THERE wasn’t much Alara didn’t hear. When they came into her room and spoke near her, she listened. When they arrived and spoke to her, she listened.
Some things amused her, and others entertained her enough that she forgot her predicament for a short while. Some talk was disturbing; frightful even.
When her visitors came to her to unload their worries and troubles, she paid close attention. Too many occasions, she wished she could speak; to warn Tomas or the guards of the deceit within the palace. Then Tomas would visit, and she would be reminded that he was all too aware of the troubles within his house.
He grew tired. Weary. Old. His voice became gruff. His touch was lighter than in recent years. His skin felt thinner, the callouses once marring his hands were now gone.
Others visited Alara as well, though they were not supposed to. Each new voice stood out for her as she heard them.
She’d imagined what they’d grown to look like over the years. Her maid and guard were sometimes challenging, having never met them before her curse took hold.
She imagined Gretchen being tall like herself, with dark brown hair and a thin frame. She felt her strong hands every time she bathed and dressed her. She had a gentle touch, even when they all thought she felt no pain. She sang to Alara and told her stories of the palace, all while everyone thought she could hear nothing. Alara decided she liked the girl very much.
Cedric was much the same. He always told stories, speaking about his day, his troubles, and his happiness. Alara imagined him taller than herself, even with heels. She knew his hair reached past his collar as Gretchen would often tell him it was against the dress code of the guard for it to be left down; to hang lower than the shoulders.
Alara imagined him sandy blond. She also knew he had no facial hair. On occasion when Gretchen needed to change her bed sheets, Cedric lifted her form and held her until she finished the deed.
He had, more than once, rested his face atop her head as he held her; cradled her to him like a man in love. His face brushed up against hers as he left a stolen kiss on her cheek.
Her body trembled as he did, and not just on the inside. He’d felt the reaction in her facial muscles, but he’d told no one. Since then, he’d greeted her with a kiss every evening. Her body shook with each one, a little more than the last.
The smell of lavender oil interrupted her senses, pulling Alara from her reverie. She winced immediately, but her body did not reveal her angst. Had the queen consort believed Alara would ever wake, or that she could hear everything happening around her, surely she wouldn’t visit her room. Recently she’d become more desperate to tell Alara all her dirty little secrets.
“You seem to have outlived your usefulness to me. Twenty years is a long time for the people to covet the Sleeping Beauty. Did you know that is what they are calling you? Even all these years later, they still want their queen.” Alara felt Talia’s icy hand against the skin of her arm. “However, I can’t just get rid of you. I’m still waiting for your husband to take his final breath. They all have noticed his decreased health.”
The woman laughed and moved around the room. “Poison seems to suit him. Twenty years. Plenty of time to grow a prince, kill a king, and rid the world of you.”
She hesitated before she spoke again. “I could always lock you in this room. Allow no one to enter. You’ll be perfectly safe.” Alara heard the woman cry for joy as she clapped her hands together.
“Oh, it’s perfect. A shrine to the queen. You’ll never die. Never grow old. Best of all, my curse will ensure you never awaken.” She leaned in close to Alara’s ear and whispered, “We can have these visits together for eternity.”
Alara was stunned, her chest tightening around the beating muscle it held. She knew this woman disliked her for having the king’s favor, but to be the one who cursed her... She wished her body would allow her to retch, for she felt bile burning her insides.
Alara listened to Talia spew her stories of grandeur for what felt like hours before she left. The Prince's arrival relieved her of the wicked thoughts left over by the queen consort’s visit.
Cedric politely excused himself so he could guard the door; the same as he’d always done when Declan visited.
Alara loved to hear the prince speak in the absence of Tomas. His voice sounded so much like his father of many years before.
She could guess by the way he bound into the room if the visit would be a happy one or one filled with sorrow. As a small child, Declan had a phase when he’d jump on two feet from the door to the chair at her side. Tomas called it his bunny hop. Oh, how she wished she could have witnessed it.
“Hello, Alara,” he moved her hand to hold it in his, as had become his practice. His father told him that touching her while speaking allowed her to hear him much better. That she needed physical contact, lest she lose touch with the world altogether. “I have news. I thought you needed to hear it from me. Father is ill. Well, he’s been ill for some time. The physician says he can’t find a reason for it. That we must accept he will soon be gone. I’m so sorry we haven’t found a way to wake you. If I could bring him here to say goodbye, I would. Mother has forbidden it. As you know, she’s not a fan of the love you two shared,” he acknowledged, squeezing her hand in his.
“I often wonder what things would have been like had you been with us. I understand my very existence would be in question. That my parents may have never had the need to conceive me, but if you’d come back to us afterward, I think I would have liked that reality very much.”
Alara could hear the sincerity in the prince’s voice. He grieved a life he’d not had and the life of both of his parents.
“If only Landon were here with us. It’s our sixteenth birthday today, Majesty. We haven’t stopped searching for my brother. We will find him.”
She felt him sit on the edge of the bed, still clutching her hand as if the connection were the only way she would be able to hear his words. She wished she could console him. With his mother threatening to lock her away, he was the only contact she may ever have, unless Talia persuaded him to stop visiting. No, he couldn’t possibly.
