A Curse For Spring

by Amanda Bouchet

  Rain laid a cool hand over his and squeezed. “First, Daric, let’s break the curse.”

  The touch of her hand returned his focus. Break the curse. Marry Rain. Give Illanna Nighthall what she deserved.

  “Tell us what to do,” he said to the witch, steel in his voice. Soon, Raana would feel his blade.

  “We take the bloodstones and the mockweed to Braylian’s Cauldron and lay them on the stone circle like this.” The witch arranged the pieces on the table to demonstrate, facing the sharp tips of the bloodstones out and placing the mockweed across them. “But sixteen stones make up the great, curving border of the Cauldron. They each serve a different purpose, and the purpose rotates among them. The stone needed for breaking curses two moons ago might not be the same one needed today. I’ll have to perform a difficult ritual to reveal the stone currently tied to maledictions.”

  Daric nodded. “I’ll reward you for your efforts.”

  The Barrow Witch smiled vaguely. “I’m tied to the ground under which I live. I do this for Leathen.”

  Daric acknowledged her words but still planned on making her underground home more comfortable if he could.

  “And when everything is set up correctly, we explain the enchantment to Braylian and ask her to break it?” Rain asked.

  “It’s almost that simple.” The witch’s gaze moved back and forth between them. Her eyes were the color of grass and soil—and seemed suddenly haunted. “If Braylian hears you, fire will erupt from the Cauldron. Then you must speak the words, the ones to—”

  “We know them,” Rain interrupted. “We know the phrase to accompany our offering.”

  Daric looked at her oddly. She was usually too polite to interrupt anyone, but he’d seen how the language of sorcery chafed her. Rain shivered, and Daric tucked her against his side, wanting to comfort her.

  The Barrow Witch watched them, her expression inscrutable, or perhaps a little sad, and Daric began to suspect he was on the outside of something he needed to be a part of. He couldn’t be sure. His thoughts still boiled angrily at Illanna Nighthall, and wrath possibly clouded his judgment.

  The witch shifted her gaze to the open doorway and the forest beyond. “Who’ll say it, then? Who will present the offering?”

  Rain clamped her mouth shut and looked at him.

  “Isme dolunde vaten crew.” Daric murmured the words she’d taught him yesterday so that Rain wouldn’t have to say them. His mouth puckered. “Is it supposed to taste this sour?”

  “All magic tastes rotten,” the witch answered. “That’s why it eventually rots you.”

  Daric had no intention of becoming a sorcerer or succumbing to their curse—and he wanted to know Rain’s opinion on the strange words.

  “Rain?” he prompted.

  “Yes.” She glanced away from him. “They taste foul to me as well.”

  Rain had lived her last day as human, and she had no idea what Braylian might do with her next. Her one regret, the dread making her heart twist and jerk, was losing Daric. But she’d loved him in every way possible—and been loved in return. Could a woman ask for more, or better than that?

  She’d known joy, fear, excitement, sadness, affection, desire. Rain was complete, just not anywhere near ready for this life to be over.

  And Daric… How would he fare? He had so much passion in him that it could easily turn to rage and despair.

  Braylian’s Cauldron was no strange place to her. She’d lived in it once. She’d also paid homage to the great goddess from outside it, watching elements erupt from the circle as she’d prayed alongside her adoptive family. The people of Leathen came here to worship, in awe and fear and hope and hardship. She’d been no different from them these past fifteen years, no different from anyone else asking for Braylian’s blessing.

  It was a calm day, both for the weather and for the Cauldron. Rain and Daric hung back while the Barrow Witch performed her mysterious task of discovering which of the stones making up the wide circle held the key to breaking curses. Daric had the objects they needed, and Rain stood beside him, wishing they could have had another night together, just the two of them, tangled and touching and loving each other more than anything.

  The witch finally backed away from the Cauldron, pointing an unsteady finger at a stone that suddenly pulsed with darkness. “There.” Her voice was reed-thin and exhausted. She stumbled over to a large tree and sat, slumping almost lifelessly against it. As they watched, her skin turned ashen, and she seemed to age a decade. Gray streaks now patterned her hair, and Rain knew without a doubt that the witch had sacrificed more than they’d ever intended.

