Cursed: Briar Rose's Story (Destined Book 6)

by Kaylin Lee

  Raven nodded, subtly straightening her spine. “We’re ready.”

  “I have to go, Briar. Not sure when I’ll be back.” Dad peered up at me from the doorway. “You know the way home, right?”

  “’Course.” I knew the city like the back of my hand. From the rooftops, at least. My hands and biceps burned as I clung to the wall. “And it’s Bri, Dad.”

  He didn’t reply. They’d already left.

  I stared at the gray rock in front of my face for a moment, my eyes oddly hot. Then I gauged the distance to the ground, released my grip, and dropped like a stone, landing in a crouch on the padded floor.

  My hands ached as I stretched them. I stood and wiped the clammy sweat from my palms onto my pants.

  Dad hadn’t said I needed to head home immediately, had he? And I’d been having so much fun climbing.

  We’d only been out of Prince Estevan’s protective custody and back in our Mage Division villa for a few days. I’d missed having daily access to the Sentinels’ training rooms in the palace basement. My stepsister Ella’s wedding yesterday had been a fun distraction from our boring, regular life, but family bonding time was nothing compared to this.

  I rolled my shoulders, then approached a new section of the rock wall, my steps jerky. There was a dark feeling in the pit of my stomach that hadn’t been there when we’d arrived.

  I gripped two starting handholds and ascended the wall, this time lurching upward with uninhibited speed. Speed and strength were all I had going for me, but at least I had something to work with there. Unlike my magic.

  As an absorbent mage, I was pathetic. Barely strong enough to cause a mild headache. It was like all the power in my mother’s womb had gone to my twin and none had been left over for me, leaving me a sorry excuse for a mage. I wasn’t absorbent enough for me to be dangerous like Mom or expellant enough to be helpful like Alba. Just absorbent enough to be a tracker—to figure out what other mages were up to as they used their far-greater powers however they liked. Perhaps it would have been better to be born without any mage powers at all.

  Tracker. I hated that word. It was drearily passive. If I didn’t make it as a Sentinel, the Mage Division might as well prepare me for a life of boring observation, while the other, more powerful mages had fun and got into trouble.

  The only good thing about being a tracker was the fact that it would make it easier to get into the Sentinels. They needed trackers to fight mages, but few mages were up to the physical and mental challenge of becoming a Sentinel.

  Meanwhile, for the next five years, I would be forced to follow in the academic footsteps of the gravelly-voiced tracker from the Crimson Blight who’d kidnapped me and Alba to get to our mom. Sometimes I sat at my desk in the Mage Academy, and the wood seemed to crawl beneath my hands. There was no doubt in my mind that the tracker who’d nearly killed us had touched the desk himself when he was my age.

  A mage’s trace couldn’t stay on a desk that long. I knew that.

  Didn’t make my Mage Academy desk feel any more comfortable, though.

  It was ridiculous that I even had to sit in those classes. I’d already learned everything about tracking on my own, at the bakery, back when we had nothing to do but study. But none of the teachers believed me—or would admit to believing me, anyway.

  I felt my lip curl as I climbed. After thirteen years of living as a fugitive, I was just supposed to pretend to be a regular mage girl now. Like I hadn’t spent a full year preparing to face life in the city on my own. Like I hadn’t been kidnapped by terrorist mages and used to blackmail my mother. Like none of it had ever happened.

  Stay relaxed, Dad had said. Right.

  I reached the top of the wall and stopped, my shoulders and forearms straining as I gripped the highest holds. After a deep breath, I let my legs drop, holding on with only my arms, letting the skin on my fingers burn as I dangled to see how long I could last. How was that for relaxed?

  I squeezed the handholds, raising from a dead hang until my head was above my hands. At least my body was strong. How many Sentinels could climb from the floor to the ceiling in the space of a few breaths, as I could? Could Mom even do what I’d just done?

  I was already strong enough to resist my True Name, just like Mom. She’d taught us in a rushed, whispered meeting shortly after we’d been rescued from the Crimson Blight. It had only taken me a minute or two to master the skill, while Alba had struggled for three times as long.

