Page 46 of Incoronate
The candles surged higher, their flames stretching toward the ceiling like clawing hands as the symbols on the floor began to glow, faint at first, then brighter, pulsing in time with the sisters’ chant.
And then I felt it.
A hook sinking into my chest, piercing and merciless, burrowing deep into a part of me I didn’t even have a name for. It was deeper than my lungs and heart. More sacred. My back arched off the floor as pain unlike anything I’d ever felt tore through me.
And it didn’t move quickly either. It was patient and meticulous, as if it were taking its time pulling me apart from the inside out. Unmaking and remaking me in slow, punishing increments, and all I could do was feel it. Every second of it. Every agonizing moment as that hook dug deeper and deeper until it found something it could latch onto.
The cords around our wrists warmed, then burned. Trace’s hand clamped down on mine, his entire body going rigid as Dominic’s grip turned bruising. I knew they were in the same agony as I was, but somehow, theirs felt worse. More honed, more serrated, as though they were being cut open instead of just torn apart. I wanted to tell them that I was sorry. I wanted to beg them to let go. To save themselves. But I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. I was trapped inside my own body and drowning in pain that had no end.
The sisters’ voices grew louder, building the way a storm gathered strength. The agonizing hook in my chest was suddenly replaced by the presence of something else. Something foreign that was invading the space where thehook had lodged itself. I tried to fight it at first. Tried to push it back out. But it was too strong. Too decided. It poured into me like water through cracks, filling every empty space until there was nowhere left for me to hide.
Trace.
I could feel him there, bright and unwavering and achingly warm, trying to push himself into me. Trying to become part of the foundation that was crumbling. His heartbeat. His breath. The way fear coiled tight in his chest even as he fought to project calm. His determination, fierce and unshakable, wrapped around me like armor.
And he wasn’t alone.
I could feel Dominic too, his presence filling the spaces Trace’s warmth couldn’t reach, anchoring me from a different direction entirely. Power coiled inside him like a sleeping dragon, dark and endless, but beneath it, there was something raw and viciously protective. A devotion so intense it stole my breath.
Instinctively, I knew they felt me too.
Every fracture.
Every whisper.
Every strand of corrupted magic clawing through my veins.
Every dark thought.
Every moment of self-hatred.
Every time I’d looked in the mirror and seen something monstrous staring back.
They felt all of it. All the ugliness I’d kept hidden. All the shame I’d buried so deep I thought no one would ever find it. But they did. And they didn’t pull away. They didn’t recoil. They just held on tighter. Pushed in deeper.
The pain intensified until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t tell where I ended and they began. The spellrot inside me rose, fighting against the intrusion, pushing back with everything it had. It didn’t want to share me or let go. It had claimed me first and it was fighting to keep what it had taken. I could feel it writhing inside me, lashing out, trying to corrupt them the way it had corrupted me. Trying to spread like a virus that had no cure.
But the tether held.Theyheld.
Slowly but surely, I felt the agonizing pressure begin to ease. The overflow of power that had been poisoning me started to bleed away, siphoning into Trace and Dominic through the bond the sisters were forging. It no longer owned me completely. No longer had me cornered. Paths were opening. Channels forming. Exits where there had once been only walls. For the first time in days, I could feel my body again. Not just the numbness and screams and the pain that had overtaken me, but everything.
My heartbeat evening out. My lungs expanding. The corruption losing its grip on me, inch by inch, as it drained away into them.
Trace groaned, every muscle in his body seizing as Dominic hissed sharply, the magic burning into them like lightning down a conductor. But all throughout, their hands never let go. Even as they took my poison into themselves. Even as it seared through their veins the way it had mine. They held on and refused to leave me alone in this.
The candles burned higher as the sisters chanted on, every word weaving around the next until I wasn’t even sure they were taking breaths anymore. The flames were so tall now they were licking dangerously toward the ceiling, high enough to throw wild shadows across the walls and fill the room with the smell of death and burnt wood. But none of us could move. None of us could stop it. We were locked in place by the ritual,by the cords binding us together, by the magic tearing us apart and stitching us back together as something different.
The tether tightened, stabilizing as something inside me turned over. This time it didn’t feel like breaking. It felt like a union, like I was aligning with them. Not just their magic or their presence, but their souls, twining with mine until there was no empty space left inside me at all. Forging us into something new. Something stronger. Something that could never be undone.
In that moment, through the haze of waning pain and cresting power, I didn’t know if what we’d just done was the right choice or if we would wake up tomorrow and realize we’d only traded one curse for another. If someday down the line, I’d look back on this and realize it was the exact moment where everything had gone wrong.
But as the corruption drained from my veins and their souls wrapped around mine like a shield I’d never asked for but desperately needed, I couldn’t bring myself to wish it undone.
All I could feel was them, solid and alive inside me. And for the first time since the rot took hold, I could breathe. I wasn’t alone. Whatever we’d just become, whatever price we’d have to pay for it later, right then, it felt like salvation.
Even if it looked an awful lot like their damnation.
15. OF SHADOW AND LIGHT
