The Curse of Ormshire (The Beast Within Book 2)

by S. L. Perrine

  “Okay, so then what about the people that live here?” I asked, regarding the family I remembered growing up with.

  “Well, I thought that was obvious,” Ty said, looking at me and then to the rest of them. Chase and Nolan seemed to have already been provided that information as well. Thinking back, I remembered Ty saying something about being interested in a blonde when she first arrived at Ormshire, and now she was my best friend.

  “Oh my.” I gasped.

  “Yup, and they don’t even know,” Nolan said and added to my shock.

  “So how is it that you have your memory back, and nobody else in town does?” Gareth asked from behind the rest of the group.

  “Well, that’s a difficult answer.” I scratched at the back of my hand. “You see…” I tried to think about how I could tell everyone.

  “It was the locket, wasn’t it?” Tabitha asked. “You spelled that thing…and me…didn’t you?”

  The good news was the look on her face said she found the idea of it funny and that she wasn’t upset by it. The bad news was I never told Ty before the curse, only Sheree.

  I looked down at my hands, confirming Tabitha’s suspicions, to which Tabitha—gloating that she had been right—jumped up and down on the bed.

  “I knew it the moment you got that funny look in your eyes.” Tabitha yelled, pointing a finger at me.

  “Why did you spell the locket? When did you?” Ty asked.

  “When Tabitha. Sorry, Tabby… when Tabby fell on that sword. I knew she had to be spared from the confines of the curse. She didn’t have magia. There was no reason she needed to be with the rest of us…here.”

  I got off the bed, leaving Tabby to her jumping, and looked around the room while pacing. The memory was there, all of them were, I just had to let it clear a bit.

  “I spelled it while she slept. So that way, she would end up outside of the curse. Everyone kept telling me how powerful I was supposed to be. Oma had since I was little. So, I told the locket she would be dead in the moment the curse hit us, and she would be alive after. So, the curse bypassed her.”

  The room was dead silent. Nobody moved or spoke, so I kept going. “Sheree gave me that locket to escape the curse. She spelled it with buio maga, so I used luce maga. Equal parts of both is stronger than just one.” I hadn’t realized I started to twist my hands together as I paced, just as I once used to. I quickly stopped when I saw the looks of concern on the others.

  “I spelled the locket to give Tabby back her memories and give me mine. I made Tabby promise to put it on me whether I wanted her to or not. Insuring it would work.” I sat on the edge of the bed and everyone in the room looked as though they were stuck in thought. Just when I thought it would never end, Chris broke the silence.

  “I wore it…the locket. Just once.” She looked from Renee to Tabby.

  “I didn’t know it was spelled with your memories. Would that have done anything?” Tabitha asked.

  “I don’t think so. It seems to have worked fine on me,” I tried to reassure her. Then I turned to Chris, who also looked worried. “Did you have any strange encounters while wearing it, or do you remember something you shouldn’t?”

  “No, nothing strange or magia involved. There were a few people who were interested in it.”

  “What people? You never told me that?” Tabitha looked shocked.

  “Ladies, could we worry about the smaller details later?” Hogarth bellowed his request.

  I’d forgotten for a small fraction of a moment that the men still stood in Ty’s room, waiting for me to finish telling the story. Or was I waiting on someone else to finish a tale? I could hardly keep up.

  “We should move to the drawing room. Perhaps with some brandy.” Hogarth leered over the group. His tall, slim, and slightly ashen color made me a bit uneasy. I knew why Ty’s uncles had been included in the aftergame of the curse, but I suddenly had a strange feeling about it. I started to protest to Hogarth, that I needed to speak to my friends alone, but got up and followed the group instead.

  Chapter Five

  Cherry Valley Present Day

  Ty’s uncles moved the group to the drawing room. After Gareth made sure everyone had an appropriate cup of tea, he poured Hogarth his two fingers of brandy. He moved about the room slowly, which gave me a chance to clear my head.

