by Lizzy Ford
“Is that a yes or no?”
“Right now, it’s a no.”
What the hell does that mean? It’s not like I’d know if he lied.
“Why don’t you go read the histories?” he asks.
“You can see and read what I can, right? You know I promised Ben not to.”
“There are answers in the Book of Secrets I can’t reveal to you. They might help you break the curse, if that’s what you really want.”
Ugh. I’ve suspected there might be something I’m missing. Erish is the final key to the puzzle. But I did promise Ben. Even if he’s lied to me since we met, even if my guilt is unfounded, I can’t go back on a promise to the werewolf. I feel like I owe him more than one favor after how I treated him and the Jenny incident.
“What do you mean, if that’s what I really want?” I ask Erish instead.
“Everyone thinks they want the curse broken until they learn the price,” he replies.
“Slaughtering a clan.”
“Exactly.”
I have a way around that. At least, I think I do. I feel like I need some more information before I can make a definitive decision, though. As in, if I go through with the plan I’ve started to form, will it work, or make things worse? I don’t want to cause any other clan to suffer the way the vampires did when they tried to defeat Erish a thousand years ago.
I don’t think Erish is going to be candid if I lay out the plan and ask him his opinion. I don’t have a good enough read on him yet.
“Do you want the curse to break?” I ask him.
“I cease to exist if it does.”
“So you really die. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not when a demon owns your soul and is waiting for you to die, it’s not.”
“What the hell did you do?” I demand and roll out of bed.
“Like you said when we were put to earth. Something stupid.”
There’s a quiet note in his voice. It’s not quite humility – I don’t think he’s capable of such an emotion – but it’s soft and almost sad. “I can’t think of anything, ever, anywhere, in any world or scenario, that would make me curse my entire family and every supernatural in existence,” I tell him.
“You are not me,” he observes.
“Definitely not.” I stand and pull on a sweatshirt, making a mental note to turn on the heat. “You killed Jenny. You swear you can’t hurt any of the candidates?”
“As long as they don’t try to hurt you, I’m harmless for the time being.”
“You just kill everyone else who gets in the way.”
“Semantics.” He laughs. “Only if your life is threatened can I act against someone outside the trials.”
“Like Jenny.”
“Yes. Bitch had it coming. I was there when you met her, you know.”
I roll my eyes. I definitely inherited my temperament and attitude issues from my father’s side. “Do you usually exile the candidate who’s supposed to die in the trials, or am I supposed to?”
“After this part of the trial, I do, using your body.”
I don’t know why I experience relief knowing my father didn’t kill one of the women he might’ve cared about the way I do the three candidates. He was a good person. Everything bad or twisted or otherwise not fitting the image of him I have – this shit belongs to the curse in charge of his mind.
Maybe the man I remember him being – kind, wise and doting if somewhat aloof – is accurate after all. The trials have made me doubt everything about him, about his love for me and the kind of person he was.
“So those bizarre narratives in the histories about Tristan grinding up dead fae and Ben culling his wolves … that was you when you possessed my father? Part of your attempt to influence my perception of the Community?” I ask Erish. “My father would never write that shit.”
Erish doesn’t respond. I’m starting to think that’s a sign I’m right. What about the Book of Secrets? Did he force the Kingmaker’s who wrote its passages to lie? And if so, what did they lie about? More importantly, how the hell am I supposed to identify truth from lie?
If I let my mind go down this thought path, I’ll snap for sure. I pat the amulet, comforted by the physical reminder that there’s at least one person, if not three, on my side. The talisman beneath my fingers is warm and exactly where it belongs – standing between me and a sadistic ghost. I trust the candidates more than I’ll ever trust the Book or Erish, even if my father asked one of them to assassinate me.
“One day down and you still don’t know what to do,” Erish purrs.
For once, I don’t react. I whip my door open and turn on the lights as I walk down the stairs to the main floor. The scent of orange cleaner reaches me, and I follow it into the kitchen.
Myca’s people were here. They didn’t just clean the floors – they replaced them, down to the old carpet in the living area.
“Thank god,” I murmur. The stench would’ve eventually driven me crazy, if Erish doesn’t first.
I send Myca a quick text then answer a note from Tristan before I dump the old coffee and make more. It’s six in the morning. I don’t feel exactly refreshed, and I’m not ready for another day of Erish.
Uncertain what I’m supposed to be doing, I decide I’d rather focus anywhere than on the unnerving shadow with an attitude.
Settling onto the couch, I pull out my notebook and start a new pro-con list for each of the three decisions I’m supposed to be making: leader, lover and … ugh. I cross out the word exile on the third page and instead write, Daddy’s Assassin, referring to the candidate my father placed in charge of murdering me if I fail to break the curse. Returning to the leadership page, I write the candidates’ names down one side and start listing out the advantages and disadvantages for each.
“Ben’s moodiness and violent streak are going to be an issue,” Erish observes from somewhere behind me.
“He’s only violent when he needs to be, and he’s managed to build an empire despite the moods,” I counter.
