Kiss of the Royal

by Lindsey Duga

  Brom squinted at the light, frowning. “I can try,” he muttered, standing and dusting off his trousers.

  After some coordinating, and shifting as many movable rocks as we could to form a platform, Zach stood on the rocks, and Brom stood on Zach’s shoulders. I watched and prayed the whole time, to whom, I was no longer sure, but it made me feel better anyway.

  Too many tension-filled seconds of swaying and reaching passed before Brom was able to grab the lip of the opening. I scrambled up next to Zach, and together we pushed Brom’s feet up. With a shout of triumph, Brom slipped his shoulders through the crack, then the rest of him followed. Lying on his stomach, he looked back down at us. “All clear. Sparrow harpies are gone, too,” he called. “The crack’s a lot bigger than you’d think. I’d guess you can both fit through.”

  Zach and I breathed a sigh of relief. Grinning, Zach waved him away. “See if you can find our packs in the front of the cave. I’ve got some rope you can throw down here.”

  “Got it. Be right back.” Brom’s face started to move away.

  “Brom!” I yelled.

  His face came back. “Yeah?”

  “Please be careful,” I begged.

  He smiled in return. “Of course, milady.” With that, he disappeared from view.

  “He’ll be fine, Ivy,” Zach said, knowing how worried I was—with wraiths and goblins and sparrow harpies and who knew what else out there. “The kid’s strong and skilled. I wouldn’t have been able to kill that wraith without him.”

  I knew he was, but that didn’t stop me from worrying—nothing ever would. My knees buckled, and I dropped to the little stone platform we’d raised. Wordlessly, Zach sat next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  “I know,” was all he said.

  I turned to him and buried my face in his chest, his arms enveloping me. As worried as I was for Brom, the events of the past hour came to me in full force, and I almost couldn’t breathe again. I clawed at his shirt, squeezing the fabric in my palms, wishing we were anywhere but right here. I wished we were back at the village on that bed, or in that forest with the golden sunlight, or at the Romantica’s bonfire.

  “Myriana loved him, Zach,” I whispered, my voice muffled in his chest.

  Zach didn’t reply, just ran his hands up and down my arms.

  I tore myself from his chest to look at him. “But he betrayed her. Did Raed love her? Did he love Saevalla? Or did he just love his new kingdom?” I pressed my palms into my eyes. “I don’t understand Love. It’s not logical, it doesn’t make sen—”

  The words died on my tongue. Love wasn’t logical. It was the opposite of everything the Legion taught. The Legion taught us to rule without emotion, to base every decision on reason and lead others to do so. Could that be because Love led to the very emotions that Myriana had fallen prey to? Anger? Hate? Jealousy? Revenge? Did the Legion teach us only of Lust because we needed to prevent the powerful, irrational emotions that accompanied Love?

  If that was the case, then I could understand why the Legion had claimed it didn’t exist. Love was dangerous. It was a risk.

  “It’s worth it,” Zach said.

  I looked at him, jolted by his words even though they were soft, calm. “What?”

  “I can tell what you’re thinking. You get that look every time I talk about Love. You’re thinking Love is the reason Myriana’s heart surrendered to all those dark emotions.”

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  “The Legion thinks opening your heart to someone and trusting them with it is too much of a risk—well, I’m telling you, it’s worth it.” He grazed his knuckles against my cheek, and flipped a curl behind my ear. “You’re worth it.”

  I swallowed hard, my skin hot from his touch. “And if I hurt you?”

  His hand moved onto my neck, and with his thumb against my jaw, his gaze captured mine. “Even if you burned me to ashes, Ivy, it’d be worth it. That’s the beauty of trees, remember? They grow back.”

  “You’re not a tree, you fool,” I said.

  “But don’t you think I bear a remarkable resemblance?”

  At this, I finally laughed, and Zach ducked his head to kiss my cheek and jaw. “I love your laugh. I love—”

  I placed a hand over his mouth, stopping his beautiful yet confusing words. “Don’t.”