  Perhaps she’d known what this day would cost her, just as Rain did, and had accepted her role anyway.

  Visibly worried about the witch’s condition, Daric took off his cloak and tucked it around her. She didn’t stir, clearly depleted by her long and strenuous ritual.

  Rain and Daric approached the Cauldron together. When they reached the stone they needed, she turned to him and lovingly touched his face. “A kiss,” she whispered, her heart splintering. “For luck.”

  Daric gently drew her closer. His lips brushed hers and Rain clung to him, sealing their mouths together. The kiss turned deeper, a little frantic, and she feared her desperation had begun to show. She was deceiving him, and he might never forgive her. But springtime would come to Leathen again. Daric wouldn’t marry Astraea. He would punish Raana and make Leathen the most powerful kingdom on the continent again.

  Daric pulled back too soon, his eyes glittering with a mix of desire and determination. “Will you marry me, Rain? The moment we return to Ash?” He kissed her again, quick and hard this time. “Please say you’ll be with me—always.”

  Instead of euphoria, nausea churned inside her. She chose her words carefully. “Nothing would make me happier than being with you forever. I love you, Daric.”

  Smiling, he tucked her hair back. “I love you, too, my silver raindrop.”

  Tears burned in Rain’s throat. In a flash of memory, Daric was young again, calling desperately into the Cauldron. It had been impossible not to go to him then, just as it was impossible not to help him now.

  Daric bent and laid out the bloodstones and the mockweed as the Barrow Witch had instructed. He straightened and gripped Rain’s hand, bringing her fingertips to his mouth and kissing them. “And now it ends,” he said.

  She pressed her lips together to prevent her breath from shuddering out. Then she nodded. “Talk to Braylian. Explain the curse.”

  Facing the Cauldron, Daric called out to Braylian. Years ago, Braylian hadn’t heard him—or else had ignored his pleas. She, Spring, had left her seasonal wanderings and come instead, seeing nothing but a handsome young prince amidst a strange and impenetrable darkness. He’d shone so brightly that she couldn’t resist.

  Now, Daric once again explained the curse, told of the crippling drought, and begged for springtime to return to Leathen.

  When he finished talking, fire erupted from the previously quiet Cauldron. It shot high, a ferocious and roaring inferno reaching for the sky with angry fingers. In all their years coming to the Cauldron with supplications and apparently useless offerings, Rain had never seen anything like it. This time, Braylian had heard them.

  Daric’s eyes met hers, his bright with triumph and the reflection of the blaze before them. Rain lifted her chin and smiled in encouragement. She would leave him with bravery as well as sorrow. “Say the words. End the curse, Daric.”

  “Isme dolunde vaten crew,” Daric called out solidly, his voice carrying above the firestorm in the Cauldron.

  I sacrifice that which I love most. The bloodstones were to get the goddess’s attention, the mockweed to reveal the source of the curse, and the words in the language of sorcery… They offered an exchange of sorts. Daric was asking for something, which meant he had to give something up. And not just anything—the thing he loved above all else. Rain had no doubt it was her, which was both a comfort to her breakin
g heart and a dagger straight through it.

  A great force pulled at her, ripping her from Daric. Rain screamed. It was too soon! Now that it was upon her, she wasn’t ready—not for this end, not for Daric’s desperate yell, and certainly not for the terror in his cry when the fire seized and engulfed her.

  Energy exploded through Rain, transformative and fracturing. All sound from her lips stopped. She lost form and features. Everything she’d been since the moment she’d decided to look like a human girl, so she could dance with a human boy, disappeared in fragments. She rose toward the sky in a great ripple of power, but even as she soared once again as she had before, something of the person she’d become remained, clinging to an essence that now stretched far and wide across the continent. That part of her belonged to Daric. It still beat like a human heart, steady and strong. The rest of her was Spring.

