Page 110 of Castle of the Cursed
Time holds its breath and pauses Earth’s rotation.
I don’t know how I didn’t see this coming. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t want to.
The whole time I was experiencing my sister’s memories, I got the sense there were moments missing. I thought it had to do with the nature of the memory magic, but now I wonder if there were things she didn’t want me to know. Things I should have worked out for myself… Like how once she made it back to Earth, she would need a flesh-and-blood body of her own.
Antonela’s physical form burned in the spell that transported her to the other castle. And as Brálaga said, Earth is a dimension ruled by matter—so she can’t return without a shell.
And the perfect genetic match stands before her.
“No!”
Bea’s voice kicks the planet back into rotation. She comes between us and says, “There must be another way—”
“There is not,” says my sister, no trace of emotion in her voice.
“So this was your plan?” I ask Antonela, my voice funereal compared to the unbridled joy I felt seconds ago. “When you hitched a ride with Sebastián? You intended to move into my body?”
“You are my only match,” she says matter-of-factly.
This is why Sebastián thought the black smoke was protecting me. Antonela wants my body intact.
After all the work from the past couple of weeks of dredging up my heart from the depths to which it had drowned, it’s now sinking within me once more, back into a sea of numbness. If this is how it feels to feel, then I don’t want any part of it.
“You were freed when Sebastián bit me,” I say, going into detective mode and piecing together a timeline because it’s the only way I know how to process this. I remember it was then that I saw the black smoke again.
“Released,” she corrects me. “Not free. I was still trapped in this castle until the boy came, and I sent him to deliver a message to him.” She gestures to Teo, who’s still on his knees.
That’s how he knew. He wouldn’t tell me himself because he wanted me to follow through with his plan. “You told Teo to cast the blood spell,” I say. “Does that mean you possessed Felipe?”
“No. If I had, I could not have used him for the spell to return Bast’s memories. My possession would have killed him.”
“Why did you want to return Sebastián’s memories?” I ask, correcting her on his name.
“His amnesia was an unforeseen side effect, and I had to remind him of our pact.”
I blink. “Pact?”
“When he bit you, I was released, but there was a second part to breaking the spell, which he did not complete. That is the reason he is still here, and why I remain bodiless.”
I review what I already know: Antonela needs my body unharmed. That means she also needs a way to get rid of me without causing her new shell any damage. I feel my neurons firing as the connections come through, and I remember how Dad described the rush of getting to this point in a case, when the pieces puzzle together with ease.
“You weren’t just hitching a ride to Earth,” I say, my heart lashing my chest as I solve the riddle of why Sebastián is still here. “You brought the Bleeder to kill me.”
Antonela’s approving smile doesn’t make me proud. It makes me sad and more than a little sick.
“Exsanguination by a Bleeder kills you without destroying your shell,” she says, talking about violence as easily as Prince Bastian. “As it is a supernatural death on Earth—in other words, magic—I can use a spell to revive your body. There was just one ingredient missing.”
“My blood,” I say, because it’s always the answer in la Sombra. It’s the key to unlocking everything from secret rooms to Sebastián’s memories.
“When I crossed over to Earth,” she says, “my magic was drawn to your blood, for it was mine, too. Yet as you were not at la Sombra, the spell was not contained… so it killed everyone around you.”
I hear Bea’s gasp, but I’m too choked by my own guilt to make a sound. My fault my fault my fault my fault my fault my fault my fault. It’s all I can hear after Antonela stops speaking. I’m not just the sole survivor—I’m the reason everyone died.
I’m responsible for the Subway 25.
“The truth is,” says my twin, “I only meant to kill two people.”
Two people. Bea and all her reflections scramble away from Antonela in horror.
