It’s a bear.
“Cole,” Omorose calls softly.
The shifter prince jumps to his paws, gray eyes immediately finding us despite the darkness. Two more bears rise to standing as we near. In their center, Frederick paces across a bed of blossoming flowers, freezing as soon as he sees us. By his feet, Ella sits, clutching her knees to her chest while her magic sinks into the dirt, bringing a wild meadow to life. I was too wrapped up in my exhaustion to notice, but now that we’re so close, I can taste the potent sting of stolen magic in the air, the bitter bite of the curse nipping at her heels. She looks up, glancing to her sister, then to me. The barest hint of a smile passes over her lips as they widen, opening as though to speak. Before any sound emerges, she collapses.
“Ella!”
Omorose and I whisper-shout in unison. We close the distance and drop as one to our knees, landing beside her small body. Ella convulses against the dirt, trembling as her curse takes its toll, stripping time from her young life. She did this to help me. She’s in pain because of me. I grip her fingers in mine, wishing I could take the ache away, while Omorose gently cups her cheek.
“Shh,” she murmurs, voice a hairsbreadth from breaking. She wipes a stray hair from Ella’s moist brow and brushes her thumb over the wrinkles etched into her sister’s skin, deep from the hurt. A fierceness carves into her features, protective and determined, but most of all, drenched in love. “It’ll all be okay. I’m going to save you. I promise, I’m going to save you.” Then she turns to the rest of us, fueled by an inner strength I wasn’t aware she possessed. “We need to leave now. The electricity will come back on soon.”
The shifter prince drops to the ground beside Omorose. It takes a moment for me to understand what’s happening as together, Frederick and Omorose lift Ella onto his back so she’s balanced on his fur. Omorose climbs up behind Ella, then lies over her sister to hold her steady, fingers gripping the thick hide of her lover’s neck. Frederick calmly leaps onto the second bear, while the third stomps over to me.
I look at him in disbelief.
Then I turn to the shifter prince, meeting his cool gray eyes. Does he understand the shock in mine? I’ve never seen a shifter allow a human to ride them like this. Do Omorose and Frederick even recognize the honor they’ve been bestowed? The rare privilege?
“It’s okay,” Omorose says into the silence. I turn to find her gaze, worried she thinks me afraid. When I meet her brown eyes, there’s an awareness in them that surprises me, a sympathy for someone so different from herself. “They volunteered. Cole didn’t order them to do this. They offered because they love their prince, and he loves me, and we all understand what it’s like to be shackled by a power outside of our control. They wanted to help Ella, and that meant first, they had to help you. Frederick told us about the thermal imaging, and this was the only thing we could come up with on short notice to fight it. Please, get on. We need to leave, or all of this will be for nothing.”
A wet nose presses into my palm and I spin. The bear nudges my side, its head as big as my torso, then dips its neck, presenting me with the opening to climb on. This is the last gift I ever thought I’d receive after stealing all their magic for my own selfish needs and using it in a healing spell that destroyed many of their lives. I lean close to the bear’s perked ear, cupping the air around my mouth to block the wind.
“Thank you for this honor,” I whisper for only him to hear. “I know you’re doing this for Ella and not for me, that I haven’t earned it, but I thank you all the same.”
The bear growls.
I’m not sure if it’s a you’re welcome, a reluctant acceptance, or maybe a little bit of both, but I climb on anyway, and then we’re off. I squeeze my thighs to keep from falling and grip clumps of soft fur in my fingers as a handhold. My gaze slides to Omorose at the front of the pack as I think over her words. Cole loves her. His people love him. All this time, I’ve been thinking of him as the shifter prince and her as the usurper, but that’s not right. She’s a human, but she’s also a shifter princess, his chosen queen—and they’ve accepted her. Against all odds, against all reason, she’s become one of them. The village they’re building in the mountains will be a haven for all of them, a place where shifters and humans live in harmony. They’re building a new world together, one sprung from love and not hate.
