To my horror, he slipped a long dagger into my palm, kissing my knuckles and squeezing my fingers around the hilt. My hand shook as he lined it up at his chest. “Do it and know that I love you.”
“Ihateyou,” I cried, preparing to shift beneath him. “You are my husband, and you will stay my husband, and I will save my daughter, and Ishtak can?—”
“You’ve never asked me about my scar.”
My breath shuddered on the inhale, and I swallowed hard. “Do not do this.”
“I was ten.”
I shook my head angrily. “I do not wish to hear!”
“My father took a good look at me one day in passing, seeing my mother’s face, knowing she loved her son, but not his father.”
“Arthur please, I’m begging you?—”
“The Beast struck in a bloody rage before I had a chance to run. And though my face was forever marred that day, my mother’s became unrecognizable. Shredded to the point where our only resemblance was in the brutality of him.”
My lips trembled and tears streamed down my cheeks. I felt for the line of tight skin that ran from his temple to the base of his jaw. “Why are you telling me this?”
He pulled my palm to his lips. “Because I need you to know that I am accustomed to the pain. I have known loneliness. I have known sorrow, even in my youth. They’ve been the dread in my thoughts and the shadows in the corners of my rooms for years, biding their time to send me to madness—just like my father before me.”
Wrapping a hand around the back of my neck, he pulled me closer, the tip of the knife barely piercing his skin. “But you, Goddess. You became my savior. First through the lines of a book. Then in the flesh and blood, spilling onto my lands to save me from a cruel and dire fate. I would take this dagger to my chest a hundredfold if it meant these last months were real. That you were real.”
I wrapped my hand around his—desperately grabbing onto the comfort of his fingers through mine. “You cannot ask me to do this.”
“You are the Goddess of the Ravenfae. Your daughter’s life is hanging by a thread. You have no other choice. You will do what needs to be done. So do it.”
“I.Can’t,” I seethed through my teeth, attempting to escape his grip on my hand holding the knife.
“Then I will do it for you.”
I screamed in agony as he jolted forward, forcing his body upon the blade, his hand—his beautiful, strong hand—gripping mine so tightly, I’d find bruises left from his fingers.
“I’ve loved you for so long,” he grunted, easing his body closer to me with more of the blade sliding into his chest. Before the steel was buried through his heart completely, he pressed a kiss to my lips, leaving a smear of blood and whispering, “And I will see you again beyond the Veil.”
My hand warmed as his blood trickled down my knuckles. His lips were still held to mine as he began to fall, and the weight of the curse holding me to the Underrealm lifted in an audible sigh, breezing through the tunnel.
But it wasn’t the only one.
The curse that had plagued me for over five hundred years broke from my soul. Like shattered glass, I bellowed a scream not of this realm. A flood of all I’d never been able to say poured from my mouth as if my body retched with words of the unyielding love I’d felt since I was a sixteen year old child.
“I love you, I love you, I love you!” I screamed into his chest, as he lay on the floor. I tore at his shirt pooling in crimson stains. “COME BACK TO ME! I LOVE YOU!”
He believed I didn’t.
And he sacrificed his life for me anyway.
Self-sacrifice of one’s life was a cruel and unusual way to break my curse, but the harshness of it mirrored the outlines of the curse, and when he’d held my hand steady and pinned himself upon the blade, he’d broken both of them. One from a blade through the heart, held by my hand. One through the sacrifice of love.
I cursed the realm, the Veil, the stars in the sky as I shoved my hands in my pockets, not stopping to swipe the tears streaming down my face. “Where is it, where is it?” I laid the vials of undelivered curses out on the rocky floor, my hands shaking, touching each one, searching for the exact bottle I needed. They glowed in colors of red and green and pink, illuminating the dark.
It could work,I told myself.It had to.
The glass vials clinked together until I touched the one I needed. I yanked the cork from the opening and tilted my head back, breathing in the crimson smoke as six seeds of pomegranate trickled onto my tongue. I crushed them in my teeth, barely registering the sharp tartness of the juice. I lined my fingers along the side of Arthur’s throat, feeling for any sign of a pulse. It was so faint, I knew I had no time. I kissed his lips as soon as the seeds were down my throat, searching for his pulse again.
“Mistress!” Piffle howled down the dark tunnel, followed by the calls of Seraphine.
I ignored them, relying on Piffle to keep her from entering too far. “Please, Arthur, stay here with me.”
