more.
The fact that my heart and soul wouldn’t survive her death was irrelevant.
"Do you care at all about what happens to them?" she asked. "Do you care about any of this?"