I look at Frederick.
There’s a wild grin on his lips, brimming with adventure and joy and marvel. As though sensing my gaze, he turns, finding my eyes. Deep within his, I see the same promise shining from before. I’m not entirely sure what it means yet, but it doesn’t scare me like it did on the train. I have the urge to run to him, not away—to dive into those blue pools and immerse myself in their wonder, to finally see all the beautiful dreams he’s been trying to share.
A smile spreads my lips.
I blink, then turn forward, watching as the forest passes in a blur, and take a page out of my prince’s book. I give in to the moment. I let myself sink back into a girl I thought was gone—the girl who chased unicorns with her best friend, who saw the beauty in living, who knew how to love. Vengeance was my weapon, and hatred my shield. I carried them so long I didn’t realize how heavy they’d become, how burdensome. Now I feel light.
I want to stay here.
I want to live in this freedom.
But as we near our destination and slow down, the weight of the world returns to my shoulders—the pressure of Ella’s curse, my sister’s cage, and the unbreakable bond between them. Half-built houses line the open field, resting like some grand metaphor beneath the vast night sky. The mountain village has come a long way since I was last here, but there’s still a long way yet to go. My journey feels the same as I follow Omorose into a tent and help her lower Ella onto a folding cot. The shifter prince leaves us alone, as sure a sign as any that we’re supposed to figure the rest out together.
I kneel beside Ella and take her hand. A wince is still etched into her brow, but she no longer trembles, which means the worst of her curse has passed.
“Twenty-five years,” Omorose whispers as she takes the spot by my side. I turn, finding her gaze. “It’s the longest any woman in my family has lived after inheriting the magic. If we don’t figure out a way to break the curse, my sister will most likely die before her thirty-fifth birthday.”
I turn back to Ella, feeling Aerewyn beneath her skin. “My sister died at sixteen.”
“How?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I confess, thinking back to that terrible night. “She’d been meeting in secret with a human prince. She fancied herself in love. I knew she was going to meet him—I knew—but I didn’t stop her. I don’t know if she told him the secret to magic, or if he learned from someone else. All I know is she never returned. And when I woke in the middle of the night to find her gone, humans had invaded our faerie camp. They knew how to steal our magic, and they took every last drop. Hundreds of years passed before my magic returned. When I woke, the world was no longer a place I recognized.”
“That’s a feeling I understand,” Omorose whispers. I think back to the memories she accidently gave me, her experience with the earthquake that merged the worlds, and I know what she means. We’ve both had our lives flipped upside down in a matter of seconds. “I’m sorry for what my ancestors did to you, and to your sister.”
“Thank you.” I know her words don’t change anything, but I feel a shift just the same, in my perspective if in nothing else. I see myself the way she must see me, as my own worst enemy as well as hers. “I’m sorry for what I planned to do to you, and to Ella. I’m grateful for the oath you made me swear, for the patience it forced upon me and for the person it allowed me to become.”
She doesn’t thank me, but I don’t blame her. It took multiple lifetimes for me to finally forgive, and I’m not entirely sure I’m there yet. The least I can give her is a few days.
“We didn’t tell Ella what happened in the woods,” Omorose says instead.
A soft breath escapes my lips, releasing a fear I didn’t realize I carried. “I didn’t want to hurt her, and she never has to know the truth. As far as she knows, we rescued you because you sacrificed yourself to lead the humans away while we slept, and because you’re her friend. But I want you to understand that the only reason I risked so much to bring you back is because you’re the only person in the world who can break her curse. You’re a faerie priestess. If you can’t save her, I don’t think anyone can.”
I’m not a faerie priestess, not quite, but I don’t correct her, because she’s right. I’m the best chance Ella has, the only chance, and I have absolutely no idea where to even begin.
