A Curse So Dark and Lonely (The Cursebreaker Series Book 1)

I have never kept a bedside vigil.

When I was young, I would have considered such a thing tedious and boring—if I ever considered it at all. I never needed to—and I likely do not need to now. Harper’s wound could have been far worse: The knife could have caught her neck, or sliced into the muscle of her arm. She could have lost her eye.

Harper will wake. She will survive. She has a lady-in-waiting who could sit at her bedside. I do not need to be here.

But I find I cannot leave.

Ironrose has never felt so quiet, the silence pressing in around us, broken only by the soft crackle of the fire, and Harper’s slow, even breaths. The music from the Great Hall is silent tonight, and I am grateful. I study the slightly arced line that bisects her cheek, the twenty stitches holding the skin closed. An angry wound that seems out of place on the soft curve of her face.

Her words from the arena keep repeating in my head, complete with the broken emotion in her voice.

Please stop. Please stop hurting him.

And Lilith’s response.

She begs for you, Rhen.

Instead of running from what she saw, Harper drew Grey’s weapon.

This feels like the cruelest season of all, to present me with a girl with the fierceness to stand at my side—yet with a home and family she needs to return to so badly.

A log on the fire snaps, collapsing in a short burst of ash. Harper stirs, then takes a long breath, and her eyes flutter open. She blinks a few times before focusing on me.

“Rhen.” Her voice is rough and worn. “What—where—” She winces and lifts a hand to her face.

I catch her wrist, but gently. Freya added an ointment for the pain, but she warned of infection. “Be still. You do not want to pull at the stitches.”

“So that really happened.” Her voice is so small.

“Yes.” She has not pulled away and her wrist rests in my grip, her pulse a soft beat against my fingers.

She stares at me, and all I can do is stare back at her. My meetings with Lilith have been a source of private shame for … ever. An eternal hell shared only with Grey.

And yet Harper has still not seen me at my worst.

I break the eye contact and look at the fire. Now that she is awake, waiting here feels like a mistake. I feel too raw, too exposed. “Shall I call for Freya?”

“No.” She shifts and tries to roll toward me. “I need—I need to sit up.”

“Go slowly. You have been asleep for hours.”

She slides her wrist out of my grasp and struggles to push herself upright. One arm presses against her abdomen and her eyes close.

Eventually, her breathing slows. “My head is pounding.”

“A dose of sleeping ether,” I say, though it could also be the loss of blood. Her skin seems more pale than usual. “We worried you would wake during the stitching.”

She swallows and her eyes widen further, flicking past me to the hearth, the windows, the tapestries lining the walls. “This isn’t Arabella’s room.”

“No. This is mine.” I pause. “I worried the children being so near would not let you sleep.”

She looks down at herself. A sudden tension seems to grip her body. “And this—I wasn’t wearing this.”

“Freya,” I offer. “She brought a new chemise. Yours was—quite soiled.”

“Oh.”

For a moment, my emotions are unsure where to settle. I want to sit beside her and offer my gratitude, to tell her how no girl has ever risked herself for me. I want to hide from the knowledge of what she saw. I want to fight—to prove that I am not vulnerable.

She’s seen the truth.

Harper’s eyes rise to meet mine. “I want to see it. Do you have a mirror?”

“I do.” I rise slowly, and then, out of habit, extend a hand. I fully expect her to refuse.

She does not. She takes my hand, her fingers wrapping around mine, then pulls herself to her feet.

Once there, she does not let go.

She stands a foot away from me. I want so badly to touch her face, to whisper my thoughts against her skin. This torture is nearly as bad as what I endured in the arena.

“Steady?” I say softly.

“Enough.” Her steps hitch behind me, and I lead her to my dressing room, where a mirror stands in the corner.

When we stop in front of it, she stands in silence, her expression flat. Her hair is unbound, the curls cascading wildly over her shoulder. She stares, her eyes fixed on the wound. The incision is an angry red, but clean. The medicine Freya applied has forestalled any swelling.

Harper lets go of my hand and moves closer, until her breath faintly fogs the glass. She swallows and touches her fingertips to the mirror. “The stitches are smaller than I expected.”

“Your lady-in-waiting has a steady hand.”

She turns to look at me. “Freya did it?”

“She did.” I pause. “She was quite forceful, in fact. Yelled at Commander Grey.”

“She yelled at Grey?” Harper’s eyes widen.

“Yanked the needle right from his hand.”

“What did she say?”

I raise my voice into a lilting imitation of Freya’s. “ ‘You will not put field sutures in my lady’s face! She is not a common soldier!’ ”

A ghost of a smile finds Harper’s lips. “That’s amazing.”

“She is quite protective.” I pause. “I thought she might drag him away by his ear.”

That makes her laugh—but then she gasps and raises a hand to her cheek. Now her eyes fill. She draws a long, quavering breath, then steadies herself.

“Come.” I take her hand again—and I am equally shocked when she lets me. “You should sit.”

I lead her to an armchair by the fire. “Wine?”

She shakes her head. “Water?”

“Of course.” A pitcher sits on a low table by the bed. I pour a glass for her, then a goblet of wine for myself.

My movements are slow, and she watches me. “Are you … okay?”

The question is touching and humiliating at the same time. I ease into the chair beside her. “Lilith is quite good at discovering ways to cause the most pain without causing lasting damage.”

Harper looks down into her glass. “I thought—I thought she was going to kill you.”

