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“The Cursed Lands have miles and miles of catacombs beneath them—some of them still explorable. In an unmarked section, rumored to be the burial grounds of a forgotten queen, the device was found. Initially, no one knew what it was or what it was for, and it wasn’t until it was tested that its purpose was discovered. Scared that it might fall into the wrong hands, the Elders tried to destroy it. They tried nearly everything they could think of. They even tried to throw it into the Endless Mist, but not even the mist would take it.”
“It’s called the Crown of Thorns,” Soren added as he walked up to us, two bloody rabbits hanging by their feet by a rope he held in his hand. He stopped a few feet from the fire and offered me a huge smile, his eyes squeezing shut. “Hope you like rabbit.”
“I do,” I answered warmly before I turned back to Ryker. “How did you come to be in possession of it?”
“The person who originally found it was our father.” Ryker’s hand gestured to him and Harper, his bicep flexing with the motion. “After the Elders accepted that they couldn’t destroy it, they entrusted it to him.”
“He didn’t tell any of us where he put it, not even Mom,” Harper added, her fingers drawing light, rhythmic circles on Lyra’s arm. Lyra performed the same rhythmic movement against Harper’s leg.
“So then, how did you find it?” I asked, eager to hear more.
Ryker smirked, leaning back in his perch on the fallen tree. “I’mveryresourceful when it comes to tracking things.”
“It’s true,” Harper confirmed.
I was chock-full of questions, but there was one pressing harder than the rest. “Why did you want to get rid of your Curse?”
Silence passed. For a moment, I wondered if I’d pried too much.
Ryker’s brown eyes firmly met mine. “Because I was in love.”
“In love?” The word tasted foreign on my tongue.
He nodded. “I was sixteen at the time. Young, foolish—but still just as handsome.” He winked before his playful tilt returned to his low, resonant tone. “Word reached the Elders that the king was preparing an army to attack us. It was rumored to be larger than one he used for the Battle for the Red Rose. Harper and I were tasked with tracking a group of soldiers camped on the cusp of Roganbush—a small village a day’s ride from the Cursed Lands. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night—the storm was like a rabid wolf. The rain was so thick, I could hardly see my hand in front of my face. There was so much lightning, I thought the gods were fighting in the clouds. But it was just what we needed. Under the cloak of it, we infiltrated their camp and kidnapped a soldier.” A smile teased the corners of his broad mouth. “Fallon.”
“One of the best female fighters I’ve ever gone hand to hand with. I still have the scar to prove it.” Harper tilted her chin upwards, showcasing the thin white line on her otherwise flawless skin.
“We took her back to the Cursed Lands.” Ryker leaned forward. “The Elders didn’t treat her well. As soon as we returned, they threw her in a dark, cold cell. They interrogated her frequently, and sometimes they even used force.” His right hand clenched—his tell. “And I let them do it.” He didn’t mince the self-loathing in his words.
“We didn’t know, Ryker. We didn’t know how far they were going to take it,” Harper offered, a rope thrown out to her twin who was drowning in an ocean of guilt.
He must have latched on because his gaze lifted and he continued, “I couldn’t stay away from her, regardless of the contempt she held for me. I was to blame for her abduction—for the cell she was locked in. I felt compelled, almost like I owed it to her to make things better. I’d take her food, and for the longest time, she’d just shove it away. One time, she even threw it at me—I couldn’t blame her.” He chuckled to himself, shaking his head slightly. The smile drifted, his expression shifting. “Eventually, she started to accept the food. I’d watch her eat, and sometimes we’d just sit there in silence and stare at each other. And then, one day, she just started to talk.” His eyebrows raised, almost as if he were still in disbelief. “She told me that she had lost her parents when she was young. Having lost my own mother and father, I understood that pain, and we bonded over it. As the nights stretched longer, and our talks became deeper, I realized I was falling in love with her—our first kiss was through those metal bars.” He stopped, muscles tensing. “She was in that cell for a total of three months, but she never caved—never gave the Elders the information they wanted, no matter what they did to her.” The fire cast a warm, honey glow on his face, but it did little to soften the firm setting of his clenched jaw and furrowed brow.
On bated breath, I waited for him to continue, but instead, he asked me a question. “Do you know what crossing the unconscious mind barrier does?”
“Yes, Ezra goes on frequent rants about it—she does not condone the act.”
Ryker nodded. “The barrier protects the unconscious mind, but if someone with the Mind Curse crosses that barrier, a piece of them gets stuck, like a sliver wedged inside. This means that they are always privy to that person’s thoughts, that they can loot through them and even distort them. It’s like peering through someone’s bathing room window and watching them undress, except the perpetrator canmakethem undress, make them think they are in a bathing room, when in reality, they are stripping their clothes in the downtown square. Crossing the unconscious mind barrier is rape of the mind, and its use is disgusting.”
I swallowed, not liking where this was headed.
He continued. “The Elders ran out of options, and they were running out of time. They held a council meeting that lasted three days, and after a nine to eight vote, they decided to break Fallon’s unconscious mind barrier.” Ryker shook his head, his expression filled with disdain. “I couldn’t stomach the thought of them doing that to her. That night, Fallon and I forged a plan. I would break her out and we would leave—together. But there was one problem—I was Cursed and she was not. You know how the outside world treats people like us, what they do to the people who are close to us—even if they aren’t Cursed. I refused to be the reason she was shunned from society should the truth ever be found out about me.”
He paused. I think we all did.
He supplied a single determined nod, and then he continued. “It took me three hours to find where the Crown of Thorns was hidden, and half of that was spent digging. But I was a fool. I had no idea what I was in for.”
Harper stared at the dwindling flames, her voice shaky as she spoke. “When I found him, his blood, it was . . . It was everywhere.” She turned her hand over, staring at it as if the blood were still there. “His veins, it was like they had turned to glass and sliced through his skin.”
I leaned in, my heart galloping.
“I thought he was going to die,” she whispered. “It took all of my strength to rip that fucking crown off his head.” She clenched her jaw, tension rolling off her in heavy waves. “After the healers had him stabilized, they told me how close he had come to losing his Curse—to losing his life. He was unconscious for six weeks.”
Ryker cracked his knuckles, his shoulders set, tense. He looked lost in thought, her words returning him to some sort of private damnation.
The five of us sat in silence, each of us consumed with our private thoughts.
When the fire was just about to go out, Harper fed it four more logs. A flick of her wrist and it was stoked into another monstrous flame.