“I’ve broken a handful of curses before, freeing the magic, but the only way I’ve ever done so is by killing the last living heir.” Omorose cuts her gaze to me, but I don’t feel shame at the words. All four of the humans I’ve killed were adults who used their stolen magic for terrible means, to torture their citizens and to rule through fear. They deserved worse ends than the quick deaths I gave them. But Ella has always been different. “I never considered that there might be another option.”
“There is,” she tells me emphatically. “There is, because I’ve seen it. Jade and Asher broke their curse and lived to tell the tale.”
My brows pinch. “How?”
“Asher’s family had magic—the power to control people’s feelings, to steal them and twist them—but it came at a cost. Their curse was to never know true love.”
“Your friends fell in love and broke the curse?”
Omorose nods. “As soon as they said the words, the magic and the curse both unraveled, shooting into the sky and vanishing into the horizon.”
If love were Ella’s curse, she would already be free. There’s enough of it in this room alone to fill her soul twice over. But it’s not. “Your family’s curse is time—days and weeks and years peeling away from your soul and sinking into the earth instead, to bring it life. How do you break that?”
She sighs and turns back to her sister. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Your friends brought you back to life after the curse left you for dead. Is there no human invention we could use to do the same to Ella?”
Omorose glares at me for the suggestion.
I shrug. It was just an idea.
“Isn’t there anything you can do with your magic?”
“I can try.”
Omorose moves to the side, giving me a little more space as I rise onto my knees and lean over Ella’s sleeping body. I press my hand against her rib cage and close my eyes, letting magic be my sight as I send my power beneath her skin. I feel her blood, her cells, all the physical things that make up her being, and I dive deeper, into the minute spaces between, the little bits of spirit holding it all together. I sink into her soul, swimming for the center as I let everything else fall away. In here, I should see nothing but life, the golden glow of the Mother, but there’s a darkness threaded through the light, glittering with a magic that doesn’t belong to her. I try to tug at the shadowed knots, but they don’t budge.
Aerewyn.
I try to coax my sister and her magic forward, as though maybe she has the answer I can’t see.
Aerewyn.
The black tendrils curl toward me, welcoming me closer. In their glittering depths, ancient faerie words faintly flicker. There’s a spell sewn into the curse, merging with the spell for the magic, but blended as they are, I can’t see which is which. One doesn’t exist without the other. There’s no way to pull them apart. There’s no way to read them or release them. I’ve no doubt priestesses were the ones to lay this curse upon humanity—priestesses with far more magical ability than me.
“Nacht deot fuon,” I whisper in the old tongue. Reveal yourself.
The ebony dances, moving with a frenzy, as though enlivened by the sound. It buzzes and spins, whirling with new energy. The words zip faster. There, then gone, then there, then gone, moving and changing, shifting and stirring. I try to dig deeper. I push my magic out. I fight for a way in.
“Log dam i fuich,” I demand. Let me see.
The magic snaps.
Hers or mine, I’m not sure, but I’m thrown back, spinning through time and space, reeling with the whiplash as I fly into my body and slam against the ground, knocked over by the force.
“Did it work?” Omorose pleads. Her fingers grip mine and she helps me back to a seated position as I roll up from the floor.
“No. But I saw something.”
She squeezes my hand. When I turn to meet her gaze, hope burns as bright as the sun within her eyes. I feel a matching blaze within my own. The longer we stare at each other, the higher the flames rise.
“Let me try again.”
I dive into Ella’s soul.
I’m spit back out.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Over and over and over, until my body is sore and my magic is weak. Omorose remains by my side, always there to help me back to my feet, never complaining, never faltering. Eventually, we both fall victim to our exhaustion. I need sleep and food. So does she. The curse has been in her family for hundreds of years—it’ll take more than a night to unravel it.
I crawl from the tent, weary and delirious, not sure where I’m going. The sun is bright overhead. I lift my face to the sky, letting those rays sink beneath my skin as I sway on unsteady feet. When I fall, I know whose arms are there to catch me.
Maybe I felt his presence all along.
Maybe I willed him into being.
I don’t care. All that matters is that he’s here, right where I needed him, the same way he’s been all along.