  I’d told him I believed him, and I meant it. I believed he loved me. I even believed Love existed, but I couldn’t let him say it to me again. Not when I couldn’t say it back to him. It would’ve been easy, too easy, to tell him the words he wanted to hear…but I couldn’t, not after he told me what Love really was, what it truly meant.

  Love wasn’t manipulation. It was honest, trusting, open. How could I tell him I felt the same way he did when I didn’t fully understand it?

  I knew I loved his goofy smile and loud laugh. His cocky shrugs and tender gazes.

  I knew I loved the way he held me and the way he ran his fingers across my arm.

  I knew I loved that he had stood in front of the Master Mages, my mother, and the Saevallans, and told them he wanted to be my partner.

  But I didn’t know if I loved him.

  More than anything, knowing that Love had inadvertently been the reason Myriana’s heart had turned evil and cold, I was terrified. Zach said it was worth it—worth the danger, the risk, the heartache…but I wasn’t sure, especially when I still didn’t know if these feelings were Love or just the intense effects of Lust.

  “Don’t say it,” I pleaded.

  Zach took my hand from his mouth and traced the mark with his lips. “I want to say it. It’s what you do before going to fight evil queens and deadly dragons: you confess.”

  I drew away my hand. “No, you want me to say it back. That’s why you told me.”

  He leaned his head back against the rocks. “Can you blame a fellow for trying?”

  My hands curled into fists on my lap, my shoulders hunched, like I could somehow make myself smaller. “Oh, Zach,” I whispered, my voice echoing in the confines of the small cave.

  “I want so much more than your lips, Ivy. I want your heart.” Zach leaned close and brushed his lips against my hairline. “Because I love you…desperately.”

  Desperately. My fingers loosened from a fist as I remembered the night he told me about his parents, the night he swept me up in a beautiful story.

  “Zach, I—”

  He cut me off by kissing under my ear, and I shivered in response. His hold on me tightened. “I know you want me, but do you love me?” His hand slid onto my neck, and his thumb rested on the base of my throat. “After all this, I’ll want your answer. So we’ve got to survive.”

  Once he released me, I instantly missed his arms, but his words pulled me back to reality.

  First, get out of this cave. Beat Myriana to the egg. Defeat the dragon. Survive. Then think about all this later. That’s all I could promise him at the moment and—bless him—that’s all he was asking for.

  “Okay. After.”

  What felt like hours later, Brom showed up with the rope. Climbing out of the cave went surprisingly smooth. Zach’s shoulders scraped against the rock, but it wasn’t anything some shassa root salve couldn’t fix.

  I wondered, as we maneuvered over rocks on our way back to the mountain path, if Myriana had just been a normal girl, then why did her heir and Raed’s and Saevalla’s heirs all possess the power of a Royal’s Kiss? Zach had said the Romantica believed it did more harm than good, but I couldn’t begin to understand how that was possible, unless it was similar to the Curse of Jecep where a poisoned crop multiplied once pulled from the roots and…

  I tripped on a stone and scraped my palm catching myself, making both Brom and Zach stop in their climb.

  “Ivy?” Brom asked.

  He asked me something else, but I didn’t hear him clearly. My brain was speeding through the memories I’d seen in the mirror. The last thing Myriana’s Heart remembered was something called the Hydra Curse.
What if that glowing ball of purple energy hadn’t just been the queen’s power manifested?

  “What if all the Royals are cursed?” I whispered, staring down at my injured hand now seeping blood. Droplets ran down my wrist, coloring the stag antlers of Zach’s mark with crimson.

  “It’s why every time we use our Kiss, the creatures we defeat are multiplied, and more curses spread. Because our blood—our blood is cursed.” My hand started shaking so hard my whole arm trembled. It was like the mountainside was crumbling under my feet. Like I was falling with no hope of ever hitting the bottom.

  Zach reached for me, probably to steady me over the sharp rocks, but I recoiled from his touch.

  The mark on his outstretched hand was exactly the same as the burn from the hand of Myriana’s first host once she touched the curse.