  Above Leathen, Rain gathered herself into a low, churning cloud pregnant with water. How many times can a heart break? For how long? She unleashed her tears, and they were the first spring showers the kingdom had seen in Daric’s lifetime.

  Braylian had taken her back. She was enduring again. Timeless. A season like three others. But she’d forgotten nothing. Rain wept, watering Leathen with a heavy, miserable, persistent downpour that splattered the ground below her.

  In the sacred clearing, Daric turned his face up to the raindrops and howled like a dying animal.

  She rained harder. Thunder was her only way to scream, so she split the sky with bolts of lightning and their tremendous cracks cried back at him.

  Their hearts broke together. Hers would break over and over, and until the end of days was a terrifyingly long stretch of forever.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Daric stood before the Cauldron. The final day of spring was almost over. Four years had passed since he and Rain broke the curse, and he was once again back at the stone circle. He’d built another shelter. As usual, Braylian would blow it down the moment he left the clearing for longer than a few hours. He did get called away. He wasn’t fully free to live as a savage and ignore his name and kingdom, but when he could, he made his home next to the Cauldron. It brought him closer to Rain.

  Everything had changed that day, especially him. Glittering parties and cozy family evenings now graced the House of Ash again—and sickened him more than anything. He’d done his duty and would do his duty in the future. For now, his parents were healthy and ruled wisely. When that was no longer the case, he would take their place. The only thing he wouldn’t do was produce an heir for Leathen.

  The mockweed had indeed revealed Illanna Nighthall’s treacherous face, although he’d barely seen it through his tears and misery. When Daric had finally brought himself to leave the clearing and the Cauldron—to leave Rain—he’d focused and honed his anger and desperation until it was as sharp as a blade, and then he’d stabbed Raana.

  The remainder of that first spring, with his heart wrecked and his spirit in agony, he’d plotted and struck, driving his army halfway to Nighthall with a gale and a tempest leading each attack. That summer, he’d secured Raana’s lake district for Leathen and taken back every single orin mine his father had relinquished. By autumn, Illanna’s struggling army had retreated to the capital city, and by winter, he’d defeated her last battalion. He took Nighthall on a frozen afternoon and plunged a cold dagger into the chest of the wicked Queen of Raana. A knife through her heart for the knife through his.

  He hadn’t turned his blade on Astraea, despite the temptation and his brokenhearted fury. She knew he could, though, and she’d sheathed her claws in the interest of not dying. He had a contingent of guards watching her in her gloomy, inhospitable castle, making sure she didn’t touch sorcery, although he didn’t think she had her mother’s predilection for it. Astraea was cruel but not clever—and now lived as a prisoner in a land he’d conquered.

  By the following spring, the second without Rain, Daric was no longer considered pleasant, fun, and easy-mannered. His people started calling him the Hallerhound Prince, and not only because of the way he bayed his misery into the Cauldron. He sought solitude and snapped and snarled at anyone who came near him. His kingdom was secure, largely expanded, and headed toward unparalleled prosperity, so he prowled the Wood of Layton, alone with his memories.

  Each year since he’d given the bloodstones, the mockweed, and his precious Rain to Braylian, Spring had watered Leathen until the rivers nearly overflowed and farmers had to scramble between storms to do their planting. Rain wept her unhappiness for three moons, nearly drowning the kingdom. Then she slept while Summer brought them plentiful crops. She slumbered through Autumn’s crisp days and bountiful harvests. She slept while Winter allowed his people to rest once again in happy plenitude before crackling hearth fires—satisfaction and comforts that Daric refused for himself. He chose to winter among the beasts and blizzards of Layton.

  He’d considered punishing the Barrow Witch for allowing Rain’s deception, but helping them end the drought had hastened her fall into insanity. She’d used so much sorcery that day to locate the curse stone that her decline had started early and struck her like a thunderbolt. Now, Daric hunted for her when he was in the forest, and she cackled and cawed and lived like a wild bird, hopping in and out of her barrow.