“How are you feeling?” Frederick’s deep voice rumbles.
I blink, realizing my warm pillow is really his chest, and glance up, shifting my head so I can look into the eyes watching me from a few inches away. One of his hands rests on my hip and the other gently traces lines across my forearm, swirling up and down, over and around, driven by an inner desire I understand, the same one that made me curl against him in my sleep—the need to be close.
“Okay,” I murmur, trying to ignore the dull ache in my shoulder. “Better now.”
“What happened last night after we got back?”
I sigh.
Omorose and I were so hopeful. If hope were enough, both our sisters would be alive and well today. But it’s not. In the bright afternoon light seeping through a break in the tent, I see the night before for what it truly was—a failure. I saw something, but not enough. Though I tried again and again and again, I couldn’t figure out a way to force the spell to reveal itself. I’m not sure I ever will.
“That well, hmm?” he comments wryly.
“I’m not sure my magic is strong enough to save her.”
“From the curse?”
I nod against his chest. “It’s a faerie spell, but it was laid down by someone far more powerful than me, maybe even multiple someones. I don’t know how to begin trying to undo it.”
The hand on my hip tightens, squeezing encouragingly. “You’ve got time.”
I have all the time in the world, but does Ella?
“Who does her magic belong to?” he whispers so softly I almost don’t hear.
I blink, refocusing on the bright blue eyes staring at me with all the warmth of the summer sky, and a little edge of something else—uncertainty. “My sister.”
He closes his eyes as he releases a soft breath. When they open back up, I see flickers of relief, of sympathy, of clarity. I wonder if he thought I was going to say a lover, or worse still, no one at all—that my intention for murder had been led by blind hatred alone.
“There was always a secret in the shadows of your eyes,” he murmurs. “Something you were trying to hide, a question I couldn’t quite answer. As soon as Omorose revealed the truth about the blood oath, everything became clear. I knew what you were planning—I just wasn’t sure why.”
&n
bsp; “Now you are.”
“Now I am.” He mirrors my words, but there’s something hollow about them. He looks to the ceiling, then back to me, hardened with resolve. “I would’ve stopped you, you know, if you hadn’t stopped yourself. I’d never let anyone hurt Ella, even you. You understand that, right?”
“I do.”
“And you understand why I had to tell Omorose and Cole what happened?”
“I do.”
“Good.” All the lingering tension in his body drains away. “Watching you drop that knife was the most relieved I’ve been in my entire life.”
“Why?” I pinch my brows. There’s a deeper meaning to his words, one I don’t quite understand.
“Because,” he murmurs as he shifts his palm to my face and brushes his thumb over my cheekbone, “it meant everything I saw in you, everything I understood about you, everything I admired you for—it was all true. You’re kind, and strong, and courageous. You care about other people, about the world. Your heart is generous. You’re not letting the past define you. You’re open to change. You want to make a better future. And I want you to understand one more thing. If Omorose and Cole hadn’t agreed to help me save you, I would’ve done it on my own.”
I arch my brows at him, dubious, even as a smile pulls at my lips.
It only spurs him on. “I would’ve stormed the base as a one-man army. I would’ve gotten you out somehow. I would’ve—”
“Gotten caught, just like me?” I interject.
“At least we would’ve been in it together.”
“That’s idiotic.”
“I was going to say honorable or chivalrous or downright attractive, but I’ll take idiotic.” He grins, letting his fingers slide back into my hair as he lifts my head toward his. “I’d rather be a fool in love than a lonely, albeit charming, prince.”
“Are you?” I whisper, gaze dropping to his lips.
“Charming? Of course.”
“What about in love?” I look back into his twinkling eyes.
Frederick doesn’t turn away. He holds my gaze as the mirth fades, leaving a deeper heat behind, something infinitely more powerful. “I love you, Nymia.”
Chasing Midnight - A Cinderella Retelling (Once Upon a Curse Book 3) Page 20
