Page 134 of Castle of the Cursed
I’m sitting across from doctor after doctor at the center, each of them trying to get me to speak.
I’m at the Madrid airport, and Lety is telling me to find my voice.
I’m holding Bea’s body, begging her to hold on as Antonela takes over.
I’m with Sebastián, and he’s saying, “I choose you over everything—”
I blast out of the memory black hole, his love reminding me of my strength. I refuse to retreat into that lost girl again. I will not fade away into my grief.
I will fight.
“We have both had our share of pain,” I say to Antonela. “If anything, that should bring us closer, not pit us against each other. We should be looking for a way around this curse—”
“I am not interested in a human life,” she says, coming in for another strike. “I have the chance to be something greater than you can ever become. Your fame on this planet comes only at my hand. Yet I can reach heights beyond this realm. I can be the first of a new species. Do you really believe your insignificant life is worth thwarting evolution?”
Insignificant?
I see her smoky hand clenching into a fist, and before she can swing it, I punch her in the face, my chest swelling with some of my happiest memories.
I am nine years old, and after binging R. L. Stine books, I write a short story about a girl whose enemy slumbers inside her and only wakes up if she stops moving, so she must always be on the run. When Mom reads it, her eyes tear up, and I have never felt prouder.
I am ten, and Mom introduces me to one of her favorite films, Back to the Future. I love it so much that I watch it again and again and again all year long. I tell Mom that on my eighteenth birthday, I want to get a tattoo with the DeLorean’s license plate, OUTATIME. She promises to get one with me so we match.
I am thirteen, and Mom is off on a solo camping trip, so I’m alone with Dad when I get my first period. He feels so awkward that he agrees to let me help him on a case for the first time.
I am fifteen, and we are living in an ocean-side motel in Miami, Florida. It’s spring break, and the same group of local high school students floods the beach every day. That’s how I meet Jair. He’s got crunchy curls and gentle eyes. We kiss in the shade of a palm tree. It’s the first time I taste a boy’s tongue.
I am sixteen, and I’m with my parents in Virginia, lying on the beach at night. The three of us are staring at the stars, and we design a new constellation after ourselves. We Frankenstein our names together and call it Esteliviaul—
“Stop!” Now it’s Antonela who can’t stand reliving my memories. “Do not try to paint our family to be something they are not. They sacrificed me—”
“Teo sacrificed you! And the rest of us have suffered for his actions. Losing you destroyed our parents!”
“In all your memories, our parents’ only priority was to protect you. But you know what I did not see? I never saw them try to recover me.”
There’s real emotion in her voice. “It could have just as easily been you,” she points out. “If I had been the one hiding. Then they would have abandoned you just as completely. This version of the loving family you have is only because you are the one who got to stay.”
“I know, but we don’t get to control that,” I tell Antonela. “What-ifs are worthless. What’s real is this moment and each other. That’s all we have. And I am asking you, begging you, to give us a chance—”
Her hands close around my neck, constricting my throat and cutting off my pleas.
“No,” she says, and her memories blast through me.
Antonela is in the Atrium of the other castle.
She is with Brálaga, but this is not the same conversation I witnessed in her memories. There are far fewer sand grains left now. Antonela must have gone back to see them again. Maybe this is when Red and Cyclops spied her going in.
“They sent me here! I was their sacrifice! Why would I even want to go back?” she’s asking Brálaga.
This is a different Antonela. Until now, she seemed cool and untouchable, even in the face of constant beatings. Yet it’s clear the memories of Earth stirred something in her for the first time, making me wonder if she’s ever been truly hurt before now.
“I have already told you the alternative,” says Brálaga pleasantly. “Would you like to live in the castle walls?”
“Then help me,” she says, crossing her arms. “Or I will tell my cousins what awaits them—”
“You cannot threaten me. Nor can I help you.”
“You told me I needed a body for the crossing to Earth, but you did not tell me I would need a body to live there.”
