Chapter Twenty-Nine
Joy
"What do you mean?" I looked at Brynn through the steam rising from the bathwater, my heart still. The warm water lapped gently around me with each small movement, creating tiny ripples.
"Let me see your wrists."
I lifted my wrists out of the lavender-scented water, droplets cascading back into the tub with soft plinking sounds. The dreaded silver bracelets caught the flickering candlelight, their cold metal a stark contrast to the warmth surrounding me. They sat heavy on my bones, constant reminders of my powerlessness—the cursed jewelry that kept my shadow ability locked away like a caged animal.
Brynn walked over to the ornate vanity with deliberate steps, her bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. She picked up a sharp nail file from among the scattered cosmetics, the metal glinting ominously in the dim light. Without hesitation, she pressed the pointed tip against her palm and drew it across her skin in one swift motion.
I gasped, reaching toward her as crimson welled up immediately. Dark red blood pooled in her cupped palm, overpowering the lavender scented air. "Brynn, what are you doing?”
Her dark eyes met mine with fierce resolve, and for the first time since I'd known her, I saw not the broken, defeated girl but the royal blood that flowed through her veins. "If my blood is special, supposedly strong enough to revive the Anchoring Obsidian stone,” she said. “Then maybe it can help loosen your magical bindings."
She smeared the warm blood across my bracelets with trembling fingers, the crimson liquid coating the silver metal like war paint. The moment her royal blood made contact, electric tingles brushed over my skin like tiny lightning bolts, starting at my wrists and radiating up my arms to my shoulders.
But then the pain hit.
It cut deeper into my flesh than anything I'd experienced before, as if razor blades were slicing through my bones from the inside out. The agony battled against the tingling sensation, two opposing forces warring for control of my very soul. I winced involuntarily, my teeth clenching so hard I tasted blood as a whimper escaped my throat.
More agony crashed over me in searing pulses. My vision blurred at the edges, black spots dancing before my eyes like static on the screen. My body convulsed with each fresh assault of pain.
Brynn's cool hand clasped my shoulder, her touch a lifeline in the storm of suffering. "Joy, are you okay?" Her voice seemed to come from miles away, muffled by the roaring in my ears.
"It's like..." I gasped between shocks of pain. The bracelets felt like they were burning my skin, the metal growing scalding hot against my flesh. "It's like there's a battle going on between good and evil on my wrists."
Brynn's face paled as understanding dawned in her dark eyes. Horror flickered in her eyes as she watched the magical conflict playing out on my body. "That may be what's happening. Those bracelets are laced with powerful black magic."
"I don't know if I can take it." The words came out as barely a whisper. Brutal white pain, pure and searing as molten metal, ran up my arms like liquid fire. The agony was so intense I arched my whipped back involuntarily, my spine bowing as every muscle in my body went rigid. A scream built in my throat, threatening to tear its way out.
The stone walls of the room seemed to pulse with each heartbeat, and I could taste copper and desperation on my tongue as the battle between light and darkness raged across my very flesh.
She gripped my hands with desperate strength, her fingers interlacing with mine like buoys trying to keep me from drowning in the pain. Her palms were warm and slick with her own blood, the steam rising around us. "You can do this. You said you can control shadows. Draw on them now."
The thought of summoning my power after everything I'd endured—the torture, the revelations, the soul-deep exhaustion—was like being asked to climb a mountain with broken legs. The very idea of fighting against dark magic sucked out the last bit of energy from my depleted reserves, leaving me feeling hollow as an empty shell. "I've tried..." The words came out as a harsh whisper. My shoulders sagged with defeat, tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.
“I don’t think my blood is powerful enough to break through the wards of the castle, but I firmly believe they can help you break the spell binding your powers.” She squeezed my hands tighter, her grip becoming almost painful as she tried to transfer her determination into my broken spirit. Her dark eyesblazed with something I'd never seen before—not just hope, but absolute refusal to give up. “You have to at least try."
Brynn had been trapped in this hellish castle most of her life, surviving cruelty and degradation that would have broken most people. She'd endured decades of what I'd suffered for only days, and yet here she was, still fighting, still believing I could escape.
I wasn't going to be defeated. Not when she'd sacrificed her own blood to give me this chance. Not when freedom was so close I could almost taste it.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, feeling the warm bathwater shift around me as my chest rose and fell. The steam filled my lungs, and somewhere deep inside, beneath the layers of pain and exhaustion, a flicker of the power that had always been mine switched on.
Something moved through me, fighting to get out. It pulsed beneath my skin, wild and eager, building with each heartbeat. As I held onto her hands, magic surged through my veins, fierce and insistent, demanding release.
Then the bracelets immediately burned against my skin like brands, fighting to contain it. But I pushed past the agony, past the fear, past everything that told me I was too weak, too broken, too human. The pressure in my chest crested, the magic straining against the bonds. Something inside me gave way—not breaking but opening—and the power began to flow.
Slowly, the bracelets began to shift toward my fingers. A surge of hope rushed through me—it was working. I wiggled and wiggled, the silver biting into my flesh as if it had teeth.
"Come to me," I whispered into the candlelit darkness. As if responding to my call, the bracelets loosened just enough—and then, like brave little soldiers, each of my pinky fingers escaped. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to stir, responding to an ancient call that thrummed through my very bones.
A laugh bubbled up in my throat, half-sob, half-triumph. My magic was answering. I was going to break free.
Shadows slid toward me across the stone floor, dark tendrils reaching from every corner of the room. But as they drew closer to where I sat in the warm bathwater, they began to quiver and tremble, as if they could sense the malevolent energy radiating from my wrists. They hesitated at the edge of the tub, writhing uncertainly, clearly afraid of whatever dark magic was woven into the silver bracelets that bound me.
The sight of my own shadows cowering made my heart sink like a stone. Even my most fundamental power was terrified of the cursed metal wrapped around my wrists.
