“I mean, you were shackled from accessing your truth. You were given something mortal in hopes that humanity would bleed into the fabric of your soul. They wanted you tamed. Who do you think would have done such a thing?” Vittoria leaned against the bars again, the magic sizzling against her skin. She didn’t seem to notice any pain. Or care if she did. “You know. Suspect. And yet you still don’t want to accept what they did to us. What she did. They took our power because that’s how much they feared us. Feared the vengeance we’d reap.”
“No.” I shook my head, the denial sitting uncomfortably. Because I knew I was lying to myself. I knew my sister was telling the truth. And yet I couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow myself to admit it. Out loud or even silently. “Nonna wouldn’t. She couldn’t have done that. Why would she?”
“It’s a spell-lock. Meant to bind. Cast by the darkest sort of magic. Human sacrifice.”
“Nonna hates dark magic. Almost as much as the Wicked.” I glanced to Envy, who was uncharacteristically quiet. Sadness. That’s what flashed in his eyes before he looked away. He believed it to be true. Bile seared up the back of my throat; I felt close to retching. “She would never kill a human. We weren’t even allowed to use bones or dark spells.”
Because we probably would have discovered the truth much faster, a little voice whispered in the back of my mind. Vittoria didn’t say another word, instead granting me the space to come to terms with how much our grandmother kept from us.
My stolen mortal heart broke. Knowing it had come from a human… part of me wanted to have my twin rip it from me at once.
“Don’t.” Envy was suddenly in front of me, shaking his head. “Don’t even consider it. You’re not ready. Trust me.”
“Why?”
He looked like he didn’t wish to answer, probably because he wasn’t used to sharing information so freely, but he relented. “There’s a small chance you may not survive the transformation.”
“You just said immortality always wins.”
“I say a lot of things I believe to be true. That doesn’t make it fact.”
“And yet here I stand,” Vittoria interjected, “fully restored.”
“You rule over death,” he snapped. “Of course you’d survive.”
I held Envy’s stare. Six months ago, if someone told me I’d be considering taking the word of a prince of Hell over that of my twin, I would have thought them mad. I thought of Wrath’s conviction about his brother—how he was no murderer. If my husband trusted him, then so would I.
Plus, I wasn’t sure what he meant by my not being “ready,” but I knew I certainly wasn’t ready to make that decision. Spell-lock or not, I liked my heart where it was.
“If my heart is the only thing standing in your way,” I asked Vittoria, “why not just take it?”
“She can’t,” Envy said. “You must choose to let it go.”
“Or?” I asked, searching my twin’s face. “What’s the consequence?”
Vittoria exhaled. “You’ll die. Just as they’d always intended. We were never supposed to remember what we are. The night we took our amulets off? It made a fissure in our curse. That’s why she warned us against switching them. They weren’t going to alert the devil. They were going to begin a chain reaction that would set us free, another one of their prophecies. No one wants to free vengeance goddesses, especially when they’d wronged them.”
“How did you learn of this?” I asked.
“A spell book whispered its secrets to me. Soon after I’d taken my amulet off and had given it to you, my latent ability was unlocked, and it grew stronger over time, the whispers becoming louder and more insistent that I act. One day the whispers led me to the first book of spells. That’s how I learned the way to remove my own spell-lock.”
It was true. I’d read the entry in her journal that mentioned the whispers and Vittoria’s desire to understand. I moved away from the cell bars and collapsed onto the mattress, dust motes puffing up from it in a blast.
Nonna knew this whole time. She’d not only known, but she’d also been the one to bind us into our mortal forms. Knowing we’d eventually die—trapped as mortals—if we didn’t willingly choose to break the spell-lock. Our lack of education in offensive spells made sense now. All of it did. And I hated it. I wanted to keep fighting against it, but it all fit.