  I sat next to Tabby and Chris on the sofa and sipped tea. My head throbbed, and my body still ached, but that was the effect of the fairy magic. Farlow had explained in great detail how the body aches would take over while my magia fought against Calipee’s magia. Once we got the passage opened again, he assured, he could reverse the fairy magia and I would feel fine. For the time being, I just had to relax.

  While scanning the room as I sipped my tea, trying to let it soothe me into a state of relaxation, it was Nolan who stirred first. Ty paced the room and everyone else seemed content speaking quietly to one another, but Nolan had a fierce look in his eye, and he stared straight at me. I looked into my cup as I drank. When I looked up, he stood right in front of me.

  “I don’t know whether to be happy right now or be sad.” He looked around the room. “I mean, we were told that the curse would break, and all our loved ones would return to us, but we’re no closer to that now than when this started.” He was angry; an expression of emotion I’d never seen from him. He turned on Farlow and pointed an accusing finger to his chest. “Your sister’s spell should be broken right now, and my mother and sister should know who I am.”

  Ty grabbed Nolan by the shoulders and pushed him away from the fairy prince.

  “It’s the passage,” Farlow began. “If it were open, the spell would be broken. Everyone in this town would know who they are. That would have happened the moment Tyson and Renella touched.”

  “Wait… Your families are here?” I looked at Chase, Nolan, and Ty.

  “Yours was too,” Farlow reminded me.

  “My mother; she was here all along.” I looked to Tabby. “Your mother, Sheree, she’s been by my side this entire time. How could I have not known?”

  “The spell meant for it to be that way.” Ty let go of Nolan and moved beside me. His hands cupped the sides of my face and the sparks ignited something inside me. Our powers relinked, and I felt instantly better. The effects of the fairies magia disappeared. He leaned in and kissed my lips briefly, remembering our audience.

  “That is why all of those buio are gathering beyond the limits of the city,” I presumed as I turned, remembering Hogarth and Gareth were in the room. We gave our attention to them to see what more they had to say.

  They had been given all the information they needed about the works of the spell by Sheree and Ty before the curse had been cast. They were also provided information from Ourobus himself, as they were two of his advisors before and after the curse. Ourobus had not considered them family, even though they were his brothers. That title he had only for his wife and son, whom, they said, he missed dearly.

  I remembered how harshly Tabby’s father had spoken to her, when he did speak to her. I looked at Tabby as the two brothers spoke, but as she suspected, she showed no signs of surprise. Tabby knew her mother would be happy to see her when the time came.

  The brothers continued to tell them that the buio hoped once the spell of the fae was lifted, their loved ones would not only be happy to see them again, but willing to follow Ourobus and join them in their efforts to save him. It meant they all hoped to get maga on their side and have the power they needed to get rid of the princess.

  “I think we all need some rest,” Gareth stated after a while. “There is nothing more that can be done this evening.”

  Ty showed Farlow, then Chris, to rooms that they could use as I followed. The house had been expanded, he said, in the event that they would have guests. I thought it a good thing the elders had a mind to think ahead. As we walked the length of the second floor, I realized the stretch of hallway vastly overflowed the realistic measurements of the house’s exterior
. At the end of the hall, there was another staircase to a third floor, which made me wonder how many floors they had extended it.

  The décor was similar to the downstairs, the paintings were all old, and the floors were a newer-looking hard wood. The lighting was lax, and the bedrooms were all furnished with older antiques. My mind being different than before, I could relate better to the decorating style, as everything reminded me of Ormshire.

  Once back on the first floor, I headed to the living room. My thoughts of home immediately surfaced as I stood in front of a painting I had once shrugged off as merely decorative in the days past.

  Ty followed as I studied each of the two portraits hanging on either side of the brick fireplace. The one on the left was of Ourobus and Sheree, Lady and Lord of Ormshire, as well as their twin children; Tyson and Tabitha. I shuddered as I looked at the man who had my sister killed. I had come to terms with the fact that he was Ty’s father and no matter what the man had done, I knew Ty would always feel a certain way about him, but I also knew I was free to loath him as I desired.

