A Curse So Dark and Lonely: Chapter 32

I storm to the edge of the Commons, where the ground drops away in a nearly sheer cliff, revealing the harbor below, docks and ships glistening in the rising moonlight. Smaller fishing wherries and larger crabbing boats are docked for the winter season, and ice clings to the posts in the water. Candlelight flickers in a few windows, but most buildings stand dark and quiet. Lanterns swing jauntily as sailors and dockworkers head home.

Along a deserted, icy dock, I spot a couple wrapped in a loving embrace.

So easy. So unfair.

Music carries across the clearing, and couples have joined to dance at the far side of the Commons. Torches blaze along tall posts surrounding the band. Despite the merriment, I can feel the weight of eyes on my back. I’ve provided enough gossip to occupy the people of Silvermoon for days. I seized control by stopping an attack and demanding allegiance—and now I’m about to undo it all because of one moment of irritation.

I never should have stalked off the way I did. I imagine my father’s voice.

People can create scandal from a word. From a look. You, son, give them no shortage of either.

Harper draws up beside me. I don’t look at her. I’m not sure what I want to say.

She must sense my quarrelsome mettle, because she says nothing herself.

I feel as though I owe her an apology—but possibly that she owes me one as well. We stand together, staring out at the water, at the night sky sprinkled with stars. Wind whips off the harbor to whistle between us, ruffling my hair and lifting her skirts. Silence stretches on for ages, until my irritation begins to dissipate, turning the quiet into something warmer. Easier.

“In the castle,” I say eventually, “the music never changes. Every season, the songs begin again, no matter what I do.”

She is quiet, and music swells from the opposite side of the clearing, muffled because we’re so near the water, and the creaking of the boats and the gently slapping waves provide an undercurrent of sound.

“I used to love music,” I say. “My family did, too. That is part of why the instruments play every day—my father once ordered it so. Music at every party, every event, every morning at daybreak. I once loved it.”

She still says nothing, but I can see the edge of her profile. She’s turned to look at me slightly.

I keep my eyes on the harbor. “Now I hate it.”

She lets out a breath. A sound of acquiescence—or defeat. “But the music here is new.” A pause. “Different.”

“Yes.”

“Asking me to dance wasn’t part of a calculated effort to win over your people. This was about distracting yourself from the curse.”

She’s right, but put that way, my motives seem childish, especially considering our goals here. I frown.

“Okay,” she says. “Show me.”

I look at her. Raise an eyebrow.

She wets her lips. “I’m not going to be good at it. When I was younger, my physical therapist recommended ballet to help stretch my muscles and improve balance—but I hated it. I was terrible. Mom had to use horseback riding as a bribe to get me to go.”

A bribe. To dance, of all things. So very Harper.

I extend a hand. “May I?”

She looks at my hand and hesitates.

I wait.

Her hand finally drops into mine, her fingers soft, light against my own. I turn her to face me, then place her hand on my shoulder.

Her breath catches. She is so still that I do not think she’s breathing.

I step closer, until her skirts brush my legs, and I rest a hand on her waist. “I am inviting you to dance, not dragging you behind a horse.” I sigh dramatically. “Must you look so tortured ?”

That makes her smile. The expression must pull at the stitches along her cheek, because the smile flickers and vanishes. Her free hand hovers, pausing over my own as if she’s debating whether to shove me away.

She is so tense. The girl who climbed down the castle trellis and threw a knife at Lilith is afraid to dance.

“Is everyone staring at us?” she whispers.

Very likely, but I do not turn my head to see. “Doubtful,” I tell her. “The night grows dark.” A bit of warmth heats my voice. “My own eyes see only you.”

She blushes, then shakes her head a little and looks out at the harbor. “You’re too good at this. How many other girls did you dance with?”

“What number would ease your worries? A dozen? A hundred?” I pause. “None? All?”

“You’re dodging the question.”

“I have no answer.

