“Killing me is her only way out of this curse, and it’s been a long time coming.” I lifted my glass in salute. “It’s been a good run, Piff.”
“No!” he cried.
“It’s how she can leave this mess.”
“But! What is her counter curse? What if you breakhercurse and thenshecan break yours!”
I shook my head, sipping the last of my drink. “She’s never revealed how to break her own curse. It’s been over five hundred years. You’d think she’d have broken it by now if it was easy to do.”
He drew nearer, fumbling his hands at his chest. He approached my chair by the fireplace with caution. “Mistress comes looking to speak to Ishtak. Maybe if we made some precautions?—”
“I’m not letting her go down the western corridor. Have you forgotten what it was like when I dragged you out of there with me?”
His shoulders shuddered and he pursed his lips. “I remember it, Master. My dreams are filled with those vile things. But if Ishtak can provide some other way to?—”
“If I believed she could, I would have trekked down that Goddess-forsaken tunnel as many times as necessary by now.” I rose and poured another glass, tipping in the last few drops. Shaking the bottle, I quirked a brow.
“I have more in the pantry, sire. Shall I retrieve another bottle for the night?”
I gulped down the rest. “Make it two. I’d like to offer one to our guest. She’ll need it for what I have to tell her.”
“Perhaps you could get to know her first? Before you give up and tell her to drive a knife through your heart?”
“I do know her, Piff.” I sunk onto my bed, picking up the book. “I’ve known her story for years.”
“That’s not the same thing, sire. You know of her origins, her story as Goddess, but you do not know her now—here—as flesh and blood not far from where you sit on that bed.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. She could never love me and she never will.”
CHAPTER 10
Reshina
When I woke,it was a slow slide back into clarity. It took me some time to grasp where I was and what had happened. I pressed a palm to my temple, chiding myself at the two glasses of yagsmead I had gulped down at the tavern in Heartstone.
I wandered into the washing room to splash my face with water and swish the taste of sleep from my mouth. Standing at the basin, I sifted through everything that had happened since I bled onto that snow.
The curse of Heartstone Castle had dragged me into it, playing the part of the woman who could end Arthur’s curse—the same curse that I had delivered to his father decades ago.
The Underrealm was built by many hands. Fine hands that knew carpentry and masonry. Where were they now? Who had built these vast corridors and that great hall of carved stone monuments?
Ishtak must know. She must retain the knowledge of something that had been lost to time or reason, and more than I needed to quell the rumbling in my stomach, I needed to find her.
My daughter would be leaving for her arranged marriagewithin two months, and I needed to help her prepare. There was much to do. She’d need a wedding gown, dresses as a queen, advice on life with a man you did not know—these were the details I could provide my daughter and I intended to.
I slipped into my heeled shoes and clacked loudly across the marble floor, thinking better of wearing them and leaving them beside the bed instead. On bare feet, I lifted the hem of my gown, slipping out the door of my room.
The corridor was still lit, though the hall I slipped quietly down looked exactly like the last. I was soon lost, turning which ways I thought were correct, only to find myself in the same forked path or one that was identical to another. After the seventh turn that led me back to the corridor with my room, I shifted, giving up on legs and flew instead.
When at last I turned down a corridor with a subtle change in the light, I found it opened up into the great marble stone hall. I shifted back into my Ravenfae form, exhausted, angry, and more determined than ever to leave the Underrealm for good. I ran across the black floors, my wings helping to carry me until I stood with cold feet in front of the western corridor.
A breeze shifted toward me, the scent of decay bringing with it a foreboding dread. I shivered but stepped forward, ready to face what might await me in the consuming dark.
The corridor was no more than a roughly paved path through black stone, chipped and jagged enough to pierce my skin if I wasn’t careful of my hands and footing. The walls closed in around me as the light from the hall faded away, forcing me to feel my way forward, searching for any sense of light or life.
I walked through the black tunnel, growing colder by the minute and unable to settle my heart with a sense of unease drifting heavily through the air. A clicking sound met my ears and my head snapped up, hitting the edge of a sharp stone.
I cursed in true Goddess fashion and pulled my fingers away from my wound, slipping one into mymouth to taste blood. A drip slid down my forehead, and I wiped it away, scraping my fingers across the wet rocky walls rather than my gown.
