POV: Raine
I caught Ella before she hit the floor.
Black smoke still poured from her mouth, and her eyes had rolled back until only the whites showed. Her body convulsed in my arms, and through our bond, I felt the curse entity thrashing inside her like a caged animal.
Two souls for the price of one, it had said.
My blood ran cold. This wasn't just a curse. This was something intelligent, something that had been waiting for this exact moment.
"No," I growled, laying Ella back on the bed. "You're not taking either of us."
I pressed my hands against her chest and channeled my dark magic directly into her. The entity pushed back immediately, and pain exploded through my skull. Blood dripped from my nose, but I held firm.
Through the connection, I felt its hunger, its rage, its ancient malice. It had been trapped in the Shadowthorn Tree for centuries, and now it finally had hosts—two powerful vessels bound together.
Let go, wizard, the voice hissed in my mind. You cannot win. I am older than your Guild, stronger than your pathetic magic.
"Maybe," I gasped, pushing harder. "But you're in my house. And I don't like uninvited guests."
I reached deeper into Ella's consciousness, past the entity, searching for her. There—a flicker of silver light, small and scared but still fighting.
Ella! I called out. Fight it! Your mind is your own!
For a moment, nothing happened. Then that silver light flared brighter, and I felt Ella's will surge forward. The entity shrieked as she pushed back against it, reclaiming pieces of her own mind.
Good, I thought. She's stronger than she looks.
With both of us fighting, we managed to shove the entity back down, deeper into the curse where it couldn't take control. It wasn't destroyed—I could still feel it lurking, waiting—but it was contained. For now.
Ella's eyes snapped open, and they were silver again. She gasped and grabbed my arms, her fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
"What—what was that?" she stammered.
I sat back, wiping blood from my face. My hands were shaking. "That was the real curse. Not just magic—an actual entity. Something alive."
Ella's face went white. "It was inside my head. I could hear it, feel it trying to take over—"
"I know." I stood up, my legs unsteady. "The Shadowthorn Tree isn't just cursed. It's a prison. Whatever that thing is, it's been trapped there for a very long time. When you touched the tree, it saw an opportunity."
"To possess me?" Ella's voice cracked.
"To possess both of us," I corrected. "When I created the bond between us, I accidentally gave it two hosts instead of one. That's why it waited until now to wake up. It wanted us connected."
Ella pushed herself up against the headboard, her whole body trembling. "Can we get rid of it?"
I wanted to lie. To tell her yes, of course, it would be simple. But I'd made a promise to myself years ago never to lie about magic. Magic demanded truth.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I've never dealt with anything like this before."
"Then we're trapped." Tears spilled down her cheeks. "It's going to take over eventually, and there's nothing we can do—"
"Stop." My voice came out sharper than I intended. "Panicking won't help. We need to think."
Ella glared at me through her tears. "Easy for you to say! You're used to this dark magic stuff. I was supposed to be a princess! I was supposed to marry Theron and rule my kingdom and—" Her voice broke. "And now I have a monster living inside me."
Something in her words triggered a memory. I walked to my bookshelf and pulled down an ancient tome I'd stolen from the Guild library years ago.
"When I first started researching dark magic," I said, flipping through pages, "I came across references to something called the Moonlight Crystal. It was supposed to be able to purify any curse, no matter how powerful."
Ella's eyes widened. "Could it get rid of the entity?"
"Maybe." I found the page I was looking for and showed her the faded illustration of a massive glowing crystal. "The problem is that no one knows if it actually exists. It's a legend, a myth. The temple where it's supposedly hidden hasn't been seen in over a thousand years."
"But you think it's real?"
I hesitated. Truth was, I'd spent five years researching the crystal, hoping it might cure the damage dark magic had done to my body. I'd found enough evidence to believe it existed. But the journey to find it would be dangerous, maybe impossible.
"I think it's our best chance," I said finally.
Ella stood up, and I was surprised to see determination replacing the fear on her face. "Then we go find it."
