AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You stabbed it too. I saw you.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t able to use my iron blade on him until you tripped him and wounded him.” Her brows lifted, but it was quite clear she wasn’t going to speak to me again, perhaps ever, unless I angered her.
With a bow, I left the room and nearly bowled directly into Everence, who waited, arms akimbo, in the hall.
My cousin assessed me with narrow eyes as I quietly shut Talia’s bedroom door. The overpowering scent of honey diminished slightly as the door clicked shut.
I stepped aside so that Everence could enter. My brother would see Talia’s indifference as something to celebrate, despite the emptiness that would forever remain in my cold, dark heart. As I brushed past my cousin, I nearly stumbled into the wall. Hands in my hair, I stared down the empty corridor, trying to find words to voice what I had just realized.
“I—” For several seconds, I stood there, mouth open, silent.
Everence waited quietly behind me.
My curse. For the first time in all my existing memories, I was glad I bore my curse. But these words could no more leave my tongue than a language I didn’t know.
My cousin took a step toward me, but I didn’t turn to face her. I couldn’t face anyone just now.
“I think I understand,” she said, her voice carrying a little louder than I’d expected. “You are both pleased and crushed that she despises you.”
I nodded, thankful she could find words when I could not.
“You see how valuable she is, and you are pleased to bear the weight of your curse, if it means she will live.”
My eyes closed as I nodded once more. Talia’s face filled my mind. I couldn’t speak this strange new revelation aloud. I had hated my curse every day for almost three hundred years, with every drop of blood in my body and every breath I’d taken.
I shook my head in disbelief. “How can I be thankful for the thing I hate most?”
When she spoke next, I could hear the smile shaping her words. “Because for the first time, your eyes are not on yourself.”
That stung. But she was right. I’d only ever cared about my own healing, and I’d decided that the world existed to purge me of my pains.
“I love her, Everence.” The words fell from my lips as easily as drops of rain from a storm cloud. She was brave, confident, fearless—things I’d aspired to my entire life. Her beauty was amplified by the fact that it was real and unadorned. She saw a path ahead and marched down it with determination, even when that path took her into danger. She was a better person than me, stronger in every way, and she deserved to live.
My cousin stepped around me, finally forcing me to look at her. She nodded, as if she’d known for a while what I’d only just discovered. Her smile, however, faltered. “And now you can never have her.”
I scowled. “You wished for her to die too.”
“No, I never wished that.” She glanced over my shoulder at Talia’s bedroom door. “I wished for something much greater.”
“Greater than taking my curse upon herself and pulling the evil I was chosen to bear into her own veins?” I crushed my palms against my eyes.
Everence gently lowered my hands, holding them carefully in her own. A few brief notes of her magical music flowed over me, and I exhaled in relief despite my whirling thoughts.
“I was hoping for this.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “That when you looked into the face of the one who took away your curse, you would finally find what you have always longed for. Love. I knew that love would change you, cousin—from the beast you were to the man I see before me now.”
At the word beast, I tensed. “But she didn’t take my curse—thank the First and Last.”
“It wasn’t your brother’s curse you needed to leave behind, cousin.”
My pulse drummed in my ears. It wasn’t my flesh that needed to change, it was the beast I had become, the cruel, unfeeling creature with a heart black enough to choose to kill my own savior. It was the terrible and beautiful truth.
“But as it turns out,” Everence added, “you fell in love and she did not, the best of all circumstances, and also the worst, because it keeps her whole while keeping you forever unhappy.”
I’d thought my heart was empty because it ached. Rather, for the first time, it was full.
With two angry hands, I grabbed fistfuls of my hair. I’d never known the depth of my brokenness until this day, and yet, now I was whole—she’d taken my emptiness and filled it.
“No, not unhappy. I will keep her safe all the days of her life,” I said through gritted teeth. “I will follow her into the mortal realms, and as long as I am able, until my mind disintegrates into nothing, I will defend her from every foe, every danger, every unworthy man who dares lay a hand on her.”
