Page 79 of Magic Cursed
“Kellan, what the hell are you doing?” Daimis runs toward us from the tree line. But four guards intercept him, two grabbing each arm. “Release me now. That’s an order.”
“They don’t take orders from you, Prince. Now calm down, we are doing what we set out to do all along,” the Regent says. “Protecting Thaaryn. Her magic must play a part in that. Do not interfere, or we will have to remove you.”
Kellan drops down to one knee in the middle of the circle and I continue to struggle, kicking at him and elbowing him in the head, which he takes but never wavers from what he’s doing. He brushes the snow away in the center of the circle to reveal a metal stake that he attaches to my ankle manacles.
I tug on the stake. “You were supposed to be the hero!”
Before Kellan leaves the circle, he faces me. “Don’t you understand, I am the hero. Getting you here is how I save Thaaryn.” He exits the circle, leaving me there alone.
“This is madness!” I yell at his back, but he continues to ignore me.
The Regent stands in front of the Faestone and chants with the guards. Elsie is throwing out every threat she can think of, rattling her cage. Every part of me is screaming to get away from here. My magic, feeling my panic, claws at the power of the ash-steel manacles, but it’s no use. It can’t help me now. I’m not sure anyone can. Whatever the Regent is planning, it turns out that I’m at the heart of it. My old companion, fear, is back, its claws sink deep into me. Des’s words coming back:Fear can control you or you can control it.
“Stop this! You can’t do this!” Daimis yells, fighting against the men restraining him. “As your future king, I forbid it!”
“Daimis, you have no say in what goes on here,” Kellan says. “We’re ensuring that you’ll be king to a better Thaaryn. You’ll thank us one day.”
Daimis and I lock eyes and something deep within him changes. His body goes rigid, and my own body recognizes a burning within him. Something ancient and powerful wanting to be set free.Something familiar.It calls to me, and my magic perks up like it’s listening intently. Daimis closes his eyes and says an incantation, one I know, and I’ve used before. And the impossible happens, the manacles on both my wrists and my ankles fall to the ground.
I gasp.Daimis has magic.I’m frozen in shock, trying to understand how this is possible.
“Run!” Daimis yells. “Now, Sahra, run!”
The men holding Daimis curse. Kellan responds quicker than I would’ve thought, slapping an ash-steel manacle over Daimis’s wrist, pulling it behind him and securing it to Daimis’s other wrist within seconds. But it’s too late, I’m free. It’s high time I make fear my bitch.I turn my fear into a weapon, letting it fuel my anger. I pull my eagerly waiting magic to the surface. And for once, I don’t care that I can’t control it. I let every ounce of rage fuel it into a living nightmare. Let them see it. Letthemfear me. Let my magic tear them to pieces if they try to chain me once again.
I will be their villain.
And I will be their death.
Black tendrils of pure shadow tinted in blue slither out from me like serpents of mist, twisting around me, protecting me. One of the guards surges forward, sword raised.Big mistake.He was the one who tormented Elsie the worst, shaking her cage until she was covered in bruises, laughing all the while. My eyes narrow, and with no more than a small thought, a tendril lashes out at the man running toward me, slicing his head from his body with surprisingly little resistance. I tilt my head and watch as his momentum carries his body forward to slide to a stop in front of me, his head rolling past, leaving a trail of bright red in the snow. Somewhere deep down a part of me recoils in horror, but I don’t acknowledge her, instead I slam a door on her, shutting her out from what’s to come.
I bend down and take the sword from the still-twitching body. I test the feel of the foreign blade in my grip as I slowly pace, my eyes narrowed, scanning the guards for my next victim. Four more men come at me from all angles, and I imagine the tendrils leaking from my body, like another limb holding a blade.
“I need her alive!” the Regent yells.
Either they’re too far into their anger at seeing me kill their comrade, or they feel they can inflict plenty of damage while keeping me alive because they don’t hold back on account of the Regent’s words. As if any of them could land a single finger on me unless I allow it. The first guard reaches me, and I block his advance with my shadow before slicing down the front of his body, cutting into flesh, sinew, and bone. His entrails spill from his torso, but I don’t waste another second on him as I duck under the second attacker’s blade, blocking the third with my shadow, turn back to the second, stabbing him in the heart, while my shadow slices off the arms of the fourth who thought he could sneak up and stab me in the back. His screams echoe in the clearing. The third attacks again, but I send a shadow straight through his skull, his limbs fall limp, and he dangles lifelessly from my shadow spear until I retract it. I swing my blade through the armless man’s neck, severing his head and shutting off his screams. All that remains of the four guards is a bloodied heap of corpses at my feet, steam rising from the heat of their opened bodies. The metallic smell of blood surrounds me. I feel its warmth splattered on my face. I don’t wipe it. I glare at the other guards, who stare with wide eyes and shaking hands at their slain comrades. When they look at me, my lips curve into a feral grin. I see in their expressions that I am as I have always feared I would be, evil—and I don’t hate it.
“I would think long and hard before you make any other moves, Sahra,” the Regent says.
As my hate-filled gaze snaps to him, I release a pointed tendril, just before it pierces the Regent, he yells, “Look,” and points behind me.
I stop the tendril. It hovers, ready to strike into his heart. I turn around to see a guard holding Elsie’s hair through the bars of her cage, pointing a knife at her small head. I look to Daimis who is being held by two guards with Kellan’s sword pressed to his throat.
Shit, no, no, no. My heart drops, and I lower my sword.
“Sahra, go,” Daimis says. “You’re what they wanted, all along. Go!” he roars.
“If you do,” the Regent says. “You’ll be killing them both. But if you step into that circle and stay, you have my word, I’ll spare their lives.”
“Don’t make me do it, Sahra,” Kellan says, the veins in his forearm protruding under the weight of his grip on the hilt. “I will, for the sake of Thaaryn. Don’t make me.” I see the conviction in his hard gaze. He thinks it’s his destiny to save Thaaryn and if his father convinces him that killing his oldest friend, his prince, will help, then he’ll do it.
“Don’t listen to them!” Daimis growls. “Run. You live.”
That’s what I’ve done since I was ten years old. Running. Hiding. Surviving. But at what cost? I isolated myself, not just from the world, but from those right in front of me. It took finding my friendship with Daimis again, remembering a time when I didn’t live in constant fear, to allow myself to really live again. To not only care for others, but to allow them to care for me. I have true friendships, that’s something worth fighting for, that’s something worth staying for.
“I’ll never leave you again,” I say to Daimis. He shakes his head and I see true fear on his face.
I turn to Elsie. “I failed you once, I will not a second time.”