  The painting on the right interested me more. There, in the most amazing detail as if they stood in front of me, were my parents and my sister, Rosella.

  My mother had asked me to name my baby sister. A three-year-old knew of nothing but rhyme. I always thought Rosella was the prettier of the two of us. Her long auburn hair was beautiful compared to my fire red ringlets that held no real measure of length. My sister had beautiful hazel eyes that changed color, it seemed, with her mood. She never had to worry about matching bright green eyes to her dress of the day so they did not clash. She had never been a klutz like I was. Rosella was full of poise and grace. The better choice for ruler of Pylira, but she was gone.

  I had to look away before the tears swelling at the brim of my eyes started to fall. I knew if they did, they would fall uncontrollably. Rosella was gone, and I recalled how I mourned her. The fake reality hid all those memories from me, but I was forced to relive them again. I wished for just a moment that the curse hadn’t lifted. I wished for just a minute that I still had parents and a brother who loved me and who I loved. Then I wondered what happened to that family.

  Ty jogged me out of my thoughts as his hand reached out and held onto mine. The familiar feeling grabbed at my heart and made me turn back to the portrait for one last look before I let him pull me to his room. When he opened the door, I saw that Tabby had made tea and moved in front of me, placing a cup in my hand.

  “I figured you wouldn’t want to sleep yet,” Tabby said as she handed the second mug to Ty.

  “No, my mind is racing. I have so many questions.” I looked around the room and stopped at the portrait of Ty and me. “What happens to the families here? I have a different father and a brother. Where have you been for one hundred years? That necklace was supposed to allow you to keep your memories so you could help Ty find me.” The tears had finally won and fell.

  “I tried to help, but I couldn’t return to Ormshire.” Tabby looked at her brother as she walked to me and used the cuff of her shirt to wipe the side of my face.

  “And I was unable to leave.” Ty held my hand and wiped the tears off the other cheek.

  The curse held all those who were affected by it inside of the confines of Ormshire. Those on the outside could no more see Ormshire than those who sought to find Cherry Valley. It was as if it had never existed. The locket did what it was spelled to do and brought Tabby to the outside of the grounds. Ty would have been confined, just as his father was, to the inside of his realm.

  “When I returned to Pylira, I found Chris. Her parents let me stay with them in Regalis. I tried to go to Ormshire, but it was as if it didn’t exist.” She sat on the edge of the bed and sipped her tea.

  Ty pulled me to the settee. “I guess there was a lot about the spell that we didn’t know about. I don’t even think Calipee knew how it would work exactly. It was her mother’s spell, after all.” He took my cup and placed it on the table beside us. “I want to give this back to you.”

  He held out his hand, and when he opened it, my engagement ring laid in his palm. There were no butterflies, but I didn’t need a second proposal. “We are still in this together… I hope.”

  “Oh, Tyson, of course we are,” I said, holding out my hand so he could put it back where it belonged. I sat there and studied it on my finger. It felt like it belonged there, but something was missing. “Where is my family ring?” I looked between Tabby and Ty.

  “I don’t know. Maybe your mother has it hidden somewhere,” he said and rubbed the bare spot on my middle finger where the ring of Pylira had once sat.

  “I have to find it,” I told him.

  “We will find it,” he said, kissing my hand.

  “What else happened?” I asked Tabby.

  We sat in Ty’s room for the remainder of the night. None of us could get to sleep. It was as if a curtain had raised, or a fog. My head wouldn’t stop spinning with each memory flooding through it. As each of my friends mentioned a place or a person, I would regain a memory.

  Tabby told them of her time away from her family. She spent fifty years with Christina in Regalis with her family. The locket had allowed her to keep her memories, but she was unable to get close enough to Ty to help him. Mariella treated Tabby as if she were one of her own children. She never told them who she was, for fear of being tossed aside, but she had always thought Mariella knew all along. She had powers of intuition and vision. It was she who told the girls they would be needed when the great power was there.