Who would keep count of such a thing? Besides, you must be aware I danced with other women even before the curse.” I pause and move closer. “I can say with certainty that I never taught any to dance at the edge of a cliff at Silvermoon.”

“I’m standing. Not dancing.”

“All part of your lesson. Close your eyes.”

She scowls, but her eyes fall closed. I move even closer, until we’re barely separated by breath. Not moving, simply standing, trapped between the quiet noises of the harbor and the louder melody carrying across the Commons.

The moment strikes me with a memory and I do not move.

“Before the curse,” I say slowly, “I would sometimes dance with my sister—”

“Arabella?”

I’m startled that she remembers. “No. Never Arabella. She had no shortage of suitors—and no shortage of temper to keep them in line. My youngest sister. Isadore.” My voice thickens with emotion, which takes me by surprise. I need to clear my throat. “She was barely fourteen, but the Grand Marshal of Boone River had expressed an interest in marriage. The man was three times her age. When he would come to court, Isa would make excuses about family obligations, then seek me out and attach herself to my side.”

My voice trails off. I’m not entirely sure why I began this line of conversation.

Harper opens her eyes. Her fingers have relaxed on my shoulder, and now her forearm rests along my bicep, her waist soft under my hand. “You and Isa were close.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I was the crown prince. I was raised apart from my sisters. In truth, I rarely saw her.”

I blink, though, and I see Isa in my mind, the way I found her after my first transformation. Her body was nowhere near those of the rest of the family.

To this day, I still wonder if Isa was coming to find me. As if I weren’t the cause of the very destruction she sought to escape.

Harper’s eyes are dark with empathy. “I’m sorry, Rhen.”

“It was quite a long time ago. I do not know what made me speak of it.” My thoughts tangle with remorse, and I feel as though I have lost my way. I blink and shake my head, wishing the memories could be shaken off so easily. “Where were we?”

“Dancing lessons.”

“Ah. Yes.” I lean close again. “Close your eyes.”

She does. We have not yet moved, but conversation—or pity—has distracted her. I step forward, giving a soft push with my hand, and she yields, stepping back too quickly.

“Easy,”

I say softly, keeping ahold of her waist. “Do not run from me.”

“Sorry.” Her eyes slide open. “I told you I was terrible at this.”

I shake my head. “Eyes closed.”

She obeys, which must be something of a miracle.

“Another step,” I say, “and then three to the side, then three back.”

While her motions are slow and halting, she stays within the circle of my arms and allows me to lead. Gradually, bit by bit, muscle by muscle, she relaxes into the movement. Our steps begin to match the music from across the clearing. For an instant, I allow myself to forget the curse. We dance in the moonlight at the edge of the cliff, surrounded by night air.

The song ends, quickly replaced by something fast and lively.

I stop, and Harper does, too. Her eyes open, and she looks up at me. “This one’s too fast,” she says quietly.

“We can wait for another.”

I expect her to pull away, but she does not. “I think the standing-still part is my favorite.”

I smile. “You do it quite masterfully.”

Her eyes narrow a fraction, catching sparks in the moonlight. “You’re not as arrogant as you pretend to be.”

I go still.

“You’re really good at laying on the charm,” she says. “But I like this Rhen better.”

“ ‘This Rhen’?”

“When you’re not scheming, and you’re just doing.” She pauses. “Like your story about Isadore. You made it sound like she was an annoying little sister, but I think you liked it. Or the way you won’t let Grey go after Lilith. At first I thought it was a pride thing—but it’s not. You’re protecting him.”

Her assessment reminds me of Grey’s when we stood outside the inn in the snow.

When I teased him about punishment for falling asleep on guard. When he said, The king would have … But not you, I do not think.

At the time, his comment made me feel weak.

Harper’s comment does not.

“And you’re unexpectedly patient,” she says. “For someone who expects everything to be done on his command.”

She is wrong. My shoulders tense—but at the same time, I do not want her to stop. As always, her words speak right to the core of me, but these do not feel like censure and instead light me with warmth. “No one would ever call me patient.”