  My sister would still be at the lowest handholds if she were here, whimpering and complaining like always.

  Incident. What incident? And what magic? Mom had never mentioned any incident to me. Maybe she’d told Alba. Or Ella. They’d always been closer to each other than to me.

  Maybe I was the only one in the family who didn’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d left me out of something important.

  I imagined the family together—Dad, Mom, Alba, and Ella—huddling around the kitchen table, worrying about the mysterious incident at the gate, making plans, and keeping secrets while I did hours of unnecessary schoolwork upstairs in my room.

  The darkness in my stomach grew heavier, too heavy to hang from the rock wall any longer.

  I dropped to the ground, this time wobbling as I landed, my crouch not quite as stable as after my first drop.

  Again. I approached a third section of the wall. Faster this time, and smoother. Again, and again, until every time was perfect.

  I walked home in the dark.

  Dad didn’t come back, not that I thought he would.

  Not that I needed him to come.

  Chapter 3

  Waiting made my skin itch.

  Every sound seemed too loud. The distant clang of the final evening bell seemed to reverberate in my head long after it ended, ruthlessly driving its message home. Another day had passed without our parents. Was that fourteen days now? Or fifteen?

  The familiar scent of honey wafting through the villa did nothing to soothe my jumpy nerves. I scratched the back of my neck and tried to focus on my cards.

  “Did you hear that?” Alba held her cards still, as though any movement would drown out the sound from outside. Her cheeks were red from the warm kitchen, her black hair untidy but glossy as always.

  “Someone’s fomecoach. Down the street, not out front.” I shifted on the wooden kitchen chair, wishing the sick roiling in my stomach would quiet down. But I’d been feeling nervous ever since Mom and Dad left to hunt for the Masters in the Badlands, and it didn’t look like the churning would stop any time soon. I dropped my worst card on the pile and took a new one. “Your turn.”

  “The honeybread is ready!” Ella set a plate, overflowing with steaming, golden slices of bread, on the table beside our card pile, her smile overly bright. Stains covered her worn, violet apron like she’d sloshed half the ingredients while making our evening treat. Maybe she was as anxious about their mission as I was. “Who’s hungry?”

  Even though she and Weslan were newlyweds, Ella had been staying with us ever since our parents had left for the mission, and her hovering was beginning to grate. Why didn’t she understand by now that we could take care of ourselves?

  Well, maybe not Alba. But I would have done just fine on my own.

  Alba set down her cards face up and grabbed a piece of bread, ignoring the hot steam that had surely burned her fingers. “Me. Always.”

  I picked up a hint of expellant magic in the air and glanced at my sister. From the contented way she munched her honeybread, I supposed Alba had simply healed the burns the moment they had happened. Must be nice. As a powerful healer mage, she didn’t have to face the inconvenience of pain like the rest of us.

  I set my cards down beside hers then peeked at her cards and grimaced. If it weren’t for Ella’s honeybread, I would’ve won. Sure could’ve used a victory today, even if it was a small one.

  “What was that?” Alba cocked her head toward the dark kitchen window. “I think I heard someone talking
. A man’s voice.”

  “There are lots of men in the Mage Division.” I couldn’t help peering out the kitchen window as hope flared unbidden at her words. After two weeks of this, I should’ve known better. “Stop jumping at every noise. They’ll get home when they’re done with the mission. There’s no point in obsessing over it.”

  “I’m not obsessing over it.” Alba took an enormous bite of honeybread and slumped with her elbows on the table. “I’m just wondering when Dad will get home. And Mom too.”

  “What do you care?” Alba flinched, but I couldn’t help myself from continuing. “You didn’t even say goodbye to him before he left. They only had a few hours at home after the Masters retreated, but you just clung to Mom like a baby.”

  I cracked my knuckles, feeling annoyingly guilty.

