Chapter 7
Belladonna
The ground beneath me cracked apart, splitting like veins of ink through shattered glass, fracturing in all directions with a sound like the world taking its final breath.
I stumbled, caught myself on nothing but instinct, and watched as pieces of the nightmare began to dissolve into nothingness.
We were out of time. The nightmare wasn't just shifting anymore; it was breaking apart.
"Bell, move!" Aurora's voice cut through the chaos, her fingers wrapping around my wrist with desperate strength.
My heart hammered against my ribs as we ran across the unraveling landscape.
Everything that had seemed solid moments before now warped at the edges, revealing gaps of absolute nothingness, black voids that swallowed entire sections of reality.
The sky fractured into shards of midnight blue, each piece revealing more darkness behind it.
We vaulted over twisted debris that hadn't existed seconds earlier… wrought iron gates bent like paper, stone statues with faces melted into screams. The air tasted wrong, electric and thick, pressing against my lungs with each labored breath.
"We have to move faster," I panted, though even I wasn't sure if there was anywhere left to run. The nightmare realm had always bent to Aurora's will, but now it seemed to be collapsing under its own weight, the curse unraveling at the seams.
Aurora didn't respond. She barely looked at me, her icy blue eyes fixed ahead, jaw clenched with single-minded determination.
I could feel her through our bond… that strange, intimate connection that had formed between us, the one that had started weakening the Sorceress's hold.
Her magic coiled around her fingers like living smoke, unstable and volatile.
I felt its echo under my skin, a phantom burning that wasn't entirely unpleasant.
She was searching for something, or rather, creating something.
Each step she took seemed deliberate, guided by an instinct I couldn't fully comprehend.
The bond between us had weakened the nightmare, had forced cracks into the Sorceress's carefully constructed prison, and Aurora was using those fractures to pry open a door back to reality.
Her fingers twitched, and for a second, I swore I saw light—real light, golden and warm—cutting through the thick haze of the nightmare. My breath caught. Freedom. It was so close I could taste it.
But then the air shifted, turned cold and sharp and lethal. The change was instant, like plunging from summer into deep winter. The hair at the nape of my neck stood on end, and a familiar dread sank into my bones.
"Aurora—" I started, but before I could finish, a wave of power slammed into us, sudden and suffocating, as if the nightmare itself had turned against us.
I barely had time to react before the force struck, knocking the breath from my lungs, sending me skidding across the fractured ground. Pain bloomed in my ribs, sharp and real… too real for a nightmare. I gasped, tasted blood, and when I looked up, I knew why.
The Sorceress stepped forward from a tear in the air itself, her midnight silks untouched by the destruction around her.
She moved with unbearable calm, her presence the only truly solid thing in this dissolving world.
Her raven hair moved like shadowed silk, coiling in slow, serpentine motions at the edges, reaching toward us without her lifting a finger.
"Trying to leave me, Aurora?" she murmured, her voice silk-wrapped steel. "After everything I've given you?"
I struggled to my feet, ignoring the shooting pain through my side. The ground beneath me shifted again, threatening to give way. Aurora had gone still, and though her posture remained tense, unyielding, I saw it—the flicker of old fear, a century of torment reflected in the tightening of her jaw.
The Sorceress's gaze slid toward me, and I didn't like the way her expression shifted, the way her lips curved like she had just discovered a new weapon.
"Of course, it's not your idea, is it?" Her eyes gleamed, icy blue turning luminescent with power. "Poor Aurora, always so susceptible to... influence. You were supposed to go willingly, not drag this little hunter with you. I don't like when you don't listen."
She turned to me fully then, and before I could move, she struck.
A shockwave of magic hit me square in the chest, searing through my ribs, tearing through something deeper than flesh.
It wasn't just an attack on my body—it was an assault on the bond itself, on the connection that had grown between Aurora and me.
My breath caught, my knees buckled, and suddenly, I wasn't just falling—I was being pulled apart from the inside. The bond burned, a line of fire stretching from my heart outward, fraying at the edges like a rope pulled too tight. My vision swam, heat and ice fighting for control beneath my skin.
I barely registered Aurora's voice—screaming my name, raw and furious, a sound I'd never heard from her before.
But I heard the Sorceress perfectly.
"What a fragile thing," she purred, watching me crumple, her voice cutting through the roar in my ears. Her fingers traced delicate patterns in the air, each movement sending another spike of agony through my chest. "Your little blood bond. So new. So... untested."
She knelt beside me, the aura around her oppressive. A contradiction, just like everything in this nightmare.
"What happens when I break it?" she whispered, the words slipping inside my head like a blade.
