The queen had grabbed one of the strands with her magic, using it to unpick other parts of the knot. Ariadne sent out brief pulses of power to jostle the strands loose, then pushed them out of the way. Soon, she started discreetly loosening the strands near where the queen was working, careful to make it clear that she wasn’t intruding on her sister’s space. The queen hesitated, not touching the loosened strands for a moment, then began unpicking them without looking at Ariadne. Soon, the two were working together.
Whenever one of four pulled too hard on something, Elena would flinch. Cam couldn’t tell whether the cause was mental or physical, but he wrapped an arm around her and tried to brace her as much as he could.
Now they could see portions of the core’s shield. It seemed thicker than the remnants of the outer shield had been, shimmering deep beneath the surface. At the sight of it, Elena tightened her hand on Cam’s leg again.
Outside the circle, the queen took a deep breath. “Once everyone has charged their strand, hold until I say ready. We’ll all need to release the charge at the same time if we want to have the greatest chance of completely obliterating the shield.”
The chosen strands glowed more and more brightly as they were moved into position. Next to Cam, Elena laid her head on his shoulder. “Make sure they don’t stop halfway,” she whispered. “I want the curse gone, whatever it takes.”
“I’ll do what I can.” It wasn’t a promise. He didn’t have the authority to make these people do anything they didn’t want to do, and Cam suspected that he and Elena had very different definitions of “whatever it takes.” But he didn’t want her to go under without some kind of reassurance. “I want the curse gone, too.”
Above their heads, the queen started the countdown. At her signal, the strands touched the core and sent up a brief, blinding flash of light. Elena slumped bonelessly against him, the blackout taking her, and Cam pulled her just a little closer. He pressed his cheek against her hair, reminding himself that this was all still going according to plan.
Once the light cleared, the shimmer of the shield was gone as well. Now, he could see faint blue lines in the depths of the knot, the same color as Elena’s magic.
Ariadne blew out a breath. “It’s more tangled up in her powers than I thought it would be.” There was enough regret in the words that Cam resisted the urge to punch her.
“Which means that we need to be that much more careful when we unwind them,” Dr. Flyte said firmly. “This will take some time, so I suggest we begin immediately.”
This time, the work was even slower. Everyone started using the queen’s unpicking technique, slowly untangling the strands that tied Elena to the curse. Whenever they managed to free one completely, it faded out of existence. Cam started counting the strands that disappeared, clearing thirty before their absence made a noticeable difference. He knew the queen was suffering her own effects from the curse—she was paler than normal, mouth tight—but it didn’t seem to affect her focus at all.
He could feel the tension in the air, the strained focus of people doing vitally important work over far too long a time period. Cam felt even more useless than he had during the analysis, and he would have been happy to donate his energy to anyone who needed it. Actually voicing the offer, however, might distract someone at the worst possible time. On top of that, he wasn’t a magic user—they might not be able to even use anything he had to give.
“If a particular strand refuses to release, move onto another one,” Braeth reminded everyone. “Do not force it.”
Still, something must have been happening, because Elena flinched in Cam’s arms. At first, he thought he’d imagined it, a sign his worry was making his hallucinate. A few minutes later, though, he felt her flinch again.
The third time, Cam studied what everyone was doing with the same intensity he used to watch for bandits. Soon, he noticed one of the blue threads straining as Ariadne slid one of the curse strands free. As the thread stretched, Elena made a small, helpless sound.
Cam held her closer, raising his voice loud enough to be heard. “Every time you do something to one of the blue threads, it hurts Elena.”
He felt everyone in the circle go still. “We discussed this,” Ariadne said, voice quiet. “This is bound up tightly enough with her magic that discomfort can’t be avoided.”
“She shouldn’t be able to feel it,” Braeth said. “It appears to be a biological response, not a magical one.”
Silence fell. The queen cleared her throat. “Elena wouldn’t want us to stop,” she said, and Cam didn’t know if the strain in her voice was from the curse or the decision she was making. He wanted to reassure her that she was right—this was what Elena would want, no matter how much it was killing them both to see her in pain. “But please, be extra careful.”
They continued unwinding the curse, clearing away as much of it as they could. Finally, only about twenty strands remained, wrapped together in a tight central knot. It was thick with Elena’s magic, the lines crisscrossing each other so often that the entire thing seemed to glow with a faint blue light.
Ariadne eyed the knot in frustration. “All of the work we’ve done should have at least partially loosened it.” Purple magic skimmed lightly over the tangled surface, sending out little pulses. As far as Cam could tell, they had no effect. “Maybe I could—”
The queen shook her head. “It should be my responsibility.” Fashioning her magic into a needle of light, she carefully slid it underneath one of the blue threads and pulled upward.
Elena jerked against him, making a sound that left no doubt that she was in pain. Cam’s own chest felt like it had been hit, and the queen froze as if she’d had a similar response. An instant later, the needle disappeared. “We didn’t discuss this.” The threat in the queen’s voice was lessened by a faint unsteadiness. “If such a small movement hurts her that much, untangling the rest of the curse from her magic might kill her.”