“What’s this?” Alara felt him pull at her hand, at the finger that had touched the cursed spindle; at the twenty-year-old ache. It traveled from her finger to the spot in her heart that couldn’t let go of her hope that the curse would one day be broken. “A splinter,” he said with repugnance. “Has nobody seen this? I wonder how long this has been here.”
Alara felt her hand lowered to the bed as it moved under his weight. The clicking of his shoes against the stone led from her bed to the door, another sound she’d become accustomed to. When the door opened and closed, she thought the prince had left her. When the door moved again, Alara expected Cedric or her maid, Gretchen, to enter.
“Show me.” She heard two sets of feet walk back to her side across the stone. “Where?” Cedric asked insistently.
“Here,” the prince said, lifting her hand from her side where he’d let it fall.
“I see it. How is it we haven’t found this before?” Cedric cursed under his breath.
The door moved again, signaling another had entered her room. Why did a splinter in her finger have everyone so up in arms?
“It’s here. Have you ever seen this before?” When Cedric asked the question, Alara knew who had entered her room.
“Sir, I have cleaned Her Majesty every day for twenty years. I’ve never seen more than a red spot on that finger. That is the very spot. The one pierced by the needle on the spindle. It’s always remained inflamed and red. I’ve never seen a splinter of wood before. I’d have removed it.” Gretchen’s cries were muffled.
“Well, maybe this is what we’ve been waiting for. Shall we?” the prince asked, and Alara felt his weight return to the bed next to her. A slight squeeze of her finger turned into a harder pinch. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. This might be painful. It’s been in there for a very long time.”
Alara felt a hand over her b
row, then another on her arm. Cedric’s scent wafted through her senses. He smelt of wood and soap, which helped to block her mind from the pain, just as a searing hot needle pierced her finger. She screamed in her head. She knew she would thrash on the inside and remain completely still on the outside. Until….
“Ahhhhh!
Her body shot up. Her eyes opened.
She could hear the scream from the outside of her own head. She could see the looks of shock and amusement from the faces she did not know around her.
Then she fell back to the bed. Her eyes closed, and she remained still.
THE ruins of castle Vlora stood off in the distance. Never reachable. Never attainable.
His aunts told him he could never go there.
It was dangerous. It could crumble at any moment.
Though they’ve told him this for the last sixteen years, he wondered how the thing hadn’t fallen yet.
They just didn’t want him there. He may have injured himself, but they would never be able to look his father in the eye again if something were to happen to his heir.
The heir of a kingdom reduced to hiding in rubble. It was comical sometimes to think about, so Landon tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about his mother casting him aside to further her own agenda, not bothering to make sure they took the right child; not bothering to know which child belonged to her. Thoughts of it made him sick.
“Landon!”
“I’m here, Grella,” he told the stout woman before she began screaming again. Though she sure did like to.
“I need your height again, boy.” The woman sighed and headed back to the house they all shared. “Oh, how I wish to fly again.”
“Nothing is stopping you. You don’t have to keep up pretenses anymore. Father hasn’t visited in a year.” Landon knew the stories of his abduction by the very women who’d raised him.
His father found them within hours of the kidnapping, just as the three women were about to give in to his mother’s threats and abandon him within the rubble remains of the castle beyond the cottage.
“Yes, but even still. Others could be lurking nearby.” She gave him the same answer each time he had offered them the out.
The women were cursed by Talia when she found out they disregarded her instructions, even if it meant going up against the queen consort. They had two forms they could choose from on any occasion. Their magic was unavailable to them otherwise.
Ordinarily, they looked like children. Three feet tall, by Landon’s calculations. Grella was the oldest of the sisters. By what, he had no idea. A different species, the fae could live an infinite amount of time, or that was his assumption. Though Grella appeared to be in her fifties at the very least.
The sisters looked nothing alike, not like he and his brother. They told him they were so similar they could be twins, even having different mothers something no one ever heard of.
“Be a dear and get that bowl from the top shelf,” Grella asked him once they reached the small kitchen.
Her red curls bounced around her face as she moved back and forth between the stove and sink. She wore her special baking apron, to cover and protect her yellow dress. Her cooking was the best in the house. Sure, the others could cook, but they lacked the tenacity of Grella’s ability with spices.
“Why, if you use this more than the rest, do we continue to store it up there? I swear you do it to humor yourself.” He barely had to lift his feet off the ground to grab onto Grella’s favorite glass bowl.
“Yes, well, I’m just making sure you feel useful around here. Nothing more.” She patted him on the wrist as he handed her the bowl.
Landon saw the blonde ringlets move around him.
“Good morning, Landon,” Nerie said, yawning her way over to the pitcher of coffee on the countertop. “You’re up early today.”
Grella smacked her sister from behind. A practice Landon became accustomed to at a very young age. He also knew it was an act reserved for the eldest sister. Neither of the younger fae ever lifted a hand to her. For fear of their lives, he supposed. She was the mean one.
Nerie moved her mug and the pitcher away from her as she poured. “Sorry, I forgot.” She sat at the table with her refreshment and smoothed the ruffles of her pink dress.
