The Cursed (League of the Black Swan)

by Alyssa Day

  “She said yes, but then she said no. It’s complicated, apparently.”

  Her point made, Kit disappeared again and reappeared at her bowl of food, where she continued eating as if she’d never performed a magic trick right there in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Yet another person, well, creature, in my life who knows more about me than I do,” Rio said glumly. “I could throw a party and only invite people who know more about my past than I do, and we’d fill the Bordertown hockey arena.”

  Luke started assembling the ingredients to make another omelet, and it temporarily distracted Rio.

  “Does Alice just stop by long enough to buy groceries and then leave?” A little pang of something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy struck, and Rio bit her lip. “Also, does she live here?”

  Luke glanced up at her and then stopped what he was doing, crossed the space between them, and kissed her.

  “Alice and I are old friends, nothing more. She stays here for the few days a month that she’s actually in town, and we catch up. She manages to hear more eerily accurate scoop and gossip than anyone I’ve ever known, and she always shares any interesting information she learns with me.”

  He went back to his eggs but then looked up and hit her with a hard stare. “While we’re clearing the air, what about Cage Whatsisname, the bike boy? He seemed like way more than a friend to me when I was—ah, when I happened to accidentally cross paths with you on multiple occasions in the past.”

  She caught a sheepish look on his face before he bent his head to chop vegetables, but decided not to ask.

  “Cage may have wanted to be more than a friend, but I never returned the sentiment, and he promptly moved on. The last I heard, he was serving as Ophelia’s operatic muse.”

  “Her naked muse?” Luke grinned at her. “I could use one of those.”

  “I’m the only naked muse you’re going to see for a long time, Buster,” she warned him, laughing.

  For some reason, he scowled down at his omelet pan, which puzzled her until she thought back to what she’d said.

  Oh. He didn’t want her to think she had any claim on him. Of course.

  “Hey, that’s fine,” she said lightly, pretending her heart wasn’t beginning to crack like the eggshells he’d just discarded in the sink.

  Discarded. Abandoned.

  Like garbage down the drain.

  She forced her face into something that might have approached a smile. “No expectations, right? You can get naked with anybody you like.”

  He was around the counter so fast she didn’t even see him move, and then he had his hands on her waist, lifting her into the air. “Don’t even think about it. There will be no naked anything for you with anybody but me. Do you understand me?”

  Something feral and primitive stared at her from Luke’s eyes, and she instinctively knew that she needed to tread very carefully until he could leash the darkness that was haunting him.

  So she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a sweetly seductive kiss; she nibbled at his lips until he opened his mouth for her, and then she delicately licked and tasted until he responded, slanting his head and returning the kiss with all of the fierce passion he’d displayed during the night.

  When he finally pulled back, there was a grim cast to his features, as if he had bitter news to tell and didn’t know how to do it. Or maybe . . .

  “Luke,” she began, choosing her words with care. “I think I may have just read your thoughts, a little. Did you think about needing to tell me some bad news?”

  His eyes widened a little, but he didn’t seem either very surprised or very unhappy at her revelation.

  “I need to tell you about my curse, Rio. I need to tell you everything, and then I need to give you the chance to walk out the door and never see me again, no matter how much I despise the thought.”

  Smoke drifted up, and Luke cursed and went to rescue his omelet, leaving Rio to watch, all alone, as her life and her plans and her heart shattered all around her. She’d been in his bed all night, giving him her body and her soul, and they hadn’t even made it to breakfast before he was willing to say good-bye. She walked, dazed and almost blindly, across the room and out the back door before he could stop her, and then she stood in the rain and let the tears fall.

  CHAPTER 17

  Luke grabbed the pan, burning his hand in the process, which only served him right. He turned off the heat to avoid burning down his damn house and ran after Rio, but she was gone, and nothing, not even a trace of her scent, remained. Only the haunting image of her shock and pain, after he’d dropped that final bombshell on her, remained to taunt him.

  He turned his face up to the cold, driving rain and wished bitterly that, for once in his life, he could have been the type of man for whom eloquent words came easily, but the glib conversationalist gene in his storied heritage had bypassed him completely. He didn’t know how to talk to a woman he loved because he’d never done so.

  He’d never before felt this way—that he might be falling in love with a woman—and now that he was, he had no map to guide him through the process. He was great at ordering people to do things. He was even pretty damn good at ordering people to leave him alone.

  Cooperation had never been his style; he’d always simply blasted anything that annoyed him and anyone who deserved it. And now, without even trying, he’d driven away the most incredible woman he’d ever known.

  Behind him in the doorway, Kit howled. The sound of her song was so desolate that the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up and his already chilled flesh pebbled on his arms.

  He suddenly laughed, standing alone in the rain, like the lunatic so many figured him to be. After all, it made sense that Rio had run away from both of them. He spun around and stalked back to his house, looking down at the little fox as he stepped past her.

  “It’s not like we didn’t deserve it. You told her that you didn’t know if you were on her side, and she thought that I told her I wanted her to leave. We deserve to lose her.”

