Page 119 of Mortdale

“He’s the best in the continent. If there’s something wrong with you, he will find it.” I kissed her tired eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She pressed her face back against my chest and sobbed. Each cry punctured straight though my skin, pulling each of my ribs apart until my sore heart was left wide open and unprotected. “You can’t find what’s wrong with me. No one can. Trust me, I have spent every day of my life trying to figure out what killed me, and I’ve come up with very few useful answers.”

An unfamiliar coldness slipped into my veins. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m dying, Logan.”

The world around me paused and my ears filled with thick static. “Say that again.”

Tears slid down her cheek. “Someone has put a malediction on me. I suspect that was the reason my mother left me at the steps of the orphanage, but not before she tried to kill me first. The headmistress loved to remind me of it every day. Of my bruised, colourless face. I couldn’t have blamed my mother no matter how much the mistresses wanted me to loathe her. Better to die than live like this. I wish she would have been able to do it. Because I never could.” Her eyes screwed shut as she shook her head. “Curses are like mould eating away at wood. Everyone breathing the spores gets sick, too. So, everyone has been terrified and repulsed of me all my life until…until I came here. Until you.” She brushed off tears with the back of her hand and briefly pressed her palm to my face. “The malediction has been slowly killing me the more chaos my body accumulates; the older I grow the worse it gets. I’ve already outlived most who carry a malediction. This is just borrowed time. It has always been borrowed time. I’m as good as dead. A walking corpse.” She pulled her sleeve down her shoulder. “I noticed it after you left the bathroom this morning. My witch’s mark is completely gone. I had to do this for Ethel,” she whispered, lifting her dark eyes to mine. “For you. For Piper. So the both of you can love whoever you want without being afraid.”

Chapter 22

Willow

Sleep was threatening to consume me whole and my buttocks were screaming, begging for a soft surface, but I waited there for him, sitting at the top of the stairs reading through my notebook with Piper’s head laying on my lap as she softly snored.

The news of Luella’s death had come only a few hours after we’d returned from the cemetery, as the new sun had finally risen to reveal the evidence of the night’s thunder. Luella had drunk poison, and by the time her caretakers had found her, it had been too late.

I’d never seen him more devastated. If I’d not been holding him the entire time, I wouldn’t have recognised him to be my Logan. His entire being had sunk somewhere to the back of his mind as I’d helped him get dressed for her funeral this morning, which Ulric had not allowed anyone but him to attend. He’d clearly loved his sister, and I saw guilt in his vacant eyes.

Maybe because of what I’d heard her say that day.

I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore, I promise.

It seemed that Ulric had used Luella to control Logan as much as he could. Maybe she’d done it to protect her brother—her final act of love.

The doors drew open, and I knew he’d come home solely by the sound of his footsteps. “Where are my girls?” I heard him ask Christof, his voice resigned and weak.

“Here,” I called.

He rushed up the stairs. “Honey?”

My hand slipped down the edge of a page when I lowered my book, and I winced when the paper cut through my skin.

Logan was before me in a matter of seconds, kneeling to inspect my finger as if I’d sustained a battle wound.

“Just a paper cut. I might survive it.”

His eyes glistened as they beheld me. “There’s hope?”

There, under the shining silver moonlight cast over him, he looked otherworldly. “There is. With an excellent medic, days of rest and an endless supply of toffee combs, I might be good as new.”

“We better get ahead of it then,” he said, bringing my finger to his lips and sucking the tip where a bead of blood had gathered.

“You’ve never told me what I taste like.”

“Deadly.”

“Is there hope?” I managed to ask despite the invisible hands squeezing at my throat and making my words choke.

“None, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry about Lu,” I said, bracing my forehead against his. “I’m so sorry.”

His thumb moved back and forth over my cheek, wiping away my tears. “Everyone is always so glad and eager to be leaving me. I don’t know what I’ve done.”

“The curse of being loved,” I whispered. “It’s a karmic debt. To have and to lose. It’s all an unfair game. No matter how hard you play. No matter if you follow all the rules.”