Page 2 of Reaper’s Curse

The advisor squared his shoulders and motioned to Valen with a stiff hand. “I believe you have already met our royal healer.”

Valen approached, his expression appearing a little too eager. He held firm to a metal device with which I was unfamiliar.

“Ms. Gunn and I have indeed had the pleasure. Now, if you don’t mind…” He raised the metal piece, presenting it to me. “All that is required is your mark, and our agreement is as good as set in stone.”

The warmth provided by the generous fire blazing in the hearth increased, setting my skin to burn. To sweat. My chest tightened, and my attention glued to the mysterious piece in his hand. Something about the design reminded me of the soul-extracting glove I had used to save Winter. An antique tool.

“My mark?” Uncertainty never failed to tie my gut into knots.

“Yes. Your mark. It’s simple enough.” He extended his hand, the metal instrument flat in his palm. Two flat sheets of metal with space between them, like an alloy and air sandwich. “Place your hand inside.”

I flexed my hand, feeling the phantom chill of Winter’s ice magic. His frost still lingered under the skin of my fingers, expanding and sweeping over the lava slushing through my veins.

Shifting the infected limb behind my back, I kept only my remaining warm-blooded hand visible. “Why is my signature not enough?”

Forgoing a verbal response, Valen pressed the device closer.

My heart beat with the wild rhythm of a crow’s wings in panicked flight.

The queen needs me, I reasoned. She wouldn’t do anything that would hurt me, prevent me from making good on our agreement.

Even as I attempted to infuse reason into the situation, I could hear Chace chastising me for considering the request. He was definitely more skeptical of just about everything, and I had to admit that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But he wasn’t present, and I could see no better option to accomplish the task for which we were sent. We needed access to the secrets surrounding the curse itself, and this agreement might actually give us that.

With a deep breath that failed to settle my volatile emotions, I reluctantly slipped my non-magically infected hand between the two sheets of metal.

The device clicked, and pressure…no…stabbing pain…slammed through my fingers. A hot flash followed by a dull, wet throb. Biting down on a yelp, I pulled my hand free and ogled the blood pooling on each of my fingertips.

My mouth dropped open as if to force my question, possible objection, free. Yet no words sprang forth, and before I could blink, Valen grabbed my hand and slammed it, bloody fingers down, to the awaiting parchment.

My mark, my blood, next to my already provided signature.

Valen handed me a handkerchief, and I deftly cleaned the blood from my skin.

“Sealed with a blood oath,” he said. “Fail to uphold your end of the agreement, and your life is forfeit.”

2

“Forfeit?” I jerked back, allowing an extra foot of distance between myself and Valen. “What will the queen do if I don’t deliver? Have me executed?”

I blinked hard and sucked the newly pooled blood from my fingers. An action meant to hold me from pressing my hand against the building pressure in my chest. Or from throttling Valen.

With a mere shrug and an expression of disinterest, he rolled the parchment into his solid grasp. “I suppose she could if she so desired. She is the queen, after all.”

The queen, with her own life to lose, I thought. Or so she professed.

“But…” Valen rolled the word off his tongue, long and slow. “From my experience, she would more likely shackle you to servitude. Possibly pair you with me to work at the citadel’s current predicament until it’s solved.”

“Is that what she has done to you? Shackled you to servitude?”

He didn’t respond. And he showed no sign of intending to do so.

Deciding not to push, I rubbed my fingers and then waved my hand in an attempt to return the blood flow…and the beat of my heart in my tips…to normal. “Servitude or not, I thought that was what I was doing; working to solve your problem.”

“Indeed.” He slipped the marked parchment into the interior of his jacket and strode toward the door. “So, you should probably get to it rather quickly.”

Trying to remember that my ire was directed at the queen and not her messenger, I considered asking him how he knew my father…if he too had once been a reaper, as I suspected. One who got trapped here by the curse.