In my many centuries, I couldn’t recall encountering such a creature as him. The Beast had undoubtedly changed whom I guessed was once a proper gentleman—boring—but proper in his acts and mannerisms. But the man I’d taken great pains to speak little with was like a man at the edge of madness. It was as if he remembered he was supposed to bend to a Goddess, but something inside made him a bit feral instead, causing him to attempt to order me around when truly, he could do no such thing.
Asserting my power was such an effort, and for the time being, I had little desire to fight him when I truly did desire to explore the library of the Underrealm.
When we left the dining hall, Piffle caught us, asking after the meal to which I made sure to praise him exceedingly well, ignoring Arthur all the while.
It didn’t seem to irritate him as I hoped, but he smiled at meinstead—the corners of his eyes crinkling as someone carefree looked out from them. I admitted then that we must share a true fondness for Piffle and his smiles were honest for the commendation of his only friend.
I walked beside the man down twisting corridors, one after the other, same as the last. “Do you ever tire of such bland halls? Why do you not outfit these corridors to easily tell them apart?”
“I spend little time in them,” he answered. “I rarely go anywhere in the Underrealm but my room, the library, or up the staircase.”
“I’ve passed other rooms. What’s in them?”
He gave a short shrug. “Dust, I presume.”
“Did your mother keep a room down here?”
“She did once. Only because my father forced her. She preferred to live in Heartstone Castle. It’s where I was raised.”
“Did you come to the Underrealm as a child?”
Silence contained him for so long, I assumed he wouldn’t answer. “I wasn’t supposed to. But curiosity would get the better of me on occasion.”
I looked him over quickly, curious again about his scar. “You rarely saw your father as human, then?”
“I rarely saw him at all. My mother made sure of that.”
“I am sorry you lost both of your parents so young, Arthur.”
We stopped before two doors meeting in an arched center. “Thank you. I am sorry for the loss of yours as well.”
It’s a strange thing to meet someone who knows so much about you.Cursed Goddess of the Veilwas not widely read outside of the Moonstone and Brackish Wood, but there was my captor, knowing well enough that I lost both of my parents at a mere sixteen—the year I became the Ravenfae Goddess and Cursebringer.
“It isn’t fair, is it? You know so much about me, but I am at a loss for what your life has been like. Though I can guess at much of it.”
He cracked a wide grin. “Please, guess away.”
I stood a little taller, my wings flaring at the challenge. “Alright. You were born a Prince of Heartstone Castle, though you did not live the life a typical human prince would. You grew up lonely, your mother and servants the only souls around you, teaching you the manners of a gentleman, but there was always a looming absence in your life.”
His brow rose as he listened. “Which was?”
“Your father. You were the direct result of a curse placed upon him when he was a young twenty-two year old king. The curse came from the Veil, delivered by a Goddess who had no choice but to do so, or it would have grown in…severity.”
“I’ve heard of this severity you speak of. Perhaps if you had allowed it to grow, we could have avoided all of this and killed my father outright.”
“It is…uncomfortable to refrain from delivering a curse. I’ve done it only once before with good reason.”
He cocked his head, folding his arms. “And what reason was that?”
“It doesn’t matter now. All reasons were my own and it is done.” I took a step closer to him, looking over his scar. “When you became of age, you left Heartstone to take your role as Duke of Riche, where you remained a proper gentleman by day and an absolute rake by nightfall.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Don’t deny it.”
“I would never.”
“You only returned to your mother at Heartstone when your father died. You knew that she was the last thread between you and the curse, so you took care of her, though not with a deep love for her. She was less of a mother and more of a burden in your life. When she grew ill, you grew anxious, knowing what fate would befall you. You did everything you could to keep heralive, not out of love, but out of fear of what you would become. What you saw in your father. A Beast.”