Ariadne looked genuinely worried now. “There shouldn’t be such a direct physical effect.” She magnified the projection of the curse so she could examine it more closely, her expression turning frustrated as she shrank it again. “Magic is energy flow. Disrupting that energy may hamper its ability to be channeled, but it has no effect on nerve endings or pain receptors.”
Dr. Flyte looked grim. “Could it have something to do with the fact that you used shared blood to activate the curse?”
Ariadne lifted a hand. “I don’t see how. It’s not as if—” She stopped speaking suddenly, and even from inside the circle Cam could see that the woman had gone pale. “Elena hadn’t finished developing yet.”
The queen unconsciously placed a protective hand to her stomach, a horrified understanding on her own face. “It grew with her.” As Bishop moved close enough to touch her back, the queen’s voice cracked. “Ariadne, what did you do?”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear. I didn’t even know—” Ariadne cut herself off abruptly.
Cam just needed to know what was going on. “Someone needs to fill me in here.”
“When a witch or sorceress is cursed, the curse normally attaches itself to the victim’s magic,” said Dr. Flyte. “Like calls to like.”
“But since Elena was still developing, her magic hadn’t yet completely differentiated herself from the rest of her,” continued Braeth. “The threads you see are Elena’s magic, but the curse tangled them too early. They’re snagged in her physical body as well, and when one of those snags is pulled it causes her pain.”
Rage flared in Cam’s chest at the sheer unfairness of it. “So you can’t finish undoing the curse without killing her.”
“No,” Ariadne said quickly. “If Elena was awake, she could guide the untangling process more safely than we could.”
“So she’ll hurt herself instead of you guys hurting her?” Cam asked. “How is that any better?”
&n
bsp; “Her awareness of her own magic will make her far more precise than we could ever be,” Ariadne explained. “There will be discomfort, but she should be able to spare herself pain or debilitation.”
“Only if she’s awake,” the queen said quietly.
“We may have no choice but to use the spell I discussed,” Braeth said, his bony fingers curling inward as he spoke. “If we reflected the result’s curse onto another, Elena would be conscious even when we attack the core. Since the spell merely alters the results of the curse, not the curse itself, she would remain conscious enough to do what was needed.”
“That spell is meant to punish not heal,” Dr. Flyte said, his spectral face pressing closer to the mirrored surface. “We have no idea whether it will even work like that.”
“Do we have a choice?” Braeth asked.
It was the queen who finally answered him. “No.” She sounded tired. “Start closing the spell, everyone. There are things we need to discuss.”
Chapter 19
Making Things Clear
She should have known.
It was the only thought circling through Elena’s mind as she listened to everyone what the next step was. When she’d first opened her eyes, she hadn’t even needed to ask whether the curse had been broken—the answer had been painfully apparent on everyone’s faces. There had been quick reassurances, talk of snags and Braeth’s reflecting spell, but she let it wash over her in a wave of words. Inside, all she felt was cold.
She should never have let herself hope. She was smarter than that.
“Elena.” The queen’s voice was sharp, commanding her daughter to return to the conversation. Her mother’s gaze was equal parts worry and anger, though Elena wasn’t sure who or what the last emotion was directed at.
They were all sitting at her mother’s worktable, as if this were just another planning meeting rather than a dissection of her inevitable fate. Even worse, she was struggling to keep her eyes open, the effects of the curse having drained most of her energy. Still, she forced herself to focus as the queen continued. “You need to listen to this. When we restart the spell, your part will be the most important.”
Too bad I’ll be unconscious. Elena bit her tongue to stop herself from saying the thought aloud. Hurting her mother wouldn’t help anything. “I need to follow my magic closely enough to unsnag it at key points,” she dutifully recited. “It sounds similar to what you did in untangling the spell, except I would be working by feel rather than sight.”
Of course, that would only be possible if they could make Braeth’s spell work. What had struck her as so unnerving a mere week ago seemed like nothing more than a fantasy now. The old evil sorcerers had cared so little for the mechanics of how certain spells worked that Braeth wasn’t entirely sure how the reflection spell worked. If the magic was a shield ready to deflect, it might be useless against a curse that had already been cast.
And even if it did work, who would they get to take that kind of risk? You couldn’t force someone into a spell without an appalling level of compulsion magic. Whoever it was would have to voluntarily accept the risk of the curse never being broken, of sleeping for a hundred years and losing their entire life in the process. No one in their right mind would take that on, and she would be unforgivably selfish to ask it of them.
“Elena.” It was Dr. Flyte who spoke this time, using the same carefully measured voice he usually saved for particularly tense therapy sessions. “We want you to be a part of this.” He didn’t have to explain how. “You may have been a passive victim of the curse, but you can be an integral part of its destruction. We need your insight as we move ahead.”
Resentment spiked inside Elena, a jagged crack in the middle
of the cold. “What insight can I give?” Her voice wasn’t quite as controlled this time. She looked around the table, carefully skirting past the eyes of everyone who had been in the circle. Cam and Bishop were standing behind her, mismatched guards who had stationed themselves on both sides of the door. Cam’s parents, thankfully, had gone. “Until we actually test Braeth’s spell, everything we’re discussing is pure speculation. I have no more facts than anyone else here, which means my theories have as little relevance.”
