Those exact hands shifted across my skin, tracing the line of my jaw where he held my face in his palms. “Yes, I have loved you for years. And for months, I have understood what I felt then was a fraction of what I feel now. I am immortalized by you. One day, when our time is done, you will continue on in this life, and I will not.”
I jerked away in a desperate vehemence, but he followed, rising and holding me still. “As you said, change is a vile thing, but there is good in change, too. Change brought back the meaning in my life. Change gave me someone to love—the same one I’d been writing to in the margins of my books all those years, so she could read them in my bed in the early morning hours.”
“Don’t do this,” I begged, the first spill of a tear sliding down my cheek.
“I love you now and I loved you then. I will love you tomorrow and the next day and the next. Until I am dead, cold in my grave, and the stars cease to shine, I will love you. There will be no leaving, Reshina. I am by your side until the day my heart fails and it cannot beat in your name.”
“I cannot?—”
“I know.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “I know, I know. I know you cannot love me.” He lifted his head in a smile that could light the world had he not been trapped beneath it. “I love you regardless. I know that if you could love me, you would.”
I froze.
I could not move.
I could not indicate a single release of breath or shift of my hands on his chest.
The curse had more power over me than just stealing the words from my lips. Not only was I unable to confess love, I could not show it. I could not reveal even the slightest hint of the truth in my heart.
I loved.
Of course, I loved.
The curse, meant for my father but bestowed upon me, was a diabolical thing. One of the worst I’d ever encountered in all my time as Cursebringer.
Theabilityto love had never left me.
Thewordsdid.
I could never say them.
Never write them.
Never show the truth of them to anyone, even my own children, just babes in my arms, looking up into my eyes as if I was all that mattered in the entire world.
Not even then.
Not now as I had come to love this man with my entirety.
Until he moved or spoke again, I was trapped within my own curse.
He searched my eyes for something. Anything. Any sign or hint of what I could have felt in another time when I was not cursed and neither was he. I stared blankly at him, screaming, rattling in my cage, begging for him to somehow see that I loved him back.
He smiled sadly. “You cannot love me. I know. And you cannot tell me how your curse is broken. I know that, too.” He laughed without humor. “Perhaps one day, I’ll break it without meaning to. I’ll kiss your elbow at just the right spot and poof! You’ll tell me how much you love me then.”
I lifted my arm, pointing my elbow towards him. “Might as well try,” I rasped.
He did laugh then, kissing it swiftly, leaving little trails of his lips. He took the other, doing the same, pressing me down into the bed, laughing with me. The curse had released me, sure that the moment of confession had passed.
He swept the hair back from my face. “I have enough love for the both of us, Reshina. I am yours for however long you’d like me to be.”
Forever, I whispered in the reaches of my mind, taking his face in my hands and pouring whatever love I could into my kiss.
CHAPTER 42
Arthur
I caughther one day as I always did, falling through the land we now both called home and into the Underrealm. This landing took its toll—sending me right through a tall mirror which had been propped up in Reshina’s rooms for the times when Piffle draped her in luxurious gowns.
