The Myths of Ophelia (The Curse of Ophelia #4)

Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ophelia

“RUN!” I shouted hoarsely, the skeletal fingers crushing my windpipe, nails digging into my skin. Its touch imprinted itself on my throat, something haunting passing through me.

I reached for Starfire, but I was shoved back. Rock came crashing down, and a body—a decayed body—exploded through the wall, rising from its eternal resting place.

It was a warrior by the looks of its tattered clothes—or it had been. Shrunken and withered, any skin remaining on its bones barely clung there. Long hair flowed from its scalp, and hollows stared out of where its eyes once belonged, yet it watched me with a sentient, knowing intensity.

The corpse clenched its fist tighter around my throat, and as spots popped before my vision, a deep hatred burned in that vacant stare.

My feet scrambled for purchase as it forced me back, back, back. I slammed into a wall, my head snapping against stone. Angelborn dug into my shoulder blades.

“What in the fucking Angels are you?” I gasped.

Its yellowed, rotting teeth split into what I thought was a feral grin, snapping before me.

The corpse pressed harder on my throat, shoving me up. My back scraped against the rough wall, and my feet dangled over the floor. I kicked and kicked, aiming for all the weakest spots on a body, but it didn’t flinch or crumble.

Nothing harmed what no longer lived.

My vision swam. Shouts echoed, and blades sang through the tunnel.

Tugging, I clung to the warrior’s wrist, but its grip was as stony as the walls of these catacombs. My dagger at my thigh would do nothing, and there wasn’t room to pull Starfire.

I swept my hands against the rubble piling up around us, searching for something loose. A stone I could use to deter the corpse. Its grip was tighter than a cobra’s.

“Mystique!” Lancaster yelled from somewhere down the tunnel. “Use your magic!”

I can’t , I couldn’t say through my crushed throat. I didn’t know how the power would backfire—who else it would hurt.

The corpse squeezed my neck tighter until I thought it would snap.

“I call in my owed debt!” Lancaster shouted, his voice laced with an authority only magic could grant.

“ No ,” I barely gasped.

But already, my body was bending to the will of the bargain.

If I didn’t do as Lancaster demanded—if I did not pay this debt—Tolek would suffer for it. Die for it.

What little air resided in my lungs tightened as the dead bore down. The bargain tugged at me, taking what it was owed and stealing my autonomy.

“Blades are no longer your only weapons, Mystique,” the fae panted through whatever fight he was also facing. “Use your fucking magic!”

With both hands latched around the corpse’s wrist, I stashed my fears and gave into the insistent fae magic pressing on me. I used the breath fading from my body to reach toward my own power.

And as I channeled every bead of withering desperation, every morsel of air snaking down my throat into the magic in my soul, power mounted beneath my skin.

It rose, a beast awakening. With claws and teeth and wings flared, but?—

But it was too much.

It wasn’t the warmth I had come to recognize. “ No ,” I muttered again, kicking wildly.

This wasn’t the glorious Angellight I commanded. This was the hissing thing that had launched itself at Jezebel earlier.

And with a burst rivaling a shattering star, light exploded between my clenched fingers. Gold, effervescent, and burning . It was reckless and uncontrollable, coiling fear through my gut.

The dead screeched, an echo that would haunt me for all eternity, but its hold slackened.

I fell back to my feet, hunching over my knees, and gulped down air. My ears rang with a dull buzz. Damien’s emblem scorched my skin, but I pulled the heat into my bones and let its healing properties repair whatever was damaged in my throat.

As my vision adjusted once again to the dim tunnel, I froze at the sight before me. The rotting corpse of the warrior was nothing but a pile of ash.

The presence it had carried was gone, as dead as any resting spirit should be.

After a few moments, the world stopped spinning and the ringing faded from my ears, only to be replaced by the clash of metal against stone. Through the dust of the crumbling wall, in the dark chamber at the end of the tunnel, Lancaster, Mora, and Santorina rotated around a second corpse warrior.

Unsheathing Starfire, I ran toward them, hurtling over chunks of rock. In the damp, death-filled air, my sword sang.

This one was different than the one I’d fought. Where that had been precise, using strength gathered within ancient bones to pin me to the wall, this one was wily. It swung a claw-nailed hand at Santorina’s face—scraped across her cheek—before pivoting quickly to pounce on Mora.

The fae female struck, swiping one of her shining blades toward its neck. But the creature slyly dodged, much nimbler than the dead should be. Instead of decapitating it, Mora severed a chuck of dead flesh and bone from the warrior’s neck.

Lancaster shouted to his sister to turn, to dodge, but it was too late. In a slow, calculated movement, the creature swiveled its head toward Mora. It lunged forward, and?—

“No!” I gasped.

The corpse sank it’s cracked and rotting teeth into the female’s shoulder, through leathers and skin. Mora shrieked as the pair tumbled into the wall.