  Tabby and Chris couldn’t find the town of Cherry Valley, so they hunted and tracked the mietitore in hopes of finding them that way. It led up to a year ago when Chris started feeling like she needed to go in a direction only she knew.

  When sleep finally took over, it was not forgiving or restful. My dreams plagued me of the day in the market when Rosella was taken. It forced me to relive that terrible day, as if I hadn’t just done that only hours before I lay down.

  I stood there, happily shopping for the wedding, and all the while, Rosella was being dragged away. When I noticed, I did everything I could, but I couldn’t find her. In the dream, my hand became entangled in a wedding veil. The market cleared, and no one was around to help her. I gasped for breath as the veil tightened its hold, wrapping around me from head to toe. The guards surrounded, laughing menacingly at me. Not one of them moved to help, but instead hid the path that would lead to my sister. I looked to the heavens and screamed, only to wake with a jolt as sweat dripped from my body.

  The events of the previous day lingered into my waking consciousness as soon as the dream subsided. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t know if I should expect to see the small, bright room of the home in the cul-de-sac or the dark stone walls of the room in Ormshire Castle.

  The noise outside made me come to terms with where I was and what events had led to me being there. In Ty’s room, I saw the blankets he had used on the couch neatly folded and placed on top of a dresser. The fire had gone out, but only recently, since the embers still glowed red. Tabby’s make-shift bed was still scattered about the floor, but she too was nowhere in sight.

  I stretched and tested the weariness of my body and head. The link I shared with Ty removed the lingering fairy magic, but still the energy used by the locket—when it had restored my memories—drained me. The magia used to enact the spell on the locket had been nothing compared to what was used when it took hold. I would never admit it to the others, but it took so much energy, I was afraid I wouldn’t wake for days.

  There in Ty’s bed, I noticed the link to him once more as I felt him moving closer from somewhere in the house. I remembered the sparks and draw of energy when Ty had kissed me a few days earlier. I felt drained and weak, just as I had before the link had been completed so long ago, back home. I could tell that even though my memories had been returned and my ring was back where it belonged, our link was once again not complete. I wondered if Ty felt it as well.<
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  The door opened, and a stream of light washed over me. I felt his presence a little more, but not as it should have been. I kept still with my back to him. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face it all and let him think I was still asleep. There were still so many questions. It was nice to have gotten the few answers I had. For instance, I knew my mother must be in Pylira with my father. That was a relief, but the questions about why the passage was still closed plagued me. I wanted desperately to be home with my parents. I wanted to feel at home again; this false world was not my home.

  With newfound strength, I got up, tried to tame my hair with the band left around my wrist, and internally thanked its existence.

  As I walked from the room, I decided the best place to look for everyone was the kitchen. I was thankful when I saw them all sitting around the large table, which seemed to appear only when there was a need for it.

  “Why is the passage not opened?” I looked to Farlow and asked the question, but I thought better of it and turned to Hogarth and Gareth, who were huddled together at the island counter. They appeared deep in their own private conversation.

  “Princess,” Gareth spoke first. “Good morning, dear. Did you sleep well?”

  The round man stood from the stool where he was perched, poured a cup of coffee, and handed it to me. Once again, my thoughts shifted to the fact that such a substance would have been handy back home, and I took a meaningful sip and repeated the question.

  “Why is the passage still closed?” That time, I looked straight to Hogarth for the answer.

  Ty stood and walked close to me. “We spoke of this last night, Renee.”

  I shot him a scornful look. “I know why it was closed. To allow you all to be in your human form so we could be reunited. My question is why is it still? We’ve been reunited. Surely the spell cast would have lifted once that was accomplished.”

  At my insistence, Ty looked to his uncle as well. When neither of them offered an explanation, I persisted.