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“Who cursed me?” I tried a different question.
“Thea, I can’t—” His skin paled.
“Yes, you can!” I yelled so loudly that it shook the ground. “Just tell me.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. His pretty golden eyes stared at me like he was trying to come up with a way to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
“She knows you can tell her.” The King of Cerithia appeared from the forest behind me. I had felt them following us, but I didn’t care. I didn’t warn the rest of my team because I had a feeling this was the beginning of the end. Cassius glanced at his father with a look of sadness I had never seen before. Was his father the one who had cursed me like I had thought all these years? Could I forgive that?
“Tell her who cursed her Cassius,” my father demanded softly.
Chapter 27
Cassius stared at me with pleading eyes, and it made me so anxious that I felt tears brimming in my eyes, threatening to escape.
“Who?” I begged. The Wisp stood by Cassius with dark grey flames.
“Please, Thea, don’t do this. You’re so close,” he begged.
“Who!”
We stared at one another for what seemed like an eternity. My stomach lurched at the way his body sagged with defeat. The way his eyes filled with regret and remorse made tears silently slide down my cheeks.
“I did,” he confessed softly.
As if I had been slapped, I stumbled backward. No. He didn’t do this to me. He loves me. My fire mist burst out of me, and it crept along the ground towards him. My fire wrapped around his wrists, but instead of hurting him, my magic caressed him. It begged him to be lying. Cassius closed his eyes tightly like that was the worst thing I could have done to him at that moment. Caress him like he was everything to me because he was everything to me. He fell to his knees as silent tears fell down his face.
Haden and everyone behind him watched me like they knew. Like all of them had known he was the one who cursed me. My magic tightened on Cassius. That darkness that lived in me clawed its way up my chest. Betrayal. Betrayal. Betrayal.
It called out in my mind. He lied to us. The darkness wanted to take over to help me from falling apart, but I couldn’t do it. Kill him. Kill him. Make him pay for what he did to us. For making me believe his pretty words. For being so blind. The Wisps had gathered by the dozens at Crimson’s border. All of them a sad melancholy grey to match how I felt.
“Tell her how you cursed her, what you had to do to her for her soul to be damned,” my father demanded with anger.
“Please,” Cassius begged on his knees still bound by my magic. “Thea.”
“He killed you,” my father answered. “Drove a dagger straight through your heart. That viper-handled one you love so much.”
Cassius's lips pressed into a hard line as I fell to my knees. Somewhere far away my world fell off its axis and stopped moving. My body froze at the confession, but my father could be lying. My fire mist jolted a wave of betrayal down it. Cassius’s painful sob made me pull them away, but I could see them. I had burned red marks around his wrists.
“But I’m not dead,” I muttered to my father. “I’m fine.” He was lying. This had to be a lie. My father gave me a look of pure pity.
“Tell me that he’s lying, Cassius,” I cried out to him. His eyes were so colorless as he looked over at me. My heart thudded inside my chest loudly as I waited for him to refute all of this. All he had to do was tell me my father was lying and I would run across this boundary and choose him. “Tell everyone that you would have never done that to me.” He physically winced at my pleading.
“He’s telling the truth,” Cassius whispered. The Wisps turned black in an instant before swirling together like a black tornado. Only they didn’t go after Cassius. They charged at me. Were they angry with me for believing Cassius? They broke into a million floating orbs when they rammed through me, but I couldn’t focus on them.
I shook my head no. “Why are you lying to me?” I cried out. “You love me!”
He simply hung his head in shame. No, this was a bad dream, and I would wake up in the cave. I must have fallen asleep.
“A betrayal that ran so deep and wicked that it cursed your soul to die over and over again in front of the man you had loved so deeply. The Gods came down from the stars themselves to curse you for loving the wrong man. These trials they put on every year to get you out of hiding were just a ploy. You don’t need these trials to get your life back. All you had to do was take the witch’s bloodstone and gift it to a side. You weren’t meant to die. You were never supposed to be with him.” My father hissed towards Cassius. “He just wants you for your power and the stone.”
I shook images out of my mind. Cassius driving a dagger with a viper handle through my heart. He killed me with my own dagger.
“You’ve died in every trial but this one,” my father continued. “His curse to bear is to watch you die over and over. His burden is to make you fall in love with him over and over again without you ever remembering who he is. Because if he can’t convince you he loves you back, you’d never choose him to gift the bloodstone to. Not over your own family.”
Cassius was completely broken now. I was slowly slipping into a darkness I didn’t know if I would ever find my way out of. I felt the darkness consume me as if to say it would protect me. He had killed me. He had cursed me. He had broken me beyond repair.
“The day he killed you the Gods granted him a choice: let your soul move to the next world or give you a chance to get your life back. Your magic is special, Thea, and it was never meant to end so quickly. Even the Gods did not see the betrayal coming. Your memories were erased each time you died so that you did not have to remember what he did to you.”