Lancaster launched himself at the dead with the force of an Angel. Mora, wrestling with the warrior atop her, gritted her teeth in a snarl. The corpse was wild, a being who—when living—had likely been untamed. One who lusted after blood and warfare. And now, in death, it appeared those traits had festered. Or maybe it had been locked up for so long, instinct had taken over.

Lancaster gripped the hungry one with a brutal force I’d never seen of fae or warrior. “I’m sorry!” he roared to his sister.

Then, he ripped the corpse off her.

And a chunk of flesh went with him, Mora’s tunic quickly soaking crimson as she cried out. Lancaster went after the corpse without remorse, dismembering him. One finger at a time.

Santorina scurried around us, crouching beside the female. With Lancaster, I circled the predator. Those jaws still snapped, now coated with Mora’s blood. And each gleaming drop of crimson that flew was another strike against the dead warrior’s existence.

“Magic, Mystique!” Lancaster demanded.

“I don’t know how!” I argued.

“You just did!”

I gripped Starfire tighter. “I don’t know what I did. It can hurt you all!”

“I command?—”

But I was not taking another demand from him tonight.

Before Lancaster could finish speaking, I clung to my last flimsy hope, and I struck with steel.

Starfire sliced clean through what was left of the corpse’s neck. Head and body toppled to the ground in opposite directions, and finally, the dead stilled.

“Decapitation,” Lancaster contemplated as we approached the body. “That’s what happened to the other one?”

“No,” I breathed. “But it’s something even the mountains can’t fix.” I turned away from the corpse and shoved Lancaster in the chest—hard.

“What in Aoiflyn’s?—”

“You do not command me during a battle again! Never pull the bargain when it could get others hurt!”

“It didn’t,” he argued, canines flashing.

“But it could have! And you’re damn lucky it didn’t backfire because my one stipulation was that anything you demand of me cannot harm anyone I care for.” I backed down a step, glaring. “If it had—you’d be dead right now, fae.”

“Perhaps if you actually learned what power lies within you, I wouldn’t have to be your excuse for using it.” And with that, Lancaster spun away, hastening for his sister.

I took one breath to steady myself, looking down at the beheaded corpse, and remembered the feeling of my agency being ripped from me with that bargain. Distasteful and wrong.

I didn’t want to feel that way again.

The body twitched once more, then laid still. An unexpected silence weighed the air as his screeches faded, the pressure of the ancient secrets of the catacombs a viable force beating upon our skin.

The lack of a presence that had long resided here.

Raising my sword, I sliced through the body a few more times for good measure. Then, suppressing a shiver, I returned to the group.

Mora’s face was ashen, eyes flat. Lancaster stood shirtless, his broad chest on display as he ripped off the layer of soft, thin tunic he’d worn beneath his leathers and gave it to Santorina to clean up Mora’s wound.

“We need to get you out of here,” I said.

“We need to get your damn emblem,” Mora growled, trying to push to her feet with Santorina’s hands supporting her. Her knees nearly buckled.

I swung her good arm around my shoulder as Rina said, “You can’t keep going.” She looked between Lancaster and me. “Nothing I do is helping it. I’ll have to work on her back at the inn.”

Lancaster’s jaw ticked.

“You two head back,” I said.

But Mora gritted out, “I don’t have a choice.” Her words were grave. In her pallid face, anger burned. She panted, “Ritalia has sworn us to help you.”

She couldn’t get out more words, but I understood. If she or Lancaster abandoned me, despite me pushing them to turn back, Ritalia had some sort of bargain threatening them. The fae would die trying to do this.

It sparked the question again of why? Why did their queen want these tokens so badly when only I could wield them? Why did she think I’d ever hand precious shards of magic over so easily, and why was she willing to risk two of her strongest guards for the mission?

I swallowed back all those fears, because there was nothing we could do about them now. I wasn’t leaving these catacombs without that emblem.

Lancaster assessed his sister’s shoulder. “Even my magic can’t heal this entirely.”

Leaning closer, my stomach turned at the deep, bloody hole where a chunk of flesh had been torn out. Crimson gleamed across her skin, but what was worse was the way her veins shone pale and blue beneath the sticky mess. And either my vision was still adjusting after nearly being choked, or the lines were ebbing. Like something swam within.

Still, Lancaster did his best to staunch the bleeding. He and Santorina used the remaining strips of his tunic to fashion a makeshift sling while I supported the female.

“This is going to take a long time to heal. Once we’re safely out of here, Mora, I promise, I’ll do it.” Lancaster’s eyes shone with a deep intensity as he swore to his sister.

“I can’t die,” she said with mock humor. “She won’t let me.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but Lancaster growled, “There are worse fates than death.”

As he said it, a clatter of metal, like weapons swinging on belts, rang down the tunnel. Slowly, fear thick in the air, we all pivoted.

“Mystique,” Lancaster said, voice chilled.

“Yeah?” Starfire was in one hand. Angelborn in the other.

“I think now is when we run.”