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I wanted him now, to ride his enormous cock again and feel him release inside me. My nipples hardened at the thought and I didn’t care where I was anymore. All I could feel was a need to release myself. The heaviness down there begged to be touched. Nothing else mattered.
Moving my fingers down my stomach, over my navel, and under my pants, I moaned. Everything else could wait. I wanted to leave this barrier, go find Raiden, and spend the rest of eternity under the sheets. It didn’t matter if I found my sister or not.
Wait.
What was I doing?
Realization splashed through me. My sister. She was who I was doing it for, for her and for me to belong.
I stood, forcing Raiden from my mind. The idea of him amplified every desire pulsing throughout my body right now. Instead, I focused on Mona and the rest of my family: Edmund, Maddox, Dora, and Naomi. I imagined their smiling faces, our early morning breakfasts, and how it would feel to be able to go with them to translate ancient texts and bring back dark objects—to finally belong.
The magic of lust faded slowly, dissolving into nothing.
It, like envy, returned to the chest. My heart hammered. Next was pride, a royal-blue smoke, thicker than the others, and it entered me with a choking gasp. I closed my eyes, keeping my focus on my family, on my friends, and on my goals, enough that it never did get its claws in. After several minutes trapped in a mental tug-of-war, I came to a realization. I didn’t need to be the best or the brightest. I was good enough, and I had people who loved me.
Pride left me, stealing my next breath with it as it poured itself back into the chest to join the others. I gasped for air, pressing my fingers against my knees when gluttony climbed across the ground and found me in a cloud of orange. I swallowed thickly as overwhelming hunger dipped my stomach, but like pride, it didn’t take much to push out.
Greed shot into me at an alarming speed, glittering gold, and a trail of silver smoke stayed behind. I gasped, my eyes snapped shut as they seeped into my thoughts, distorting them, changing them. My heart raced at the idea, at the image it created: revered, loved, with my sister here, and me as grandkeeper. No one would look down on me again. I was even better than Maddox and Edmund at managing curses.
Greed painted a picture in my mind, stoking my deepest desires, amplifying them. I saw myself not only as grandkeeper but an artist, an author, and everything I could imagine. I owned businesses and had more skal than I knew what to do with.
The thought was exhausting. I smiled. That was it. I didn’t want fame or a grand fortune. I’d love to be grandkeeper one day, but I was perfectly content with waiting decades for it.
Greed left me, stinging like a scorpion as fled my mouth, choking me. I sucked in a deep breath when sloth came in a thick brown. It dissolved into me, lulling me into a want to sleep. My eyelids growing heavier, until I could barely keep them open.
I wasn’t sure how long had passed… minutes, half an hour, maybe more? I lay on my back with my eyes closed, unable to find the energy or motivation to get up. I knew sloth would get me. I always did like slacking off when I could.
I could take a short nap. Maddox and Edmund could wait. Just as a light snore escaped my lips, my eyes flung open. Like my mornings when it was an effort to get out of bed, I still did it, even if it was sometimes nearing noon. All because I had to take the day, to work and become something.
The desire to become a keeper outweighed my desire to do nothing. With a heave, I sat upright, moving in what felt like slow motion to my feet. Sloth slugged out of me, crawled across the ground, and slumped back into the chest.
I felt a thousand times lighter.
Was that all of them? I was counting my fingers when wrath erupted in a cloud of red smoke. No. This was the last, and the one I feared the most. I braced myself when it darted toward me and hit through my chest. A burning behind my eyes forced them shut. Kneeling, I grasped at the ground as wrath took over my body. Flames of heat licked through my veins, my body convulsing on the ground until pain turned to seething hatred of everything and everyone. He was more than a sin. Wrath was alive, an entity, and everything I believed was brought into question.
They all deserve to die, a voice tinkered in my mind. Wrath tugged at every painful memory. My sister being torn away from me. My past mixed with scenes that hadn’t happened. Images were shown to hurt me, to provoke rage. He fed off it, delighting and ravishing in the anger as it spilled through me.
Mona would hate me when she saw me. She wouldn’t want to see me again because I’d left her. She hated me for being a witch. She had to. I tried to help her, to protect her from the awful Miss Thompson, who’d enjoyed hitting us, but what had I got for my troubles? Demonized, called evil, and sent away to a territory that didn’t accept me either.
My heart hammered as I curled my fingers, digging my nails into my palms. He tugged at every insecurity. Every time I tried to bring in some light—a memory of Naomi and me—wrath reminded me of how she believed Craig over me, her best friend. I thought about Maddox, but wrath showed me how he didn’t believe me when I had tried to warn him about Raiden.
Finally, when the darkness was too much, I found something I’d buried deep long ago. It was a faded memory of the mother who’d abandoned Mona and me long ago, leaving us with a father who drank himself to death, leaving us to the mercy of the orphanage. Salvius wasn’t as forward-thinking as Istinia and didn’t look after their weak or old. No one cared for us. My mother had moved away, built a life for herself with a wealthy merchant. I didn’t care if she ever thought of us after. She had abandoned me, I’d been taken from Mona, my dad left me by choosing alcohol over his daughters, and Naomi had decided she’d had enough of me.
I opened my eyes, staring at the large stone beneath me through red-tinted eyes. I blinked twice. “No.” I sucked in a deep breath as I fought wrath. I wouldn’t let it beat me. I couldn’t. It didn’t matter how hurt I was, or the pain I felt. It would be nothing compared to failing this test. I’d lost hope, but I was at the end, and maybe, just maybe, I actually stood a chance.
I thought of Dora, Edmund, and Maddox. He wanted me to win. He’d told me so. Edmund was rooting for me too. Dora took care of me as a mother would. I had family here, and I was worth something to them.
It recoiled slowly, then left my body, slipping back into the box with the others. The lid closed with a slam, the key shooting out of the keyhole on its own accord. I curled into a ball as the magical barrier fizzled away. Bright pale light hit my eyes. I rubbed them, then looked bleary-eyed at Edmund and Maddox. Dora wrapped her arm around me, helping me to my feet.
Edmund clasped his hands together. “You did it.”
Dora smiled as she steadied me. My legs were weak, and my knees felt like they’d buckle at any moment. “Pandora’s Box is the most difficult part of the test. You can finish this.” She handed me a bar of chocolate. “Eat this, honey. It will help you regain some strength.”
Maddox patted my shoulder. “Good going.”
Edmund held a black cane, with skulls and roses made from metal as the handle. I looked at the old crow’s cane, the second object. “You know how this works. This one, like the others you’ve done, you need to contain the curse without allowing it to pass to another object.”
I wolfed down the chocolate, closing my eyes as the bitter, smooth cocoa coated my tongue. It was like Midas’s book, where the curse of turning everything one touched to gold must be held within the person so it didn’t transfer. I still couldn’t believe it when Viktor—no wait, Raiden—had mastered it so quickly. Sometimes I still got them confused.