“You are. In a different way.”

“In what way?”

“In the fact that you’re standing here, not making me feel like an idiot because I can’t dance.” She pauses. “The way you didn’t make me feel like an idiot for asking you to show me how to shoot an arrow.”

“You did that quite well,” I say, and mean it.

Her voice goes quiet. “The way you don’t treat me like I can’t do something.”

“Truly?” I release her hand to brush that errant lock of hair from her face. “You have convinced me you can do anything.”

She blushes. “Don’t start with the compliments.”

“It is not a compliment.” My fingers linger along her jaw, tracing the softness of her skin.

“Even now,” she says, “you’re out here risking our lives, trusting me to help you save your people, when you don’t really know anything about me. When you’re probably supposed to be back at the castle feeding me grapes and trying to get me to fall in love with you.”

“Grapes?” I say. “Is that what it would take?”

“The red ones are secretly the way to my heart.”

My thumb strokes over the curve of her lip. Her breath shudders.

Her free hand flies up to catch my wrist.

I freeze. She will shove me away again, the way she did in the inn.

“Wait,” she whispers. “Just wait.” Then her lip quirks and she repeats my line from earlier. “Do not run from me.”

“I will not run.”

To my surprise, tears form in her eyes, a glint of diamonds on her lashes. “I want to trust you,” she says, so quietly that her voice could get lost on the wind. “I want—I want to know it’s real. Not that you’re trying to trick me to break the curse.”

I do not understand how she can fill me with such hope and fear simultaneously. I pull her hand to my chest and lean in to her, until we share breath. My lips brush across hers.

It is barely a kiss, but she is somehow closer to me, her body a pool of warmth against mine.

I want so desperately to turn it into more, to see where this blossoming attraction will lead.

But I have come close before. I have found this moment before.

The only difference is that I have never wanted it so badly.

I draw back, then press my lips to her forehead.

“I want to know it’s real, too,” I say.

Her body goes still against mine, and then she nods. Her head falls against my shoulder, her face close enough to breathe warmth against my neck. It puts my hand at the small of her back, the other on her shoulder.

I speak low, against her temple. “Shall I have the guards call for the horses?”

“Not yet,” she says. “Is that okay?”

“Always.”

I stand and hold her until the music fades and the night grows too cold.

But inside I’m warm, and my heart wants to sing.

We arrive at Ironrose late. Stars light up the sky and torches burn along the front of the castle, lighting the spaces where guards once stood.

Grey and Jamison take the horses, and I walk Harper through the Great Hall and up the sweeping staircase. The air is thick with tired silence, and neither of us breaks it, but for the first time, no wall of tension stands between us.

We stop in front of her door, and she looks up at me. “Are we doing this all again tomorrow?”

I cannot tell from the tone of her voice whether she’s eager or apprehensive—or simply exhausted. “No. I will have Grey send word to the Grand Marshal of Sillery Hill that we will visit in three days’ time. I want to give news time to spread.”

“So we’ll stay here.”

“If you find that acceptable.”

“Maybe we could finish our lesson, since I didn’t get to learn much.”

“In dancing?” I say, surprised.

She swats my arm. “In shooting arrows.” A faint blush finds her cheeks, and she adds, “But dancing would be okay, too.”

“Anything you wish.”

“I should probably go to bed,” she says.

But she lingers and makes no move to open her door.

So I linger, wondering if this is an invitation to finish what we began at the edge of the cliff at Silvermoon. I’m not sure precisely what has changed between us, whether it’s trust or respect or simply the ability to see each other in a different light. I’m not sure it matters. All I know is that I long to take her hand and lead her into her chambers, to sit at her side and share secrets. To run my fingers through her hair and discover the taste of her skin.

I cannot remember the last time I’ve felt this longing.

In truth, I’m not sure I ever have.

The door to Freya’s room eases open. Harper jumps and takes a step back.