“He’s not polished enough to lead yet. He should’ve known Jenny was involved in drugs. His father would’ve known the day she started. He was a good alpha. In another hundred years, maybe Ben will be where he should be, but he’s not there yet,” Erish says, sounding puzzled. “I’m not sure how he’s brought the wolves this far.”
“This is my list, not yours.”
“I’ve been around for two thousand years. I know a thing or two about what makes a good leader.”
I’m not about to humor the opinion of a man whose poor judgment led directly to a curse spanning twenty centuries, but I also can’t help secretly agreeing. Everything Erish says is true. Ben is an incredible person and a good leader, but I’ve often wondered how he was so blind to what was in front of him. The night he texted me for hours with silly little questions, too, has often perplexed me when I compare our in-person interactions. It sometimes feels like there are two of him.
“Maybe he has some sort of personality disorder,” I murmur.
“By definition, anyone who is half man, half beast is the very incarnation of a dissociative personality disorder.”
“Sometimes you sound so reasonable,” I respond. “Then I remember how bad you fucked up and think, why the hell would I ever listen to you?”
“Truth is truth, no matter what the source.”
Ben and Erish couldn’t be more different. Then again, a week isn’t long enough to know someone completely, I remind myself.
I can’t bring myself to diagnose Ben with a personality disorder, but I do write sometimes violent in the column for Ben’s disadvantages of becoming Community leader.
I move onto Tristan.
Erish is silent as I complete the rest of the list for each candidate, which I take to mean he agrees with what I write. When I’m done with the leadership page, I lean back and drink my coffee, frowning at my work.
“They’re all almost perfect,” I complain. “Why can’t the Community vot
e for their own leaders?”
“Because it’s against the rules.”
“So, what?”
“You can play by the rules and lose a few people here and there, or your can break the rules and lose everyone. It’s your choice, but I’m going to recommend following the rules.”
Erish’s casual explanation horrifies me. Myca said half his clan was massacred when they led a revolt against the Kingmaker’s. This curse, and its rules, are pretty serious.
How the fuck am I supposed to break it if the penalty for trying is killing so many innocent people?
I flip to the second page, still unable to wrap my head around choosing a husband in the midst of all this. I sense it has something to do with ensuring the Kingmaker line remains unbroken, so Erish can continue to torment every supernatural in existence as long as there’s a Kingmaker to possess.
“This list is troublesome, too, and it’s not just one of them this time.” Erish’s voice is nearer, and I hunch my shoulders instinctively.
“Agreed. They’re all incredible men,” I reply. “I’d be honored to choose any of them.”
“I feel quite the opposite. None of them is your mate.”
I twist and squint until I see the shadow man shifting along one wall of the living area. He’s pacing, but slowly, as if he’s thinking, too.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “I thought I just picked the person I like the most.”
“One of them is … should be, destined to become your mate.”
“You’re telling me it’s preordained?”
“Somewhat.”
“That’s stupid. The Community doesn’t have preordained mates.”
“Not for everyone. Just for a Kingmaker, to ensure there’s always an heir,” he says impatiently. “Your father should’ve chosen someone. He didn’t.”
“Is it possible you don’t know who he chose?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “It’s possible. I’m somewhat vulnerable during the transition period. He would’ve had to have gone to great lengths to deceive me.”
“That wouldn’t make sense.” I frown. “Of all the things to lie to you about, it doesn’t seem like it would’ve been worth the effort to hide which candidate he wanted me to marry.”
“On the contrary, it’s the key.”
“To …”
“Repeating the past and the choices I made that landed us here.” The quiet note is back.
I set the notebook aside, intrigued. “You’re telling me you sold out our family and the Community for a woman?”
“I’m telling you that your fated husband, who should be among the candidates, isn’t here,” he replies without missing a beat. “I won’t know who to exile.”
Coldness races through me. “You killed her? This woman you loved?”
“Accidentally.”
That word makes me feel … icky. I don’t want to know what happened, or why he claims every death he caused was accidental. My instincts are tingling, and I pick up the notebook again and gaze at the names of the three candidates.
My father claimed there was only one of them he’d entrust to kill me. What are the chances the man Erish seeks, and the one my father trusted, are the same one?
“How do you know he’s not among these three?” I ask, puzzled as I try to unravel the latest mystery.
“The bond you felt with each disappeared when your time was up. If one was supposed to become your husband, you would’ve remained whatever supernatural creature was destined to become your mate.”
About a billion questions cross my mind, but only one sticks.
“Oh,” I breathe. “But my father loved my mother. You’re saying he loved someone else more and you killed her?” Was the woman who looked at me with such warmth stuck in a loveless marriage and then killed by her own family?
In the memory Myca showed me, she was happy, and she loved me. She admitted there were rules that had to be followed, but she didn’t seem miserable.
“You care for all the candidates, don’t you?” Erish answers. “Your father did as well. But yes, I killed the one he was meant to be with. Rather, he killed her while I was in charge of his mind. The candidate exiled is your destined mate. Once he’s gone, you choose another and the final becomes the Community leader.”