  That didn’t make any sense. Alba was the one who should feel guilty, not me. I couldn’t imagine treating our father so rudely. We’d gone thirteen years without our amazing, heroic dad, and now he was here. Tough, smart, competent—the commander of the best fighting force in the city. He was perfect, and Alba kept breaking his heart.

  Couldn’t say I was all that sad about it, though. I shifted on my chair, unable to get comfortable for some reason. Alba always got her way in our family. I liked having Dad to myself. Alba had Mom, Ella, and all the magical power we should have shared. It seemed right for me to at least have him.

  Alba’s cheeks turned even redder. “Doesn’t mean I don’t care,” she mumbled around her bite of bread. “Don’t be so mean.”

  Ella didn’t speak but looked up from washing the dishes to shoot me a pointed look. As usual, she’d backed up Alba’s rebuke.

  “I’m going upstairs.” I ducked my head, hoping she couldn’t see the hurt on my face. Why did Ella and Mom always side with Alba? And why did I get in trouble every time I told the truth?

  I grabbed a napkin and folded it around a hot piece of honeybread, but the heat seared my fingertips through the napkin. I switched hands and tried to look nonchalant. “Thanks for the food, Ella.”

  “Of course.” Ella removed her apron and set it on the counter. “If you stay downstairs, maybe we could all play—”

  “I’ll pass. Just want to do some studying.” I ignored the disappointed look on Ella’s face and sped toward the stairs. If Ella wanted me to stick around for sisterly bonding, maybe she should take my side a time or two. I wasn’t the one who was too immature to forgive Dad for failing to find us sooner. It wasn’t even his fault, anyway, and there was no point in making him feel worse about something he couldn’t control.

  Upstairs, I tossed the steaming napkin full of honeybread on my bed and blew on my fingers.

  My bedroom was dark, simple, and quiet. After thirteen years of sharing the upper room of Ella’s bakery with my mom and sister, followed by weeks in the palace basement as we waited for the furor over Mom’s absorbent mage powers to die down, I liked having space to myself. Even if it was a bit eerie.

  I flicked on the luminous and sat on my bed for a moment, uneasy as the empty walls in my room seemed to inch closer.

  The villa Prince Estevan had arranged for us to move into two months ago was fine enough, but it was missing a rooftop terrace like the old bakery. How was I supposed to survive the stifling walls of my daily life without an outdoor escape above my room?

  I shook my head, feeling silly. The walls weren’t getting any closer. I had to stop complaining about the villa. Life here with Dad was far better than it had been back at the bakery. At least the Mage Division didn’t reek of rotting garbage in the streets like the Merchant Quarter, and I didn’t have to scrub the bakery’s downstairs with expurgo every week to hide the trace of Mom’s dangerous, absorbent magic.

  But the most important thing was that Dad was here. That alone was enough of a reason to stop complaining.

  I reached under my pillow and found the book I’d hidden there, my fingers grazing the embossed, foreign letters as I pulled it onto my lap.

  The Legend of the Gold Hills. The Western letters that hovered over the etched mountains on the book’s cover were so faded, I’d had a hard time translating the title when I first stole it.

  Um—found it.

  Mom had sent Alba and me out into the city secretly as part of her plan to prepare us for life in the real world without her. Everything had worked out, thanks to Dad and Prince Estevan, but I secretly missed the thrill of exploring the city on my own each night.

  If there was one thing I’d learned from sneaking through government buildings and Procus compounds during our final year hiding in the bakery, it was that the private libraries of wealthy Procus lords were full of illicit Western books.

  The Western books were supposed to have been burned in the plague bonfires years ago, back when we thought the plague had come from the West and that we could vanquish it with the simple brush of flames. Some book collectors must have had a hard time sending their treasures into the fire. In hindsight, they were right to have kept them, because now we knew the truth—the whole, terrifying truth—and the bonfires had done nothing to keep us safe.

  The plague hadn’t come from the West. It had come from our continent, intentionally sent to the West from Theros by evil, Kireth mages who lurked in the Badlands—the exact mages my parents were currently seeking on their mission in the Gold Hills.