  Our marks were physical evidence of the curse. And Zach, with the Mark of Myriana, was now the most cursed of all. Oh Sisters, I cursed them. My partners, my Kisses—nothing but tools to spread more darkness. Perhaps the irony was the worst part of it all.

  Brom took my hand and doused water over it, making the scrape sting. I barely flinched.

  I stared at Zach, all hope that he’d given me in the cave snuffing out like a candle. “How can we defeat someone who has literally put her curse, her own power, in our blood?”

  And if it was in our blood, maybe that’s how the Sense worked. The evil that called out to me—resonating in my chest—connected to the Hydra Curse that lay within us.

  I clutched the front of my tunic as if I could somehow rip out the darkness tainting my lungs. In a way, I was one of the Queen’s creatures—born from her wickedness. We all were.

  The wind whistled in my ears, carrying over the mountains and whipping back our hair and cloaks.

  Zach tore his gaze from me to stare at the gray scenery before us. “The Hydra Curse works only through our Kiss. So we just…we can’t Kiss.”

  I already knew we couldn’t Kiss, but it didn’t seem as simple as what Zach made it out to be. We still had no concrete plan of defeating her if she reached the egg before we did.

  If only she had a weakness. Something to exploit.

  Again, I turned to her memories. Was there something in there…something I had missed that we could use? What had crippled her heart so much that made her want to cut it out?

  Had it been Raed sleeping with Saevalla?

  No, surprisingly, I didn’t think that was it. I’d been her. I knew what had killed me the most and it had been…

  The miscarriages. Losing the babies, one after another. Feeling them grow inside me, then losing that second heartbeat.

  It made me want to rip out my own.

  I felt Brom wrapping my injured hand with a clean bandage, but he seemed so far away. Everything felt disconnected from me. For a moment, I was Myriana again.

  The idea of losing a baby was all-consuming. There was nothing else in the world that mattered except protecting a new life.

  “It’s babies,” I whispered.

  Brom leaned close. “What?”

  I looked up and focused on Zach. “That’s her weakness. Babies.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had proof. Solid, indisputable proof that the Evil Queen would go to any length to protect an unborn child—like weaving spells into her creatures and curses to prevent them from harming a woman with child.

  “Rochet,” Zach and I said at the same time.

  In the cursed village, Rochet had been pregnant and the only one not to have any symptoms of the curse, even though she’d been drinking the well water like everyone else. A witch’s power was derived from the Evil Queen’s Forces of Darkness, so her Curse of Venera hadn’t affected Rochet or her unborn child.

  “Patrice, too,” I said, grabbing Zach’s arm in an iron grip. “The griffin attack. She’d been pregnant and was the only survivor.”

  “And the pregnant girl in the burning house—at the attack at the wall. She’d survived a burning, collapsing house,” Zach said, breathless.

  There was no way they were all coincidences—all miracles.

  Zach and I shared a grim smile. It wasn’t an all-powerful Kiss or even mage magic. But it was something. We could work with something.

  …

  When the stars were just beginning to wink at us, the pain in my chest grew so heavy I struggled to stay upright. At one point, I staggered forward, and Zach lunged to catch me.

  But I’d found it.

  As Zach steadied me, I pointed up the mountain’s face. It looked like a few hours’ hike to a large cave. Even at night, the darkness congregating at the mouth of the cave was almost tangible. Like an army of wraiths could step out of it at any second.

  We camped roughly a mile from the cave, then woke up to a sky of pink and red, as if predicting the blood that would be spilled.

  No, don’t think like that, Ivy.

  But it was hard not to. I thought about the swarms of sparrow harpies, the horde of doppelganger goblins, the wraiths, and the devastating magical storms with black lightning that froze the earth. And those were only the omens of the Sable Dragon, not the beast itself.

  Putting aside the fact that we would have to battle Millennia if she’d managed to reach the egg, we still had to defeat the dragon without the Kiss. And now without a mage to help us. Neither Zach nor I had talked about what we could do, because deep down we realized there was nothing to do except wait for the egg to hatch then defeat the dragon somehow. Even if that meant collapsing the whole mountain. So how could we possibly survive?

  With a terrible clench in my stomach, I realized we probably wouldn’t.