Aurora's rage hit like a second impact, a force so raw it sent a tremor through the nightmare itself. The collapsing world around us shuddered, responding to her fury, her grief, her unwillingness to let me go.
The ground beneath the Sorceress cracked, black vines erupting from the fissures, wrapping around her ankles.
Her surprise was momentary, a flicker of annoyance crossing her perfect features before she dissolved the attack with a casual wave of her hand.
But that moment of distraction was enough.
The pressure on the bond eased, and I gulped in air like I'd been drowning.
I tried to move, but my body felt wrong—too light, too heavy, like I wasn't entirely here anymore.
The bond between us had been stretched, pulled taut, and now it was unraveling.
I wasn't sure what that meant. Would I simply be cast out of the nightmare?
Or would something essential be ripped away from me forever?
But Aurora wasn't thinking about that. She was thinking about revenge. I felt that much through what remained of our connection… white-hot fury, laced with a protectiveness that stole my breath in a different way.
She moved toward the Sorceress, and I had never seen her like this before.
Her delicate features hardened into something ancient and lethal, her perfectly styled blonde hair whipping around her face as if caught in a storm.
Her power surged, no longer contained, no longer bound by the nightmare's rules, tearing through what was left of the crumbling dreamscape.
"You should have never touched her," Aurora whispered, and the entire world recoiled.
The Sorceress's smug expression faltered as shadows cracked apart around her, the air itself howling like it was being torn at the seams. Suddenly, Aurora wasn't just fighting back…
she was destroying. Destroying the prison that had held her for a century, destroying the rules the Sorceress had established, destroying everything except the fragile thread still connecting us.
The Sorceress lifted a hand to counter her, but this time, she looked wary. Her midnight gown rippled, edges fraying into wispy shadows that couldn't quite maintain their form.
"You forget," the Sorceress said, her voice almost lost in the howling chaos, "this is my creation. My curse."
"No," Aurora replied, her voice simultaneously soft and deafening. "It's mine now. It always was."
Magic clashed between them, dark against light, destruction against creation.
The air itself seemed to bend and warp around the collision, colors bleeding into each other, reality thinning to the point of translucence.
I struggled to focus through the haze of pain, dragging myself toward Aurora, drawn by the pull of our bond.
My body still ached from whatever the Sorceress had done, but the fire inside me—the fire of the bond—was still there. It was flickering, frayed at the edges, but it wasn't gone. Aurora hadn't let me go. She was choosing me over the nightmare, over herself, over everything.
And the nightmare couldn't handle it.
The ground beneath us split, massive fissures opening, swallowing entire sections of the dreamscape as reality itself began forcing its way in. Light—real, golden, burning light—seeped through the cracks, reaching for us, offering us a way out.
The Sorceress saw it too, and her expression shifted, something like frustration curling at the edges of her perfect mouth. She had lost control. The fury in her eyes blazed brighter than the light breaking through.
"You cannot leave," she hissed, her composure finally fracturing. "This is where you belong, Aurora. This is what you are."
Aurora glanced down at me, then back at the Sorceress. "No," she said, and there was a finality to her voice that made even the Sorceress hesitate. "You never understood what I am."
She reached for me, helping me to my feet. The bond between us pulsed stronger, renewed by her certainty, by her choice. I leaned into her, my body weak, my vision blurred, but I wasn't letting go. Not now. Not after everything.
"We go now," she said, no hesitation, no doubt, her eyes fixed on mine.
A roar shook what remained of the nightmare… the Sorceress's final attack, her power surging toward us in a wave of midnight and frost, one last attempt to drag us back, to keep Aurora imprisoned.
The nightmare screamed one last time, tearing at my skin, at my soul, at the fraying edges of our bond. I felt it trying to separate us, trying to convince me that Aurora would remain monstrous, that she would never truly be free, that I was making a mistake.
But Aurora didn't look at the destruction around us. She didn't look at the Sorceress. She only looked at me.
And then we leapt… straight into the light.
The sensation was like being turned inside out, like having every cell in my body rewritten. The bond between us pulled taut, almost to breaking, and for a terrifying moment, I thought we would be torn apart after all. The Sorceress's magic clawed at us, desperate to maintain its hold.
Aurora's fingers tightened around mine, her nails digging into my skin hard enough to draw blood. But the pain was grounding, real. Through the chaos, I heard her voice, close and certain:
"I won't let you go."
The light enveloped us, searing away the last remnants of the nightmare. I heard the Sorceress scream, a sound of pure fury and loss that followed us as we fell.
And then there was nothing but warmth, and Aurora's hand in mine, and the sensation of finally, finally breaking free.