  Kit howled again, but he pulled his door shut, forcing her to back up into the kitchen and out of the rain. The two of them stood looking at each other. Both miserable; both wet and dripping; both probably cursing the other for contributing to Rio’s despair.

  Luke had known enough about her history that he had no excuse for his thoughtlessness. Her parents—whoever they had been—had abandoned her at that convent. And now, even that pale shadow of a home had disappeared out from under Rio’s metaphorical feet.

  What a perfect time for him to dump the truth of his curse on her. He couldn’t have timed his stupid blunder any worse if he’d planned it to cause her the maximum possible pain.

  It was even worse than that, though. He had to be honest with himself. His fault lay in what he’d done the night before. He’d taken advantage of her inexperience and the vulnerability of her situation because he was a selfish bastard who’d only been interested in quenching his insatiable need for her.

  It had been an unforgivable thing to do, especially from a man who knew he had no right to a future with someone like Rio. He was an immortal cursed to walk the razor’s edge between salvation and damnation—forever. A man whose entire existence had been, and always would be, spent paying for the sins of the past.

  His first instinct was to try a locator spell, but the little bit of common sense he had left after Hurricane Rio had swept through his life told him that she would never forgive him for tracking her down like a lost dog. So he turned his thoughts to something—anything—he could do while he waited to discover if she’d ever return or forgive him.

  His upper lip lifted from his teeth in what was probably a good impression of Kit’s best snarl. He knew exactly what to do. A practical task; one that would help Rio.

  An easy mission.

  He was going to storm the Silver Palace and drag the truth out of a certain Fae aristocrat.

  Twenty minutes later, Luke was wondering how much
trouble he’d be in for incinerating a half dozen Fae guardsmen, and whether it would be worth it, when a flunky finally officiously gave him permission to enter the palace. The flunky personally escorted Luke to Lady Merelith’s quarters.

  “It’s not like I’m going to steal your silver, pal,” Luke snarled, but the man never even blinked an eye. Probably, after life among the High Court Winter Fae, the little guy wouldn’t be afraid of much that didn’t walk the icy realms. There was plenty enough and more to be terrified of right here.

  Luke had been in the Winter Court Palace several times before, but familiarity, though it didn’t breed contempt, didn’t breed admiration or liking, either. The place’s icy lines and sterile decorations always made him think that here was a home without a heart. It was an easily recognizable flaw when the one doing the noticing suffered from the same problem.

  Rio could have been the heart of his home, Luke realized, and the rhythm of his pace faltered enough that the flunky cast a chiding glance back over his epauletted shoulder.

  Merelith inhabited an enormous suite on the east wing of the third floor. By the time they got there, and more of her flunkies, this time dressed like the Royal Guard, screwed around for a while and then finally allowed him into her presence, Luke was about a mile and a half past reasonable.

  Which was fine by Merelith, apparently, because she didn’t bother much with small talk, either.

  “How did you get in here? Get out.” She didn’t even bother to look at him, which raised the thermostat to red on the How to Anger the Wizard meter.

  “Make me. What do you know about Rio and her parents?”

  Her eyes narrowed, and the four guardsmen flanking her immediately drew their swords and pointed all four of them, plus the requisite daggers, straight at Luke. Luke bared his teeth at them, and then he started to laugh.

  “Merelith, do I look like somebody who’d be afraid of your boy toys and their little pointy sticks? They’re very decorative, but I’ve had a bad damn day. I’m soaked from the rain, and I’m standing here dripping on what I’m sure are very expensive carpets. Is this really something you want to prolong?” He held up his hands and made sure she saw the blue flames sparkling between his fingers. “I’d be happy to redecorate for you. Kind of minimalist in here, don’t you think? Little cold? What would you think about a nice roaring fire right here where your men used to be standing?”

  The guardsmen all simultaneously tensed and leaned forward, eager to slit him from stem to stern, no doubt.

  “Wow, it’s like watching synchronized swimming without the water. Now we just need Michael Phelps,” Luke drawled. “Did you hear the rumor that he’s probably a Water Fae?”

  Merelith sighed. “Lucian Olivieri, you make it very hard for a person to be pleasant to you.”

  Her voice was as icily arrogant as ever, but Luke’s wrongness detector was buzzing. The Fae wasn’t one hundred percent on her game today; she lacked some indefinable quality of command or control that he’d never seen her without before. Luke suddenly looked around. Something was off. The usual luster of the room had dimmed to a dull sheen. He’d visited Merelith on a few occasions on investigative business. Whenever he had been in her sitting rooms before, it had felt uncomfortably like he’d entered the inside of a highly decorated ice cube.

  Now, however, the effect was more like that of the interior of an old tin box.

  “What’s wrong? I don’t mean to be blunt, and you know I can play Winter Court etiquette with the best of them when I’m really motivated—”

  “Which is almost never,” she interrupted icily.

  “Granted,” he agreed. “But it’s almost Rio’s birthday, and suddenly everybody in the known universe is interested in her, and I don’t like anything about that. I need to help her, and in order to do so, I need to know what’s going on. You gave us the impression that you knew something about her, when you were at my place, so talk.”

