Chapter 61 Unraveling
Aurora's POV
"You said those 'gifts' would help me increase their favorability," I hissed into the empty room, my voice low and venomous. "So why did everything backfire and hurt me instead?"
Silk's response came through our mental connection, calm and unbothered by my anger. "You cannot directly harm Elara now. But if you keep absorbing the fortune of others, these wounds will heal quickly enough."
I gripped the edge of the sink hard enough to make my knuckles white, ignoring the fresh wave of pain that shot through my burned arms.
"Silk." I kept my voice steady with effort. "I want to try that method you mentioned before."
There was a pause, longer than usual, and when Silk spoke again there was something almost like warning in its tone. "Once you succeed, there will be no going back. The transformation is permanent. Are you certain you want to proceed?"
I thought about school starting in less than two weeks, about facing everyone with a scar on my forehead and burns hidden beneath long sleeves. I thought about Damian's cold distance and Ryan's suspicious glances and the way even James had looked at me like I was something disgusting.
"I'm certain." My jaw clenched. "And I've already chosen the first target."
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James's POV
I woke up to the sensation of something crawling across my chest.
My eyes snapped open and I jerked upright so fast my head spun, my heart hammering against my ribs as I scanned the dark room for whatever had touched me. The moonlight streaming through my window showed nothing out of place, just my usual mess of clothes and books and the display shelf where I kept various trinkets and gifts.
Including the doll Aurora had given me months ago, sitting in its glass case on the top shelf.
I stared at it for a long moment, my skin prickling with unease. Had its eyes always been open like that? I could have sworn they'd been closed earlier, but maybe I was just being paranoid after everything that had happened tonight with Aurora and Maple.
I lay back down, pulling the covers up to my chin and trying to calm my racing pulse. It was nothing. Just a weird dream brought on by stress and—
Something touched my chest again.
This time I felt it clearly, like invisible fingers pressing against my skin right over my heart. Cold spread through my ribcage as if ice water had been injected directly into my veins, and I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything except feel that presence pushing deeper.
The moonlight stone pendant Elara had given me suddenly grew hot against my skin, so hot it felt like it was burning, and whatever had been touching me recoiled with a force that made my whole body jerk.
"Jesus!" I bolted upright again, fumbling for the lamp on my nightstand and flooding the room with light.
The pendant had fallen out from under my shirt during my violent movement, and when I lifted it with shaking hands I saw dozens of hairline cracks spider-webbing across its surface. The stone that had been smooth and perfect this morning now looked like it might shatter at any moment.
My chest burned where the pendant had rested, and when I pulled my shirt down I saw a red mark in the exact shape of the stone branded into my skin.
Something in this room had just tried to hurt me. Something had tried to reach into my chest and touch my heart, and the only thing that had stopped it was Elara's protection charm.
I shoved my feet into slippers and yanked open my desk drawer, pulling out every protective charm and talisman I'd collected over the past few months. Calming talismans, evil-warding charms, protection amulets—I stuffed them all into my pockets until I could barely move without hearing paper crinkle.
The cracked moonlight pendant went into my clenched fist, and I practically ran out of my room and down the hall to Damian's door.
"Damian!" I pounded on the wood with my free hand. "Open up! I need help!"
The door opened after a few seconds, and Damian stood there in pajama pants and a t-shirt, his hair messy from sleep and his expression caught between concern and wariness. "James? What's wrong?"
The words tumbled out in a rush. "Something tried to attack me in my sleep, the pendant Elara gave me woke me up by burning my chest, and now it's completely cracked and I have a burn mark and I think something in my room is trying to kill me!"
Damian's eyes sharpened, all traces of sleep vanishing from his face. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his room, closing the door behind us before examining the pendant I held out to him.
His frown deepened as he studied the cracks, then he pulled out his own moonlight pendant from under his shirt. It was completely intact, smooth and perfect without a single mark.
"Mine's fine," he said slowly, meeting my eyes. "Which means whatever attacked you was specifically targeting you, not just randomly lashing out."
I tried to laugh but it came out shaky and thin. "Can you call Elara? Please? I need her to come check my room or give me a new charm or something, because I am not going back in there alone."
Damian glanced at his phone on the nightstand, and I saw him grimace slightly. "James, it's almost three in the morning. I can't just—"
"Then what am I supposed to do?" My voice cracked embarrassingly. "Just go back to sleep and hope whatever it is doesn't try again? What if the pendant doesn't work next time?"
He ran a hand through his hair, clearly torn, then sighed and picked up his phone. "I'll call Kaelen. He can sense magical energy better than any of us, and he's probably still awake anyway."
Relief flooded through me so strongly my knees felt weak. "Thank you."
Damian made the call, speaking in low tones that I couldn't quite make out, and within fifteen minutes there was a knock at the door. Kaelen stepped inside, dressed in dark clothes and looking completely alert despite the late hour.
"Show me," was all he said.
We went back to my room together, and I hovered in the doorway while Kaelen walked a slow circuit around the space. His eyes were half-closed in concentration, one hand held out as if feeling for something I couldn't see, and I watched him pause near my desk, then my closet, then finally in front of the display shelf.
After what felt like an eternity, he straightened up and turned to face us. "There's no residual dark energy here. Nothing active, at least."
"What?" I stared at him in disbelief. "That's impossible! Something definitely attacked me!"
Kaelen's gaze moved to the glass case on the top shelf, where Aurora's doll sat with its blank face and button eyes. He stared at it for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and I felt my stomach twist with sudden dread.
"That's a gift from Aurora," I said, my voice coming out smaller than I intended. "From before... before everything got weird. You don't think it could be causing problems, do you?"
Damian's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, and I saw him exchange a glance with Kaelen that spoke volumes. They were both thinking the same thing I was, connecting the dots between Aurora's increasingly strange behavior and the fact that something in my room had just tried to hurt me.
Kaelen turned back to the doll, studying it from every angle without touching the glass case. "I don't see any obvious signs of cursed energy," he said finally. "But that doesn't necessarily mean it's safe."
"There's somewhere else I'd like you to check," I said quietly. "Aurora's walk-in closet."
"Damian? James? And Kael... I mean Alpha Thorne"
All three of us froze at the sound of Aurora's voice drifting down the hallway, soft and sweet and perfectly innocent. I turned to see her standing at the far end of the corridor in a silk robe, her head tilted slightly as she looked at us gathered outside her room.
"What are you doing outside my door at this hour?"