Page 126 of An Oath at Midnight

I gripped the glass wall, hissing as another wave of pain washed through me. “I’m nothing like you,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re a monster, and you’re exactly where you belong.”

She tilted her head to the side. “You really do feel it. You don’t know how much that pleases me.” She smiled wide. “But it’s obvious you do.”

The pain shot higher, and I sucked in a breath. “W-what are you talking about?”

“The spell I used to stab you…over and over and over and over again.” She threw her head back and laughed like the deranged lunatic she was. “Your screams were so loud, I could hear them from next door. I wanted to watch so badly.”

Her words made the blood in my veins turn cold. “My scars? That’s what you’re talking about?”

“Of course,” she said between cackles.

My legs almost collapsed from under me as another wave of pain hit me. “Why do they still hurt, Cora?” I growled out.

“In general, or right now?”

“Both.”

Her laughter stopped abruptly. “You haven’t worked it out?”

“Tell me!” I screamed, all semblance of self-control shattering under the constant agonizing onslaught of my scars.

She rushed up to the glass wall of her cell, her gaze locking with mine. “It wasn’t just a spell to hurt you, Magnolia, it was a hex to corrupt you, to destroy anything good in your life. Your grandmother was dark, did you know that? She tried to hide it, but it was there. I felt it. Dark senses dark, you know. I sensed it in you as well. I just had to give you a little push to bring it out. The rotten apple, that’s what you are. The rot in your coven that would spoil the rest. It was my backup plan, in case you lived. Turns out it worked very well. The pain is your body trying to fight it, to get it out, and it gets worse whenever you try to be happy, like one of those science experiments with rats, shocking them to make them avoid something they want again and again until they give up entirely.” Her eyes flashed. “And it’s even worse now because I’m near. Magic binding this place or not, it senses me, it’s part of me and it’s working harder for me.”

I gasped in agony and horror.

“You really did go above and beyond my wildest expectations, though. I hoped, but I never imagined anything like this. You’re a monster.” She laughed again as she stared at me, unmoving, just watching and enjoying her triumph.

The fucking bitch had hexed me. I wanted to claw at my skin and tear her out of me. She was the reason the pain grew worse when Bram touched me. I was finally reaching for happiness and her hex had tried to put a stop to it.

The pain hit me again, and I retreated into the corner of my cell, where Cora couldn’t see me, where she couldn’t take pleasure in the damage she’d done, and dropped to the ground, crawling into a ball and gritting my teeth as pain sliced into me over and over again.

I bit down on my lip. I wouldn’t let that bitch hear me cry.

This wasn’t how this was supposed to end. I had to get out of here.

Anger filled me, and the darkness inside was a furious storm.

I used it to fight the pain, to fight Cora’s poison inside me—then I felt it, a shadow memory of Death’s claws, the way they’d felt taking hold on me. It sent dread through me. Everything in me wanted to retreat from it, but something told me to do the opposite and I did, I gripped on to it in return.

Something wrenched inside me, like a dislocated limb being forced to the side and snapping back into place. Finally, the relief came. The sense of wrongness disappeared, replaced by a power that surged through me, not like my magic but something new and exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

There was a knowing that came with it, now that I’d quieted my mind and allowed it in.

I was a reaper.

No doors or bars, no magic, could hold me. I struggled to my feet.

I was Death’s servant.

Nothing could stop me.

* * *

Bram

Umbra Sanitarium loomed in the darkness.

It was warded. I felt the vibration of magic the closer I got to it.