  Two hours later, we approached the entrance of the cave. We paused and looked over the edge of our climb. From this angle we could see the vast distance we’d traveled over the past few days—the deep ravine and the stone valley far off to the south and, at the very edge of the world, the trees from the Galedral Forest and beyond. The sight was breathtaking. If we didn’t succeed, this entire world and all its people would be nothing but seas of ash. That was why we had to win. Why we had to fight.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  Lair of the Sable Dragon

  Entering the cave was like driving a blade into my chest. The darkness hit my Sense so powerfully that I fell to my knees, clutching my shirt and fighting for a breath. I’d never felt evil such as this. Tangible. It hung in the air and entered my lungs with each breath I drew.

  Zach and Brom both dropped next to me. I waved them away. “I’m fine,” I wheezed.

  “Clearly, you’re not,” Brom said.

  Now that I knew the darkness from the cave was reacting with the darkness that was already inside my blood, it wasn’t sheer will that allowed me to push down the Sense, it was anger. I wasn’t going to let this stupid curse slow me down. I wouldn’t let that old crone turn my own body against me.

  Squeezing my shirt in my palm, I opened my eyes and got to my feet. “Let’s go.”

  Zach took my hand. I glanced at him, and we shared a smile.

  The cave was dank and dark and curved to the right, the tunnel disappearing into the darkness. It didn’t matter if there were intricate tunnel systems in this cave, because I’d be able to find the egg regardless. The problem was getting back out.

  “Plan ahead,” Brom said, as if reading my thoughts. He took out bright red berries I hadn’t even noticed him gathering along the way and smashed them against the cave’s walls, leaving a crimson stain.

  We lit a torch, the dry wood bursting into orange flames, creating flickering shadows that reached into the tunnel’s depths. With a stab of pain that had nothing to do with my Sense, I missed Millennia. She would’ve been able to light it with just a wave of her hand.

  We carried on for some time, occasionally coming to forks in the tunnel. Brom smeared more berries, and I pointed us down the path that brought more and more pain to my chest.

  As we walked, I watched
the shadows dance across the walls, remembering the way the firelight and smoke drew Zach and me into our own mystical dance the night at the Romantica camp. How the same intoxicating feeling had consumed me when he kissed my neck and shoulders out on the rocks. My heart pounded from the memory.

  How could I know if this was Lust or Love? All I did know was that I never wanted to let go of his hand. I wanted our time together to stretch for eternity.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Brom and Zach stopped. “What?” Brom asked, his voice taut with tension.

  “Nothing, just the pain,” I lied.

  I wiped my brow with my other arm and concentrated on my breaths. In and out. Pushing down the Darkness. Focus on what is important.

  …

  Finally, we came to a halt when I couldn’t stop a fit of coughing. I let go of Zach’s hand, covered my mouth, and coughed and coughed. I’d never coughed so hard before in my life, hacking as if there was something in my lungs that needed to come out. Suddenly it did. I drew my hands away from my mouth and caught sight of what looked like ink.

  It was as though I had coughed up darkness in its liquid form.

  “Fields of Galliore,” Zach whispered. “It’s killing you.”

  “It’s because we’re here.” Brom touched his torch to an extended ledge on the cave wall, and a spark ignited. As the purple flames rose, my stomach lurched painfully, remembering the fire that had danced across Millennia’s shoulders and had separated me from Zach and Brom.

  The purple fire spread through the cave, following the ledge that encircled the large cavern. From where we stood, the flaming ledge extended all the way to the other side, engulfing the room in purple light. Ominous shadows flickered in the gigantic domed ceiling. In the center, seated on a round slab of rock like an altar, carved with special symbols of the language of the dwarves, was the egg.

  “Fields of Galliore,” Zach repeated.

  It was gigantic, rising maybe thirty feet tall. Its shell was a swirl of purple, black, dark blue, and gray, resembling the marble in the Hall of Ancestors back in Myria Castle. We stared up at it, entranced by its beauty, yet terrified of the horror within. Then my gaze dropped to the stone altar and what lay before it.