Broken Magic by Catherine Vale

Author:Catherine Vale [Vale, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun
Published: 2017-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

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I COULDN’T SLEEP. I LAY awake all night with my back flat against the stone floor, staring up at the empty shape of the window, dreading the coming dawn. There was a way to get out of here. I just had to figure it out. Even without my magic, there had to be a way.

I cursed myself only once for not unleashing the power in that mirror. It could have freed me, but it also might have led to my destroying everyone and everything in this world and countless others. I knew I could never allow dark power like that to gain a stronghold inside me, no matter how desperate my situation. Even dying in a heap of billowing flames was a better fate than succumbing to the temptation of dark magic.

I decided that I would try picking the lock to the chains connecting my ankle to the wall. When the sun came up, I got started, stopping only once when a guard dropped by my cell bearing a cup of filthy water. I guzzled that and got back to work, stopping again when the light drained out of the cell completely, and my fingers were too sore to move. After a full day of trying to escape my shackles, I was no closer to being freed than when the guards slammed them shut around my ankles.

My thoughts turned in stubborn circles, repeatedly slamming into the obstacle of that useless energy filling the still air. I turned my mother’s ring around on my finger until the skin was raw, wishing for magic that wasn’t inside of that shimmering opal. Its soft glow was the only light in the room after the sun went down. I lifted my arm in front of my face and watched that jewel sparkle in the dark, the swirling color changing as I stared at it, just as fascinated then as I was when I was a little girl. Had my parents died here in this realm? My gut told me no. But why else would my mother have left something so dear behind?

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