  He was sorry for her. They’d all lost more than they’d imagined that day. The gain had never once outweighed his heartbreak.

  Rain’s next sleep was almost upon them. Daric reached a hand into the thick cloud rising from the Cauldron, desperately hoping that cool feminine fingers would brush his skin in a loving caress and that a beautiful silver-haired woman would appear before him. She’d smile, join him, and he’d be complete again, not this hollow shell, not this man whose nightmares echoed with words he never should have spoken.

  Isme dolunde vaten crew.

  He hadn’t been offering Rain. He would never have sacrificed Rain, and she’d known it.

  Daylight waned, the healthy, leafy branches of the trees around the Cauldron blotting out what little sunlight remained on this last day of spring. Daric turned Rain’s starflower over in his hand. She’d left it in her saddlebag, and he’d rubbed the carving so often between his fingers that the shallower details on the flower had faded. Her hairpin still dangled from the loop, sometimes pricking him. He’d taken a few strands of silver hair from it, but those he kept in a safer place.

  Rain would be dormant for the rest of the year soon. He’d still call to her. He’d call and call, but she would never answer. And next spring, she would wake again and pour her unhappiness down on Leathen. The farmers still cried tears of joy when spring rains started, but Daric watched the drops fall in torment. His love was gone, and he’d never accept it.

  Rain’s new sister was jealous and possessive. She didn’t understand why she had to share her season. Rain tried to communicate with her, to explain that they could work together, but this new Spring didn’t understand the idea of producing those kinds of thoughts herself—or have any interest in listening. Rain shaped clouds into people she loved and missed, and her sister blew them away with disapproving gusts. Rain moped on clouds of gloom, and her sister threw down rainbows from her darkness simply to contradict her. Rain cried in gentle, steady streams while her sister did her best to cut through her clouds with violent weather.

  After three seasons of bickering, Rain, who remembered her name, her life, her love—everything from her time in Leathen—claimed her land with the explosive force and fierce determination of a goddess much older and stronger than any spring infant. The sister born when Rain left the Cauldron, this child who hadn’t even lived the span of a human lifetime, ran to Braylian when Rain banished her from Leathen.

  Braylian chose not to intercede, for Rain’s sister still had the rest of the continent, and Rain cared nothing about what happened in Parr or what used to be Raana, or anywhere that wasn’t her Leathen.

  Her heart broke every time and somehow harder each time she saw Daric
at the Cauldron. He barely resembled the prince she’d known. He was leaner, tougher, shaggier—more jagged all over. His eyes glinted like chips of blue ice, but they’d once held warmth despite their cool color. Now, they held only rage and bitterness.

  Rain longed to go to him, to help him somehow. She was desperate to show herself and speak, even if she couldn’t touch him. Braylian wouldn’t let her. The great goddess stopped her with harsh elements every time Rain tried to take shape at the Cauldron. After being burned, battered, and overcome too many times to count—and seeing Daric also violently blown back by the tremendous force of Braylian’s power—Rain finally stopped trying and simply watched Daric from afar, giving her tears to him instead.

  He’d turn his face up, and sometimes, she knew they wept together.

  And when he told her it was too wet, that the land was flooding, she did her best to dry the eyes she didn’t truly have anymore and let the sun peek through, thinking not of loss but of happy memories.

  Just hours from now, she would sleep. She’d spend three seasons without Daric, without being able to see him or watch over him. Four years ago, she’d sent thunder and lightning along with his army into Raana. She’d lashed storms down on his enemies. She’d done her best to protect him and Leathen. But a lot could happen while she slept, and it terrified her each time the Great Rest claimed her.

  From the ground, Daric called her name until he was hoarse. He always did, his anguished rasp scraping across bark and branches. She’d been transformed into something without form, but heartbreak wasn’t physical. It was her soul that cracked and suffered.

  Daric suddenly howled and threw her starflower into Braylian’s Cauldron with a curse that rattled the forest. Rain gasped, her shocked inhalation sucking at leaves that abruptly shook and churned upward.