Curse Broken (Cursed Descent (MistHallow Academy) #3)

16. Matilda

16

MATILDA

I follow Morrigan through the misty dawn. Chaos purrs contentedly on my shoulder as we walk in silence toward the lake.

My body aches from being buried alive, and my head throbs where I cut it, but those are minor inconveniences compared to the churning in my gut. I can feel it now, more clearly than ever. The pull of magick, all of it, flowing back toward me like rivers to the sea. It’s overwhelming and fucking frightening.

Morrigan stops at the water’s edge, her back to me. I jump, startled, when a blue-skinned merfolk female dives out of the water and back in, swimming along the shore before she disappears under the surface again. Eldra.

“You broke the curse,” Morrigan says.

“Yes.”

She turns to face me, and there’s something in her ancient eyes that makes me straighten my spine. “Now we need to discuss what comes next.”

“You mean the unravelling of magick? The fact that I’m apparently some kind of cosmic vacuum cleaner now?”

“You know already,” she studies me for a long moment, her expression grim. “And it has to be stopped.”

“I know.” My voice is quiet but firm. “The magick is reverting, and it’s going to kill them all, isn’t it? The elementals, the witches and warlocks, the fae, the dragons, every supernatural creature that relies on their specific classification of power.”

Morrigan nods sharply. “Each type of magick evolved separately for a reason once it was split. They maintain crucial balances in the magickal world that the Praxian force ignores. It is godlike, and by that, I mean not what I used to be, not what Anu claims to be, but as in the actual creator of universes ways. Without elemental magick, the elements will die. Without death magick, the boundary between life and death crumbles. Without fae magick?—”

“Nature itself falls apart,” I finish. The weight of it settles in my chest like lead. “The Praxian force is drawing everything back to its original state, and it’s going to destroy everything in the process.”

“It is unravelling the worlds as we know them.”

“How do we stop it?” I ask. Chaos shifts on my shoulder, his tiny claws digging in. “There has to be a way. ”

“That’s what we need to figure out. And quickly.” Morrigan’s green eyes lock onto mine. “Before the damage becomes irreversible.”

“So you don’t know?”

“I was hoping you did.” She smiles, and despite the sheer gravity of this situation, I giggle.

“Well, can’t help you there. We are the blind leading the blind.”

“But the one-eyed man is the king of the blind,” she murmurs. “We need to find that eye.”

“Where do we even start?”

“We need to rewrite the rules,” Morrigan says abruptly. “This predates any written history. The Praxian force isn’t meant to be bound, so recursing it won’t do anything. We need to establish new parameters for how magick flows.”

“Create new channels,” I say slowly, understanding dawning. “Instead of letting it all revert back to one source, we need to maintain the separate classifications but find a new way to sustain them.”

“Exactly. But it won’t be easy. The force wants to return to its original state.”

“I think we need to talk to Blackthorn. He can help.”

She nods, and we start walking back toward MistHallow with the weight of our discussion and the significance heavy between us. As we emerge from the tree line onto the academy grounds, shouts and raised voices catch my attention. A crowd has gathered near the main gates .

Morrigan and I exchange a glance, and we rush forward to see what all the commotion is about.

Chaos’s claws dig into my shoulder as I spot Blackthorn at the entrance, his black robes billowing out with the magick flowing around him.

My blood runs cold when I see who he’s facing down.

They stand on the other side of the gates as smug and nasty as always. The woman who I thought was my mother stands there in her perfectly tailored clothes. The man who isn’t my dad stands next to her with his stern professor’s stance. My reaction at seeing them again is visceral, and I resist the urge to blast them back to where they came from.

“We have every right to see our daughter.”

“You have no rights here,” Blackthorn growls. “Not after what you did to her.”

“Everything we did was for her own good,” my adoptive father says, and I feel my hands shake.

“Matilda.” Morrigan’s voice is soft but firm. “You don’t have to face them.”

I square my shoulders, forcing down the tremors. “Yes, I do.”

But as I take a step forward, Chaos lets out a warning growl, and I realise something’s wrong. The magickal signatures around them are off. I can see them, like black auras swirling around them, alive and well.

“They’re stronger,” I whisper. “How are they stronger when magick is unravelling? ”

Morrigan’s eyes narrow. “Maybe it hasn’t reached them yet? It will be a slow process?—”

“No, something isn’t right.” Adrenaline spikes my blood.

I glance at Morrigan and turn away from her without a word. The urgency builds with each step until I’m running towards the Academy almost in slow motion, like I’m running through jelly.

My heart pounds in rhythm with my feet.

Racing up the stairs, gasping for breath as I round the corner and run full pelt down the corridor.

I burst through my bedroom door, stumbling to a halt.

Chaos leaps from my shoulder as I drop to my knees beside the bed. My hands are trembling as I reach underneath and my fingers grasp the bag “Janice” gave me that night I ran, the one full of jewels she said would buy my way into MistHallow. The one Blackthorn refused to accept. The one I’ve been sleeping above for too many weeks now.

The moment I touch it, vertigo hits me like a tidal wave. Through the fabric of the backpack, I can feel the heat radiating from inside from the fierce glow that gets brighter as I open it.

A pulling sensation grips my chest, like something’s trying to draw my insides out through my skin.

Chaos hisses, backing away. The room tilts sideways as darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision.

I hear running footsteps in the corridor. Morrigan’s voice calling my name .

But it’s too late. I finally understand, and the truth is worse than anything I could have imagined.

I understand why they’re here. They don’t want me.

They want what they’ve been stealing from me all along, only now on an industrial scale.

Morrigan bursts through the door, followed closely by Luc, Vex and Draven. They freeze when they see me on the floor, the glowing bag in my hands.

“Don’t touch it!” I manage through gritted teeth. The pull is excruciating now. There are hooks in my magickal essence. Each jewel shines with stored power—my power—and hungers for more.

“UnHoly shit,” Draven breathes, taking a step forward.

“Stay back!” Morrigan’s voice cracks like a whip. “Those are magick syphons. Dozens of them.”

“Like the pendant,” Vex says, his face hardening with recognition. “But a whole fucking bagful.”

“They weren’t just using the pendant,” I gasp. “They’ve been harvesting me through these too, since I got here.”

“We need to destroy them,” Draven growls.

“No!” Vex grabs his arm. “The backlash could kill her and us. They’re holding the Praxian force, raw and untamed. If we destroy them, it will do what we’ve been trying to prevent.”

My arms shake with the effort of holding the bag. Each jewel pulses with my stolen power, trying to draw even more from me. The pull is excruciating now that I understand what they are .

“We have to do something,” Draven says, but Vex’s warning hangs heavy in the air. We can’t destroy them without potentially unleashing catastrophic consequences.

“Put them down slowly,” Morrigan instructs. “We need to contain them until we can figure out how to safely neutralise them.”

I carefully set the bag down, fighting against the dizzy pull.

“They’ve been feeding off you this whole time,” Vex says quietly. “Right under our noses.”

“They can’t have it. Any of it.”

But even as I say it, I can feel the pull of all magick toward me growing stronger, the unravelling continuing, which in turn flows into the syphons, making the bag vibrate with the sheer power contained in it. It is literally a bag of the most powerful magick on earth, and anyone could snatch it up and use it.

Fuck.

Fuck!