“How can you not want this curse to end?” I shout, my temper snapping. “How can you torture every generation of Kingmaker and the Community when you went through what it feels like to lose someone you love?”
“I never said I don’t want it to end.”
“Stop fucking with my head! Answer my question!”
The shadow stills and moves closer to me. “My sole purpose is to continue the curse that’s trapped our family for so long. I am not fully the man I was, not fully the soul-less entity I will become. I am here for one reason only. What I can do is limited to the rules of the curse. What I feel, and what I want, Leslie, have not mattered for two thousand years, since the day the curse fell and I lost the woman I loved.”
Is it possible for a creature with no soul and no form to suffer from heartache? I feel it then … it’s instinct only, perhaps leftover from the fae or wolf experiences.
Two millennia is a long time to suffer a broken heart. I don’t want to pity the man who put us in this situation, but my anger fizzles to realize he’s not only trapped in a vicious cycle of reliving his mistake, but in reliving the pain, and will probably be so forever. His mistake or choice – whatever it was – has fucked up the world and left him broken.
I turn away with a shake of my head. “Leave me alone,” I order him.
He doesn’t deserve my sympathy and I can’t find it in me to resent him at the moment.
Erish doesn’t speak, and I glance back to see if he’s present. He’s not. I sigh and shrug my shoulders. My hands are trembling from the emotion of hearing his tale – and the distress of imagining my mother in a world where she, too, was trapped. I’ve learned during the trials that my father was stuck, and I don’t want to believe the same was true of my mother.
I have to believe my father loved her and me. His inconsistencies, and the bizarre writings he left, I will gladly attribute to Erish.
Retrieving my notebook, I stare at the three names listed on my Potential Husbands list. I’m not buying Erish’s explanation about being destined to marry someone in particular. Maybe that’s what a soul mate is in the human world, but I’m a supernatural under a curse. Even if it were possible for me to be fated to marry someone, for the sake of continuing the curse, I can’t imagine someone else out there being fated to marry me. No one deserves that level of punishment.
My phone vibrates.
We still on for this morning? Ben’s asked.
“Dammit.” I glance at the time. I’m not late, for once, but I’m not feeling mentally prepared to go. Yeah. I need a ride though, I type. Considering my note, I sigh. They all know I’m poor as shit, and a biscuit from McDonald’s isn’t going to break the bank for a multi-millionaire. And breakfast. I add before sending.
Ben answers with a thumb’s up emoji.
I roll my eyes.
Erish leaves me alone for the rest of the morning. I’m not entirely certain I believe his explanation yet about not being a threat to the others, but … if Erish doesn’t know which candidate he’s supposed to kill, I assume he won’t kill any of them until he does know. I just need to remain diligent and warn whomever he picks before he acts.
Chapter Three
The driver has a gourmet breakfast sandwich and hot mocha waiting for me in the car. I wolf my food down on the way to the lake. We arrive half an hour later to an unfamiliar home on the side of the lake Ben owns.
Whereas Ben’s house was one story, this one is two stories tall. The differences seem to stop there, for there are as many windows in this log home as Ben’s, and the secluded estate is likewise tucked away from the road in the forest.
Four large dogs run to greet us. I start to smile as I get out of the
car, tickled by the idea of a werewolf with pets. The driver shoos them away, and they run to the forest.
Ben is waiting in a picnic area near the side of the house. He’s not alone; Jason and another man, whose back is to me, are standing farther away, heads bent as they talk.
Ben offers a half smile as I approach, his sizzling golden gaze moving past me to the driver, who returns to the car. Tall, muscular, and every bit the sexy alpha, Ben’s features are tight and his stance unusually closed.
I glance at my feet to see if Erish is with me, as usual. The second shadow is present, even if he’s quiet. He’s probably spying, and has been my entire life, a realization that gives me the creeps.
“You okay?” Ben asks in his low growl. His eyes are on my second shadow, too, and I know without a doubt he understands what it is.
It kind of hurts to know how much he and the others kept from me.
“Awesome, considering I’m being stalked by a ghost,” I reply sarcastically.
“It’s about to get worse.”
I lift my eyes to his.
Ben clears his throat. “I want to tell you what I lied about, before you find out the hard way.”
I hold my breath. I want to know – but not really. Everything I learn crushes me. I don’t think I can live with the idea of Ben betraying me horribly. I need to believe in the candidates, to know I haven’t made the worst mistakes of my life by trusting them.
Be strong, Leslie. Ben’s watching, I tell myself.
“Jenny wasn’t my fiancé,” the werewolf starts. “She was my mate.”
My mouth drops open.
“We mated in secret soon after your father chose the candidates,” he goes on. “The circumstances were … complicated.”
“Oh, god!” I exclaim. “She wasn’t pregnant or something was she?”
“No. Nothing like that. She threatened to leave me otherwise, and when it came to her I was blind. Always. In every way,” he answers. “This was the clan’s opportunity to obtain equal footing in the Community. It’s all we’ve wanted for thousands of years, and Jenny knew that up front. She promised she was okay with me going through the trials, so I agreed to marry her.”