"It's not that simple—"
"Yes, it is!" She stepped toward me, her hands clenched into fists. "I have two choices: sit here and wait for that thing to take over my body, or go find something that might save me. That's not really a choice at all."
I studied her carefully. The terrified girl who'd woken up was gone. In her place was someone who'd decided to fight back. I recognized that look—I'd worn it myself when I left the Wizard Guild.
"The journey will take months," I warned. "We'll have to cross the Obsidian Swamps and climb the Crystal Peak Mountains. There are creatures in those places that will try to kill us."
"Worse than the thing inside me?"
I almost smiled. "Fair point."
"Plus," Ella continued, and I heard the bitterness in her voice, "my kingdom wants me dead. My father exiled me. My fiancé betrayed me. I have nothing to go back to. So why not risk everything to find a cure?"
She was right. She had nothing to lose. But I did.
I'd built a life here in exile—lonely, yes, but safe. No one to betray me. No one to lose. Going on this quest meant leaving my tower, facing dangers I'd been avoiding for years, and worst of all, trusting someone else.
But the alternative was watching this girl die, and taking me with her thanks to our bond. And if I was honest with myself, I was tired of hiding.
"There's something else you need to know," I said. "The bond I created between us—it's permanent. Your life is tied to mine. If you die, I die. If I die, you die."
Ella stared at me. "You're saying we're stuck together?"
"Until we find a way to break the bond. Yes."
"Can the Moonlight Crystal break it?"
"I don't know." I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache building. "I've never heard of anyone creating this kind of bond before. I didn't even mean to do it. The magic just… happened."
For a long moment, Ella didn't speak. Then she laughed—a short, bitter sound. "So let me understand this. I'm cursed, possessed by an ancient evil entity, bonded to a dark wizard I just met, and my only hope is to find a legendary crystal that might not even exist?"
"That about sums it up."
"And if we don't find it?"
I met her eyes. "Then we both die. Probably horribly."
Ella took a deep breath, then held out her hand. "I have a proposition. You teach me to control my curse and help me find this crystal. In return, I'll help stabilize your dark magic so it stops killing you. We work together until we both get what we need."
I looked at her outstretched hand. This was a terrible idea. Every instinct I had screamed at me to refuse, to find another way, to stay safe in my tower.
But when I'd touched her cursed blood during the ritual, my magic had stabilized for the first time in five years. The constant pain had stopped. I'd felt strong again.
And maybe, just maybe, we could both survive this.
I reached out and gripped her hand. "Deal."
The moment our hands touched, energy crackled between us. The bond flared to life, and suddenly I could feel her emotions—the fear she was hiding, the determination burning underneath, the desperate hope that she might survive this nightmare.
And she could feel mine. The loneliness I'd carried for so long. The guilt over lives I couldn't save. The tiny spark of hope that maybe this time, things could be different.
We both pulled back quickly, breathing hard.
"What was that?" Ella gasped.
"The bond," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "It's getting stronger. We're becoming more connected."
Before either of us could say anything else, a sharp knock echoed through the tower.
We both froze.
No one knew where my tower was. The magical wards made it invisible to everyone except me. No one should be able to find it, let alone knock on the door.
Another knock, harder this time.
"Raine," Ella whispered, her face pale. "Did you invite anyone?"
"No." I moved toward my staff, dark magic already gathering in my hands. "Stay behind me."
A voice called out from beyond the door—cold, elegant, and terrifyingly familiar.
"Hello, Raine. It's been a long time. I know you're in there, and I know you have the Shadow Elf with you." A pause. "Open the door, or I'll burn your precious tower to the ground."
My blood turned to ice.
I knew that voice. I'd hoped never to hear it again.
Ella grabbed my arm. "Who is that?"
I couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. Because the person at my door was the one person who could destroy everything—the one who'd taught me dark magic in the first place, the one I'd betrayed to keep my humanity.
The one person in the world I truly feared.
"That," I finally managed to say, "is Morgana Ashenheart. And if she's here, we're already dead."