  The skin on my arms prickled. I couldn’t let myself think about that, or I’d never be able to sleep tonight. I shook my head to cut off that train of thought and refocused on the treasure before me.

  I’d found this thin, gorgeously illustrated travel journal tucked behind a row of botany books in the Galanos family’s private library. Mom had sent me to explore their street, but I couldn’t resist entering the compound, and once I was inside the compound, I couldn’t resist finding the library.

  That had been just days before the Crimson Blight kidnapped Alba and me. With the chaos of moving to the Mage Division—not to mention aurae nearly taking over and the Masters invading the city—I hadn’t had time to return it yet.

  At least, that was what I told myself as I settled into yet another evening of neglecting my schoolwork and translating the precious Western book instead.

  The Western tongue had nothing in common with our own. I could barely pronounce it. But it was simple, structured, and logical, and with the help of a reading primer and a thick dictionary I’d pilfered months earlier, I’d translated the first dozen pages in the travel journal all by myself.

  The secret project made me feel a bit better about the fact that Mom and Dad hadn’t told me about the Masters and their attempt to kidnap Mom at the city gate not long ago.

  My parents kept secrets from me, and I kept secrets from them.

  Justice was a beautiful thing.

  I flipped open the journal and removed my thin sheaf of translated notes. The dawn shines brightest on the mortally wounded man, read the epigraph. For it bestows on him yet one more day of beauty.

  Mortally wounded. I chewed on the end of my pencil, the words I’d written a few weeks ago looking too precise, too confident. Had my parents been mortally wounded by the Masters? Or by some other foe in the Badlands? Perhaps that was why they hadn’t—

  I couldn’t think about that.

  I redirected my thoughts to the journal and continued through my notes, checking the spelling and grammar against the reading primer, letting the old explorer’s words and the gentle rhythm of the Western language quiet my nerves.

  In the ancient land of Theros, magic pulses in the air. Our world is formed of facts and mechanics, you say? Not magic? Dear nephew, heed my words. Theros is no legend, but a real land, as real as ours. I have seen it—touched it—tasted it. And here, I have drawn it.

  The journal’s author claimed to have adventured in Theros over two hundred years ago, just before the golden age of trade with the West. His illustrations and observations were enthusiastically fanciful—and occasionally outlandish—but I loved it like
the man had written it for me instead of his nephew.

  The mountain initially of least interest reveals itself to be the one hiding the greatest treasures. Cold wind whistles through its valleys. The trees and shrubs are dry, barely living, though somehow, they grow all the same.

  The sun never quite seems to shine. In places, exposed rock includes patches of slick, black rock that will cause even the most stable step to slip. At the top of this menacing slope sits an impassible collection of rocks so enormous, so unforgiving, the mightiest of our machines would be required to drill through them.

  And yet, would you believe me, young man, if I told you I’d found my way through?

  The rocks may not be moved by any power, but for the worthy, they may part—just a crack—just enough that a young man with a taste for adventure might creep through a tunnel that grows ever narrower before opening. And when it opens, my boy, the idyllic scene will take your breath away, for the rocky mountaintop is no ordinary peak. It is verdant and secure, an oasis built on eons of death and power.

  I flipped through the dictionary as I got to work translating the next sentence, the structure and repetition of the Western tongue now comfortingly familiar. My pencil scratched the paper, one word after another, the translation emerging like a satisfying puzzle.

  It is the top of a dead volcano.

  My breath caught. I set aside the dictionary and the sheet of notes that held my translation. Could I be reading that correctly? There was an extinct volcano in the Gold Hills?

  I’d memorized a map of the Gold Hills years earlier, sketching each mountain with a rough hand and labeling the peaks and major bodies of water under my mother’s watchful eye. But never, not in a single Asylian book of geography, had I read of a volcano in the Gold Hills.

  “It’s just a story,” I whispered under my breath, running my hand over the etching of the mountain beside the adventurer’s entry. “Just a tale for his nephew. Not real.” But the longing unfurling in my chest was real enough.