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“Hints at the future,” Eryka whispered.
Calista shrugged. “I suppose. There is always a choice, but there are consequences for those choices. I merely deliver foreshadows or guidance toward a path of fate. They might be dreary; they might be joyous. It is your choice to heed the missive or not.”
My stomach tangled in tight, heated knots. Eryka was a seer, but her trances felt more like a guide leading us forward after we had already chosen a path.
This sort of mesmer seemed more dangerous. More sinister. Missives of fate we could not avoid, or if we consciously did avoid them, disastrous consequences would follow.
All at once, I did not want the girl to place her pen to the parchment at all.
Kase tightened his hold around my hand and offered a small smile. No doubt he tasted my fear of this girl’s magic like a soiled bit of jerky. I leaned into him. This was the move, and it would do us no good if I wobbled about in uncertainty.
Calista sat on one of the benches in the warship, splayed out the crinkled parchment, and closed her eyes. The hum of an eerie tune came from her throat as she spun the quill between her fingers.
I startled when she snapped open her eyes, a subtle shimmer glazed across the blue, and Kase had to catch me around the waist.
Calista dipped the quill in the ink. Nothing but the gentle lap of water on wood, the groan of heavy ships rocking side to side, and the scratch of pen to parchment was heard as she scribbled a few lines, reading the words aloud like a storybook.
“Deep within, find a king’s hateful foe and return again to the beast you know.
By light of moon, a beastly reign begins anew.
Nary a thought but death and gore, our beast king lusts for blood once more. Until. . .”
Calista paused. Her lashes fluttered, and the quill halted. She pointed her gaze to the sky. The melancholy humming returned as she studied the velvet night. Sea wind whipped her hair around her face as the girl swayed a little on her bench. Like the song stirred the words she needed to write.
Another heartbeat, another breath, and she turned her attention to the parchment.
“Until blood’s desire is shadowed, forgotten, and gone. Only then, will our earth king, at last, move on.”
Calista returned the quill to the inkwell. She tried to hide it, but her hands trembled as she carefully tore the words out of the big sheet of parchment.
“This alters your fate, Cursed King,” she said softly. “This was not in your plan, and there are consequences for changing the Norn’s desires.”
“I see no other way. Was it not a seer of fate who led us here?” Valen pointed at Eryka. The fae woman shrunk a bit behind Gunnar, but she did not deny what she’d said, nor what she saw in her trance. “It has always remained, the . . . call to blood. The memory of those days. What if this is the reason?”
“What if, indeed.” Calista sniffed, rereading her words. “I hope you find a way to forget it, to be free of it this time. Royal blood is not the key as it once was. It is not so simple. There is no respite between changes. Fate is being cruel and punishing you, it seems.”
“No respite between changes?” Tor stepped forward, a dark sort of pain in his eyes. “But before there were weeks between and . . .”
“By light of moon,” Valen said, voice hard and flat. “Seems I will need to be bound and chained each night.”
“Dammit.” Halvar leaned over the rail of the ship. He looked pale.
“Could someone else be cursed?” Ari came to Valen’s side.
Calista narrowed her eyes, studying him. “It’s possible. But it’d take time you don’t have. I am returning a curse that never truly left him in complete peace. It is like stirring that memory.”
I froze when Calista flicked her eyes to me. How much did she know—or sense—about my mesmer?
“How long?” Ari asked. “To build a new curse, I mean.”
“It is an intricate spell cast,” Calista said. “Curses feed on individual attributes and twists them. I would need to learn your greatest attribute, then conjure a curse to use that against you.”
“I am loyal,” Ari offered.
“So shall I curse you with the proclivity to betray folk?”
“Strong. An illusionist. I am clever.” Ari’s voice hitched to a new desperation.