“Killing me would end her fun.” I take a sip from my glass and feel the burn all the way down. I welcome the numbness that will trail behind it. “She prefers to make me beg for death.”

Harper swallows that information. “I’ve seen—I’ve seen bad things before. But not—” She falters, then shudders. “I couldn’t let her—I couldn’t—” Her voice chokes to a stop. “I couldn’t watch.”

“My lady.” The emotion in her voice turns my own rough. “What you did for me …” I find I have no words myself and I flinch away from her eyes. “I regret that you have been injured so … permanently.”

That seems to steady her, but at the same time, she sinks into herself a bit. “Why didn’t Grey do something? Why did he just stand there?”

“In the beginning, Grey would try to stop her. But she finds creative ways make him watch. Severed tendons, broken limbs … a favorite was to pin him to the wall of the arena on his sword—”

“Stop. Please.” Harper holds up a hand.

“Ah. Forgive me.” I look away. “I have learned to draw and hold her attention. What she does to me is bad enough. I can endure it. I will not watch her visit pain on my people.”

We fall into silence again, staring at the fire. I keep expecting her to ask me to leave, but she does not.

After a while, motion flickers to my left, and I look over to find her dabbing at her cheeks. Tears have snaked their way down her face, collecting along the stitches to make them gleam in the firelight.

“My lady.” I shift forward to the edge of my chair.

Despite the tears, her voice is steady. “I’m so stupid. You warned me, but I didn’t realize what you meant.”

“That is not stupidity,” I say.

“It’s something close.” Her voice is flat and bleak. “I ruined my chance.”

For me. She ruined her chance by trying to help me. “You may get another. Lilith will return. She is never gone for long.”

“What then? I can watch her do it again?” She glares at me, her expression made more fierce by the injury to her face. “I don’t know what I can do to her, but I won’t just stand by and watch it. I can’t.”

“What will you offer to stop it? What will you offer for passage home?”

“Anything.” She draws a hitching breath. “God, Rhen. Any—”

“No!” My voice is sharp, and she jumps. I put a finger over her lips. “Never offer blindly, my lady. Not for your family. Not even for yourself. Certainly not for me.”

She stares at me over my hand, until I feel foolish and pull away.

“Do not misunderstand,” I say, and my voice is rough. “When you bargain, you must know what you are willing to lose. If you offer all you have, be prepared for her to take it.”

“Is that what you did?” she asks quietly.

I stare down into my glass and remember the first night, when I thought Lilith was just another courtier. The first morning, when Lilith tore me apart. When she tore Grey apart.

While I lay broken and bleeding on the floor, she threatened to tear my family apart. She threatened to start with my sisters, limb by limb.

In retrospect, I should have just let her. Now the guilt is mine alone to carry.

Harper watches me, waiting for an answer. I drain the wine in one swallow. “Yes.”

She thinks about that for a long time. When she speaks, her voice is quiet and level. “So I’ve got a question.”

Right now, in this moment, I would grant her my kingdom if she asked. “Go ahead.”

“Do you still think your plan will work?”

“I do. I have sent Grey and Jamison to the inn to see whether any soldiers from Syhl Shallow have returned.”

Her eyebrows rise. “So Grey hired him?”

“Not yet. But Jamison seems willing. And loyal. He believes Lilith is working with Karis Luran. He offered to stand guard at the inn overnight, though I do not anticipate more trouble from those soldiers.”

“Why not?”

“Because they did not attack last night. They could easily have returned with reinforcements. I suspect, however, that they have retreated to send word to their queen, and to await further orders. That will take several days. Likely weeks. It is the dead of winter in Emberfall, and Syhl Shallow is on the other side of a mountain range.”

Harper considers this. “Could Lilith get in the way?”

“Absolutely. She already suspects that I am trying to trick her somehow.”

Harper points at her cheek. “How is this going to affect my part?”

“Do you still wish to proceed as the Princess of Disi?”

“I’m certainly not going to sit here feeling sorry for myself.” She pauses and some of the fire drains out of her eyes. “Every time I go still, I think of my mother.”

“I would undo it if I could,” I say softly. I want so badly to reach out and touch her, but she has made her feelings quite clear. “I swear to you.”

“I believe you.” Her voice is equally soft, but she straightens. “Enough. Seriously. What are we going to do about this?”

I frown. I cannot decide if she is being self-deprecating or practical.

Her eyes narrow. “I’m sure you’ve thought of something.”

“That we can tell the people of how the princess faced the evil sorceress from Syhl Shallow and drove her away with minimal injury? Yes, my lady. I have thought of something.” I pause. “If you are still willing.”

“I am.”

“Then when Grey returns, I will have him send word to Silvermoon Harbor, announcing our intent to visit. I would like to go the day after tomorrow, if that suits you.”

“It does.”

I study her, weighing my thoughts. She seems to think that her wound will make her less convincing as a princess. In truth, watching her now, she has never looked more like one.

“I have underestimated you again,” I finally say.

“How?”

“I have been waiting for you to wake for hours,” I tell her. “I was certain this would … break you.”

She frowns and looks at the fire. “It’s not my first scar, Rhen. I wasn’t perfect before. I’ll get over it.” Then her eyes shift back to mine. “Did you say you’ve been sitting here for hours?”

“Yes.” I pause. “You are not angry about what Lilith has done?”

“Oh, I’m furious. But not about my face.”

“Then what?”

Her voice fills with steel. “I’m mad I missed.”