  One of the guardsmen raised his dagger and rushed Luke, screaming something about Luke’s “effrontery,” and Luke smashed him to the ground with a bolt of enhanced gravity designed to break several of the man’s bones.

  “I don’t even know what ‘effrontery’ means, and that pissed me off,” Luke said, mocking the rest of them, daring them to try something.

  Anything.

  “Is this the wizarding world equivalent to trying to start a bar fight?” Merelith stared down at the broken guardsman with distaste. “And you. Did I order you to attack this man, who is a guest under my roof, however uninvited and unwanted?”

  She pointed to the others. “Get him out of here.”

  The remaining three guardsmen picked up their fallen companion and filed silently out of the room, leaving Merelith and Luke alone.

  “Why would you possibly think I would tell you anything, especially after you just damaged my guard?” Merelith never raised her voice, but she didn’t need to do anything overt like that. Menace ran through her veins like blood, and Luke wondered why he wasn’t afraid.

  Maybe because he’d finally reached the point where he had something to lose.

  “Because you owe me. Do I really need to call you on the debt that your honor should have seen paid?”

  Luke played the game. Fae were big on defending their honor. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if she ever paid him for basically playing taxi service to her niece, and if she did, he’d do with it what he always did—donate it to the poison control hotline.

  Those gifts always gave him a great deal of satisfaction. It was like spitting in his ancestors’ collective eye.

  “Do not question me on my honor, wizard, or you will regret it very bitterly. Payment is on its way to you, as agreed, but I have been somewhat . . . occupied.”

  Luke wanted to blast something, but for once in his miserable, impatient, cursed life, he took the time to consider his options. He studied—really studied—Merelith’s face for a hint of what she was feeling. That would usually be a stupid waste of time with her, or with any Fae, but this time something was different.

  Merelith’s face was showing emotion, and that was very, very wrong.

  He could see faint lines of strain around her perfect eyes, which meant that either she was in true pain or her magic had become so badly flawed that it was failing to preserve an illusion of beauty that she had previously maintained for all the years he’d known her. He knew enough of the Fae to discard the second option. Her beauty was no illusion. Neither was the terror she inspired in any sane man.

  Therefore, something was wrong, and only one name came to mind.

  Elisabeth.

  “Where is she? Where’s Elisabeth? Is she all right?” He strode right past the startled Fae and slammed open the door to her inner sanctum. It was a door he’d never seen opened before, and he didn’t know quite what to expect. What he found was gut-wrenchingly devastating.

  Elisabeth lay in the middle of an enormous bed, swaddled in silk coverlets, so pale and still that he was sure she must be dead.

  “What did you do to her?” He whirled around and confronted Merelith. “If you hurt her in any way, I swear to you—”

  He abruptly shut his fool mouth, because the truth of it was plainly apparent on Merelith’s drawn and tired face. She was hurting over this. Hurting in a way that he’d never seen before, not even when her youngest sister—Merelith’s favorite—had made a bad marriage and been exiled. Or murdered, Luke had always secretly suspected, but that wasn’t important now. It was simply his brain babbling and taking cover under an onslaught of trivia so Luke didn’t have to face the tiny body on the bed.

  “When did Elisabeth die?” Luke managed to force the words out, even though his throat was closing up and his eyes were burning.

  Merelith’s face softened for a second as she watched him, but then she resumed the blank stare that had replaced her icy mask of indifference.

  “She is not dead.”

  Luke’s knees weakened with relief, and he didn’t even care
that Merelith saw it.

  “She is very ill, and we do not know why,” the Fae continued. “None of our healers can help her, not even I, and I share a blood bond with her. I have had five different human doctors examine her and take specimens of her blood, hair, and urine back to their laboratories outside Bordertown, in case the illness could have been related to Elisabeth’s human heritage, but none of them could find anything.”

  A single tear pooled in Merelith’s right eye and slipped down her face, and it was all the more jarring since Luke was almost certain that she was completely unaware of it.

  “I let them live,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “The useless human doctors. In case that’s the next accusation you want to hurl at me.”

  The only accusations Luke wanted to hurl were at himself, but he figured he’d join Merelith in her anguish only when he’d run out of other options. He was a wizard, damn it. He should be able to find a cure for a sick kid.

  “When did it start?” He crossed over to the bed and stared down at the tiny girl, who seemed much smaller than she’d been when he’d retrieved her from Dalriata’s office.

  She was so pale—impossibly pale—a color that no human skin should ever be. Her pulse and breathing had slowed so much that it was almost as if she were under a sleeping curse.

  “Sleeping beauty,” he murmured, reaching out to move a strand of her hair that had fallen in her face.

  Merelith glanced sharply at him. “That is a very old curse, indeed. I’m surprised you have heard of it, beyond the fairy tales that infuse contemporary culture. I thought of it, of course, but the counterspell has had no effect. Whatever this is, it is not that.”

  Merelith sank down to sit on the bed next to her niece, graceful even in her extreme distress.

  “She wanted to see Rio. She asked me if Rio and the fox could visit her, and I said no,” Merelith admitted, the perfect silken perfection of her voice finally cracking. “That was the last thing I said to her before she fell into this coma, or curse, or whatever it is.”