“Well, I haven’t.” Landon looked behind him as Eirene moved into the room, her dark hair pinned up in circles around her head. The blue dress she wore made her skin look pale in comparison to the dark blue hue of her dark curls.
“Yes, well. We shouldn’t discuss it.” Grella fussed with the apron over her yellow dress. Her red curls made her look washed out. Tired. Or maybe that was just the air of the day.
She turned from everyone as she prepared a batter for the sixteenth cake she’d ever made.
“It’s not like I’m ten, Grella. I can handle today just fine. It seems to me that it bothers the three of you more than it does me,” he pulled at the hem of his shirt and made his way through the house to his room.
The women were not his aunts, but the women who’d cared for him; raised him while his parents fought each other behind the other’s back.
He often wondered if his brother knew of the discord between the two of them, being in the same house; being able to see them together daily. Would he understand all of this when it finally came out? Then again, they were about to spend another birthday apart, he in the run-down house full of rot and death when they’d arrived. His brother, in the palace. He’d have satin sheets and maids to see to his needs. Landon had clean sheets and three neurotic fae looking after him.
His father used to visit him once a month to give them supplies and tell him stories from the palace. Stories of his mother and brother. When he turned thirteen, the king felt it essential to explain to Landon the reasons why he grew up away from his family. He wanted to know that Landon would never trust his mother to care for him as he had.
He said something was in motion; something he couldn’t stop, for it could get Landon and his brother killed. So, he stayed quiet. And Landon remained with the three bickering women to protect his family.
He wanted to feel like the hero of his story. Living in poverty with only a few luxuries his father could bring to him so he could save the day. Not that it was all bad. The house was cozy. He had his own room and personal effects.
Throughout the years, his father brought him all kinds of things to fill it and make it resemble a room at the palace.
New satin drapes and bedding. The old bed and dresser looked like they belonged to his father as a child. His favorite possessions were the wood carved dragons. His father brought him paints so he could create them in his own eye.
Landon could hear the women bickering below him, and he wondered how they managed to remain together after so many years. He fell to his back on the twin bed. Thinking how drifting to sleep would have allowed him the pleasure of skipping his birthday.
He didn’t want that. He just wanted to try and imagine how he would have spent the day if he’d grown up beside his brother.
He’d fantasized it many times over the years and wondered if Declan ever imagined the same. Or if he was ever told the truth.
He wondered if his brother spent his days with his mother, a woman he thought gave birth to him. Or if he knew the woman threatened the lives of three fae to have Declan kidnapped from the castle… only to have grabbed the wrong child.
“Why not just tell her the truth? You know what she did. Call her out on it. Bring me home?” Landon had begged his father the last time he saw him.
“I wish that I could. I tried the night you were taken; before I’d even known she had anything to do with it. She looked past your brother and said she knew that was her child. I truly believe she’s felt no connection to either of you. She would surely kill me, Alara, and maybe even you and your brother. No, we must let her plans follow through. When your brother takes the throne, then you can come forward.”
“Father? You’ll be dead by then. How w
ould that help?” Landon begged his father.
“Her hands will be tied. If anything happened to you after your return, she’d look guilty. She won’t risk it.” Beads of sweat formed across the king’s brow despite the cold temperatures. “If you went back now, it would be nothing to rid herself of all of us to take the throne herself. I still don’t know what her end game is. She could still hurt your brother and try to take the throne for herself. If that happens, I need you to fight her. Take back the crown and free the people from her. She is not a queen. She’s a witch.”
He promised his father if it came down to it, he would fight his mother. He wouldn’t let her take what rightfully belonged to his family; to him.
For as long as his brother remained unharmed, he agreed to stay hidden. Until Declan ascends to the throne. Then he would go home.
That would mean the death of the king.
It had been weeks since the supply wagon came with news.
His father’s health deteriorated so quickly after his last visit, he hadn’t been able to travel far from the palace. His most recent letter told him he’d finally been reduced to bed, and Declan saw to the day-to-day dealings.
The sun rose a little more in the sky. Birds chirped outside. The sounds of the stream cut through the silence of his room.
The banging of pots and pans died off. The sisters were probably out on a walk. They got bored quickly sitting around inside the house. The three of them told him stories as he grew of how they grew up, never spending more than an hour at most inside a building. They were nature fae, and that was where they most liked to be.
The heat of the brick oven rose to his room. Just when he thought he could handle the lack of contact no more, he heard it. The telltale sound of a squeaky wheel over a rough road wafted through his bedroom window. The whip of the driver smacked against the ox pulling his cart. Landon jumped from his bed, ascended the stairs two at a time, and rushed down the road, too anxious to wait for the wagon to make it to his door.
The driver looked more weary than usual. He was getting old, Landon knew. He’d been handpicked by the king to make these trips each month since the day Landon had been taken. Usually, the wagon overflowed with supplies, food, gifts, and the king himself. Over the last year, there’d been only the food and a few meager items. A new pair of pants and shoes for the growing boy. An extra blanket or two, but nothing more than that. Today, of course, should have been different.
Alara's Curse Page 4
