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“I swear if you fucking lie…” I lift my finger, poking it through the air at her. “So help me. Where is Alice?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Her head drops as she takes a step back.
“You helped her. You’re the only one besides myself who knows how to remove that mark and I highly doubt Alice would cut her fucking flesh without knowing it would work to remove the spell.” I stalk toward her, and she steps back into the wall. Putting my face inches from hers, I spin my dagger in my hand, pressing the point to her cheek. Clamara shudders against the blade, cloning her eyes. “You know something, so spit it the fuck out.”
“I don’t–”
“For your sake, that better be true.”
“She told me you marked her, so I took pity and helped her remove it. What she did afterward, I don’t… I…” Her hands are trembling, losing their grip on the towel around her waist. It drops to the floor, prompting me to take a step back. She doesn’t move, doesn’t open her eyes. She’s frozen. Sheathing my dagger, I bend down to retrieve it and hand it out to her. Clamara’s eye peeks open and she slowly takes the towel before quickly wrapping it around her form again.
“Why would you do that to her?”
“I didn’t have a choice and I was going to remove it tomorrow.” I bite the words out. In no world should I have to explain myself, but I’ll make an exception for her.
“She was going to hurt herself trying to get out. To save Luri. I could feel it. When I touched her after I found her in the garden… If I didn’t help her remove it, she might not have lived long enough for you to.”
Grinding my teeth, I try to hold back the power, the rage that wants to weave its way into my words. “If you thought that, you should’ve come to me.”
“All do respect, you’ve never been marked. Sure, you’ve been told to stay in the castle, but not like me and the princess. That mark challenges you to remove it. It’s something to do with the spell. Itwantsyou to try, at all costs. You didn’t see the look in her eye.”
“You never told me about a drive…” I scrunch my brows together, trying to think back to our conversations.
“There’s a lot that I left out, Mi lord,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Had I known you were going to do it, I would’ve said something. Honestly, I didn’t think you were wicked enough. You always seemed so…respectful.” My eyes flick up to meet hers. “I never thought you’d use that information against another human being. Not after seeing what it did to me.”
“This drive. Did it go away once the mark was removed?”
She nods yes, leaning against the wall.Thank the gods…
“It drives you mad. Fills you with the need to be free of your cage. It pushes you to do unspeakable things in an attempt to break the curse. That’s what the mark is–a curse.”She shivers as if remembering the feeling.
“Thank you,” I say dryly, spinning on my heels and leaving her quarters. I don’t know what else to say at this point. The only thing I know for certain is that there’s one hell of a pissed-off Whittaker witch, with more power than she knows how to safely control, on a warpath across the seven realms. That takes priority.
12
Alice
My arm throbs as I push through the forest of lost souls. I fucking hate this place at night. It’s eerie, not to mentionhauntedby the dead. Oh, and it’s full of hellacious creatures who might or might not want to steal my kidneys. Okay, I’m not entirely certain about that last part, but after hearing the stories, I’m almost certain it’s true.
The undergrowth is dense, and I hurdle fallen tree limbs. I’m not sure where I’m going, per se, but I do know the last time I saw her, she was heading in this general direction. That’s going to have to be good enough. Twigs slap and scrape against my flesh, tearing it open while the cool night air burns and rubs it raw. My eyes water from the onslaught, but no way did I tear out a chunk of my shoulder to stop now.
I open my third eye again, hoping to see something that might clue me that I’m at least moving in the right direction, but everything is too bright. There’s too much magic, too many ghosts, and small creatures to see much of anything. The loud chime of crickets drowns out all chances of hearing where she is, and if it’s not them, it’s rustling from animals that scatter the moment I near. Darkness shadows everything in sight, but the moons are bright, high in the sky, and casting everything in a ghoulish glow.
My legs are on fire as I sprint, dodging and weaving in a desperate attempt to cover more ground. Pain bursts through my middle and I scramble to catch my footing. Utterly failing to do so, my palms scrape against the jagged earth. My hands and knees sting as fresh cuts appear, ripping through my thin leggings. I hadn’t had time to worry about changing. By the time I got through with Clamara, I didn’t want to stick around longer than I had to and risk missing my window of opportunity.
Lights scatter in my vision as magma pools in my core. What the fuck is happening?! Shaking fingers latch onto the hem of my shirt, raising it until I can see the smooth skin of my stomach. There are no wounds, no scratches, and no bruises. Just nothing. Yet a second origin of pain blasts through my side and I scream, biting into my lip until I taste iron to keep another at bay lest I broadcast my location.
She has to be here. Luri. I have to be feeling it through the bond. Neither of us likes to acknowledge it. And honestly, as long as we’re not near each other, we can both pretend it doesn’t exist, but when we’re close, I can feel every bit of pain, every bit of emotion she does. And vice versa. She has to be close. I’m too late.
No… I push up to my feet, fighting down the bile creeping up my throat. No… I won’t stop. I have to keep going.
“Talk to me,” I say, knowing it’s a long shot. She has amazing hearing, and I only need to be close for her to speak telepathically to me. “Come on, where are you?”
Taking off, I circle through the woods, spiraling wider with my eyes peeled.
“You have to go…” Luri’s voice is weak yet radiates through my skull. It’s a command.
I skid to a stop, looking around for anything that might show me where she is. “Where are you?”