“Do you have a theory? Any theory?” Braeth asked. “Relevant or not, I believe it would comfort us all to believe that your brooding had produced some vaguely useful result.”
Resentment heated into anger, but a shouting match would change nothing. She bit her tongue, forcing herself to be content with a glare.
Ariadne looked up from the spell book she’d been studying. “If we want a useful response, then we should be looking for a willing subject instead of discussing magical theory.” She looked at Elena with a mixture of sympathy and frustration. “Brooding or not, she’s right about one thing. We need to test Braeth’s spell.”
“You can’t test it,” Elena snapped, switching her glare to Ariadne. “Unless I’ve wildly misinterpreted Braeth’s description of the spell, it can’t be undone once you’ve cast it. If the plan doesn’t work, I’ve simply condemned some poor innocent person in my place.”
“What else would you have us do?” Braeth said quietly.
Elena bit her tongue again. Logic and harsh reality aside, she wasn’t enough of a monster to say the truth where her mother could hear it.
Miraculously, Ariadne stepped in. “The curse doesn’t activate until your eighteenth birthday, Elena. Even if Braeth’s spell doesn’t work, we haven’t come to the end of our options or the time we need to work on them.” She turned to look at everyone else at the table, meeting everyone’s gaze but her sister’s. “But we won’t know what step we need to take until we know whether this one works.”
“Which means we need to find someone willing to take the burden of the curse’s effects from Elena.” Dr. Flyte’s voice was solemn, but it was evident he didn’t disagree with everyone else’s assessment. “The spell requires someone of similar biology, which unfortunately eliminates Braeth and I from the running.”
Elena’s stomach knotted tight. How had she not realized they would volunteer themselves first? She couldn’t let any of them risk themselves for something this pointless. Especially not—
As if she’d heard Elena’s thoughts, the queen opened her mouth. “I—”
“I’ll do it.”
Everyone turned at the sound of Bishop’s voice, which was as calm as if they were discussing the monthly budget. The elf hadn’t moved from his position by the door, but the way his gaze had locked with the queen’s made Elena afraid to see the look on her mother’s face.
She forced her voice to function. “Absolutely not.”
Bishop turned to look at her. “It’s the most sensible option. If the spell is successful, your mother’s skills will be needed to aid in undoing the curse.” The brief unsteadiness in his voice made it clear he’d known how close her mother had been to offering. “This way, I can be of use as well.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Elena felt the panic rise in her chest. She stood, pushing away from the table so that she couldn’t even see her mother out of the corner of her eye. “Is it any better that you fall asleep for a hundred years?”
“You make it sound like those are the only two options,” growled Cam. Since she’d woken up again, she hadn’t met his gaze once. It was too painful. “Like Dr. Flyte said, this isn’t the end. Even if this doesn’t work, there are other things we can do.”
“I’m not sacrificing myself for you, Elena. I’m risking myself.” Bishop’s smile was just a little sad. Elena knew the elf was looking at her mother. “There’s a difference.”
There was no help for it. Elena turned, facing her mother. “I don’t want this.” The words caught in Elena’s throat. “You shouldn’t have to sacrifice him just to keep me safe.”
There were tears in the queen’s eyes. “I would burn the wor
ld down to keep you safe.” She locked gazes with Bishop, her voice thick with emotion. “How can I help but love someone who would risk so much do to the same thing?”
A hush fell. No one dared to speak and break the moment, no matter how much it cheated her mother and Bishop to have it happen in such terrible circumstances. Grief and resentment at the unfairness of it all twisted in Elena’s chest, making it ache. This wasn’t right. She was the only one who was supposed to be at risk here. She’d known the curse was coming for so long that there was nothing left for it to snatch away, but she refused to let it start stealing from other people as well.
That, she was willing to fight for.
“No.” Elena’s voice was calmer now, a new sense of determination helping her wrestle back her control. When everyone looked at her, she lifted her chin. “Bishop, I am deeply grateful for your offer, and if worst comes to worst I may have to take you up on it. But if I heard Braeth correctly, the person who takes my blackout will also feel the pain that comes every time I untangle something.”
“I am aware,” Bishop said, obviously trying to reassure as he turned to look at Elena. “But the pain is also likely to be far less than what you experienced.”
Elena blew out a breath. “But I’ll have to watch myself hurt you, which for me will be worse than actually feeling the pain. I’m going to need all my concentration for this, and I won’t be able to do that if I’m making someone I care about suffer.”
Privately, she still didn’t believe they would ever get to that point. But she would do whatever she had to in order to keep them from getting any more hurt than they already were.
She turned to Braeth, hoping he would be the most practical. “If you’re still insistent on doing this, surely there’s another pool of candidates we could draw from. The crown has enough resources to make it worth the risk they’ll be taking on.” Callous, yes, but if someone had to be a risk she would rather it be a stranger than someone she loved. “I also feel I should once again point out that even if this doesn’t work, the candidate isn’t necessarily condemning themselves to anything,” Ariadne interrupted, showing more than a hint of impatience. “To a prisoner, for example, the risk/reward ratio might be entirely feasible.”
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