Freya’s eyes flash wide. “Oh!” She bobs a curtsy and speaks softly. “Your Highness. My lady. Forgive me. I was going to stoke the fire in the bedroom.”

What a coincidence, I think. I was considering the very same thing.

I turn to Harper before my thoughts can get ahead of me. “I should leave you to your rest.” I bow, then take her hand to brush a kiss across her knuckles. “Until tomorrow, my lady.”

It takes every ounce of self-restraint I possess to walk away.

My chambers are a well of darkness, the fire burning low in the hearth. The first season, I was asleep by now, well fed and worn out after a long day of hunting with the king and other nobles—men who had no idea what was in store for them. Exhaustion rides my back today as well, but it is no match for the tiny thrill of anticipation skipping through my veins.

I leave my candles dark, enjoying the quiet after the noise of the day. I shed my weapons, my bracers and greaves, then begin to unbuckle my jacket.

A long sigh escapes my chest. Hope is a luxury I cannot afford. An emotion I cannot dare to feel.

Hope blooms in my chest anyway, a tiny bud giving way to the first light of spring, petals daring to open to reveal the color inside.

I want to know it’s real.

That must mean it’s real for her.

The last buckle gives and I toss the jacket on the chair. When my fingers find the lacings of my shirt, hands settle on my shoulders. I freeze.

“Prince Rhen,” says Lilith. “I’d forgotten what a fine form you have.”

I jerk away and turn to face her. I want to snatch the jacket back from the chair. “What are you doing here?”

She moves closer to me, her eyes dark in the firelit room. “You once enjoyed my company in your chambers,” she says. “Has so much changed?”

“You know what’s changed.”

She steps closer, until a breath would bring my chest against hers. “Did you have a nice visit in Silvermoon? I’m amused at your attempts to convince the people you have secured this mysterious alliance. Tell me, what will you do when they discover your family is not in exile, but is actually dead?” She feigns a gasp. “Will you disclose that it happened by your own hand?”

“If I can save Emberfall from Karis Luran’s army, I will worry about that day when it comes.” I point at the door. “Leave my room, Lady Lilith. You are not welcome here.”

She lifts her hand to stroke down my chest, her fingers trailing a line of squirming discomfort along my skin that makes me gasp and jerk away before I can stop it.

This will lead nowhere good. I seize her wrist. “What do you want?”

She steps into me, pressing our hands together between our bodies. It’s like clutching a coal against my rib cage, and it pulls a low sound from my throat. I attempt another step back, but now she holds fast.

“I can stop this so easily,” she breathes. “Have you never considered wooing me to break this curse?”

“Get off me.” I want the words to be a threat, but they’re more of a plea.

She rises on her tiptoes to brush her lips over mine, a cruel perversion of the moment I shared with Harper. I turn my face away, pain stealing my breath. “You—you are not to interfere.”

“I interfere with nothing,” she whispers against my cheek. “Your broken girl is nowhere to be found.” A pause. “Do you wish to call for her? Perhaps she would like to beg for more—”

“No!”

Lilith laughs, her breath a rush of heat along my neck. “You are so easy, Rhen. This is why you will not reclaim Emberfall. This is why your kingdom would have fallen, even without my interference. Do you know I tried to seduce your father first, but he turned me away?” She leans down close again. “The King of Emberfall knew, even then, that succumbing to the wrong temptation could undo a man.”

My father, the great philanderer, who would bed any courtesan in eyesight, had the wherewithal to say no to Lilith.

Ever the fool, I walked right into her trap.

Another bolt of failure to join the others lodged in my heart. I clench my eyes closed. “You will leave Harper alone. You will leave Grey alone.”

Her tongue traces the length of my jaw and I shudder. “Of course, Your Highness. You know I would much rather play with you.”

Her hand catches my chin. Turns my head. Her lips press against mine.

My jaw is locked, but it does not matter. This is the worst kind of torture. Something more than pain.

