Page 86 of A Fate In Moonstone

“I’m already yours,” I said to the figment of my imagination. Hallucination Rune was just as ruthless as the real one. Touching me, being sweet, his groans had my fingers digging into the bed to keep from racing out the door.

But then the real Rune would see me. He’d see the twitch forming in my eyelid, the dark circles under my eyes, the black veins spreading from my armpit.

It was easier to hide in my room until I finished fate’s task. Once freed from the grasp of death, we’d handle the rest together.

“Observed the dagger placed into the skin of patient 22. Their instinct to draw on their core power overrode the pain.” That seemed promising.

“Oh, they died.”

Not so promising after all.

Some had side effects like lethargy, amnesia, erratic emotions, and frequent chills. If Magrithia saw me surviving this, I wanted to assume that meant surviving without lasting side effects.

Gregory’s theory was that a Fae’s core could be removed as he’d done it with Hawk Fae. The key was the patient had to be the one to do it. Drag the dagger through their skin from sternum, across the left shoulder, down their arm, and finally keep the blade rooted in their palm.

I’d been confused over his finding for a few hours. Why the left over the right? Did it matter which side was dominant?

I jotted the notes down alongside his, and eventually he asked the same questions, and worked tirelessly to solve them.

The left side was magically more open. The receiver, the chaos of magic. Core magic wasn’t a physical contained thing in the body like a floating gem inside my chest, radiating sapphire energy.

It was me. I was it. Like an atom, or a spirit.

Wielding only worked because I was an extension of it.

Everything worked in balances and the right side of magic was a tad more rigid. The left, not so much. In order to break the balance, and change a core’s natural design, you took advantage of the less orderly left side. Using magic law against itself.

Breath tickled my neck despite knowing my head made it up, as it did Rune’s soft voice against my ear. “I missed hearing my name on your tongue.”

I groaned and the stupid twitch in my eye increased.

“Time to give this a try.” I was over the sickness, the voices. I wanted it done, this poison out of me.

I gripped the hilt of the ornate moonstone dagger, inhaled deeply, counted to three, pressed it against my bare chest, and counted again.

I kept counting.

And breathed.

“Come on, Sapphira. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel.”

One.

Two.

I grit my teeth, pricked my skin, and then stopped.

“You’re not trying hard enough,” Rune growled in my head and I dropped the dagger. My hands covered my ears.

“Stop. Get out. Get out.”

Nausea rolled around the base of my throat and a wave of heat rose beneath my skin.

“No. I’m done. I’m over this.”

“I’m not letting him win.”

“I’m not dying this way.”