Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) Sarra Cannon (best english books to read txt) 📖

over, and the cold had seeped so deep into her bones, everything ached.

It wasn’t good for a fire witch to be left in the cold.

On instinct, the witch reached for her fire magic, hoping to conjure a simple flame to warm the space.

Nothing would come, though. She’d been here too long, cut off from source.

It was dark in here, wherever she was, but there was enough light coming in from a block of translucent ice on the wall for her to at least tell that she was trapped inside some kind of bare, square room.

No furniture filled the room. No sign of another person. Just a cold floor that felt slick and icy to the touch and four icy walls surrounding her.

When she placed her palm on the ice to get traction so she could stand, the frozen cold of it nearly burned her.

“Hello,” she said, her voice so weak she hardly recognized herself.

She cleared her throat and tried to swallow, but she hadn’t had anything to drink in so long, it hurt to even try.

How long had she been trapped in this place? And who had brought her here?

She struggled to recall where she’d been before this. What was the last thing she could remember?

Zoe’s hotel room.

The symbol of air drawn on the window.

Telling the Dark One that somehow, the fifth had found Zoe before she did.

The memories rushed back with a vengeance now, and the witch gasped. Why couldn’t she have left them locked away in a dark place in her mind where she might never see or think of them again?

Hours of torture and pain, repeated over and over again without relief.

And just when she’d thought, mercifully, it was finally over, the horror had started again.

Punishment for her betrayal. For giving the stone to Parrish. For allowing them to give her a name.

The pain was meant to make the witch sorry for what she had done.

Instead, it had made her sorry she’d chosen the wrong side and betrayed the only friends she’d ever had.

There was nothing to be done about that now, though. There was no turning back from her bad choices. Now, the only thing she wished for more than home was death.

When she’d lost consciousness, the Dark One must have had her brought here.

But where, exactly, was this place?

Despite the tenderness of her wounds, she managed to push herself up to a sitting position before finally, after several minutes of pain and determination, finding the strength to stand..

Her shoes had been stripped from her, so that she had to stand on the icy floor in bare feet. She winced through the pain of the cold’s burn and walked to the block of ice that provided the room’s only light.

She lifted onto tiptoes to look through the clear block of ice, but it was too thick and distorted to see what lay beyond it. A shadow moved across her vision, though, and she backed away.

A cold room was nothing compared to what she’d endured at the hands of the Dark One. She didn’t dare do anything to invite that kind of wrath again.

The witch looked down at her burned and deformed skin, then brought a trembling hand to her once-beautiful face. It now matched the horror of the rest of her body.

An icy tear fell onto her fingertips, and she lowered her hand, wishing again for the mercy of death.

She used to hate her life before she came to this world, believing there could be nothing worse than the way the Council of Fire treated her. They ignored her and refused to teach or train her properly. They refused to even give her a name, saying someone like her didn’t deserve one.

They did that to all the young girls like her. Orphans brought in from the outerlands.

The witch had believed life with the Council was the worst horror she could ever endure.

Now, though, she could see every blessing. Every moment of joy.

She closed her eyes and imagined the young ones entrusted to her care over the years. The tiniest babes cradled in her arms. Watching them learn to walk and coo. Witnessing their first smiles or kissing their heads when they cried at night.

The witch had always done what she could to protect as many of the young ones as possible from the suffering she’d endured. She held them and whispered loving words in their ears when the Council wasn’t watching.

She’d given many of them names. Nothing she’d ever spoken out loud, but names she’d carried in her heart.

Instead of seeing the blessing and joy they had brought to her life, though, she’d focused on the unfairness and heartache when one of her wards was given a real name and a real home.

Her own longing had filled her with anger every time a child was adopted and given a life apart from the Council.

The witch had hated that life, believing there was nothing more in the world she wanted than to have power over all of them. She wanted a chance to make them all regret just how poorly they’d treated her for all those years.

But now, beauty and power stripped from her, the witch could finally see how foolish she had been.

Now that it was too late, she wanted nothing more than to go back to her old life.

Or her life with Parrish and the others.

Why had she ever left them? Why had she betrayed them?

She collapsed onto the floor, tucking her legs and skirt under her body as she prayed for some relief from the cold. She needed to block those thoughts from her mind. It was too late now, anyway.

“Feeling sorry for yourself?” the Dark One asked.

A shadow crossed the room in front of her, and the witch slid backwards until she hit the wall behind her.

Her body shook in fear.

She didn’t dare answer the question. She had no idea what she was expected to say, and she was so tired of getting it wrong.

The witch searched the room for the source of