I think of Harper standing in the clearing, her hand on my shoulder, gentle fingers wound through mine. I want to know it’s real.

I think of Harper throwing a knife at Lilith. Please stop hurting him.

Humiliation burns my eyes, my throat. When she breaks the kiss, relief nearly breaks me. I want to shove her away, but I am pinned to the wall. My breathing is rough and ragged.

I cannot look at her. I can barely move. My hands are still in fists, my muscles so tense I am trembling. Any hope that bloomed in my chest has now withered and died.

“You do not wish for my attentions?” she says.

I have to swallow to form a word. “No. Never.”

“Such a waste.” She lays a palm against my cheek, and I flinch. She smiles. “How do you propose to rally your people when you are so easily cowed?”

“I will do what I can to save them.” A chilling thought wraps around my chest. “Are you going to ruin this, Lilith? Are you working with Karis Luran?”

“I have told you already that I have no hand in this. I can even swear that I will allow your charade to play out.”

I blink at her. It’s rare to obtain such a direct oath from her. “You will not interfere with my people.”

“I will not interfere with your people.”

I’m nearly breathless. “And Karis Luran. You will not reveal our plans—”

“I will not reveal your plans.” Her palm is still pressed to my cheek and she leans in. “I truly wish to see her take Emberfall from you, Rhen. I shall enjoy watching.”

This promise gives me strength. I straighten. “You shall be disappointed.”

“Your Highness. Consider the state of your people.”

“I have—”

A white light steals my vision. I’m suddenly in the middle of a village. Rain pours down. Bodies are strewn everywhere. Men. Women. Children. Some have been dismembered. Arrows jut from others. Blood mixes with rain to form glistening puddles along the road. In the distance, homes are burning, smoke a thick plume pouring into the sky.

My knees threaten to collapse, but I blink and I’m staring at Lilith again.

“You show me the future?” I choke out.

“No. I show you what the soldiers of Syhl Shallow did to your border city.”

My mouth opens, but my room vanishes again. A city, this time, larger. Wildthorne Valley. A brawl has broken out. Men who are too thin to fight are battling over the remains of a roasted deer. A punch is thrown and a woman ends up in the mud. Men step on her trying to get to the dead animal. A child screams from somewhere beyond.

I cry out, but I’m back in my chambers.

“I show you the present,” Lilith says, her voice low and vicious.

“Stop,” I whisper. “Stop this.”

My room disappears again. We’re in the middle of a sunlit village. The scent of fish fills the air, but it is not Silvermoon. Another water-dependent town, though, and the people seem better fed. A young boy carries a plank laden with fish across his shoulders. He’s whistling, and a woman from a nearby hut calls out, “Jared! Hurry with those to the fishmonger! The day’s half-gone!”

“I’m going, Ma! I’m going!”

I can breathe. This scene isn’t too terrible.

A low growl fills the air. The boy’s whistle is cut short. He turns, a look of sudden panic on his face.

“Jared!” screams the woman. “No!”

A black shape rushes from the edge of my vision and tackles the boy. The creature is three times his size. Part wildcat, part bear, all claws and teeth and snarling rage. It tears him apart in less time than it takes me to blink. One moment, boy. The next, nothing but so much blood and flesh and viscera.

The woman screams so long and loud that I do not realize I have reappeared in my chambers. I’m on my knees, my arms gripped across my abdomen. I’ve bitten my lip and blood burns on my tongue.

I know what my creature does. I have heard stories from Grey. From my people themselves.

I have never seen it. Never with human eyes.

“Please,” I whimper. “Please stop.”

“Oh, but Your Highness, I believe you deserve to know the true state of your people.” Lilith’s eyes flash. “Before you lead them into war, you should know them all. Before you tear Harper limb from limb, you should know what you’re capable of.”

“No.” A tear slides down my cheek. “Please.”

She has no mercy. My rooms disappear.

Lilith continues her onslaught.

No matter how much I beg, she does not stop.