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

I wake with a belly full of fire. My body feels torn apart.

I draw a hand across my abdomen. No bandages, no stinging tightness. Lilith didn’t break the skin. Sometimes that’s worse—when the pain is all magic. Magic takes longer to heal.

A crackling fire throws shadows on the wall. Music carries from the Great Hall, a slower flute melody that tells me we have an hour until dinner. I’m in my bedroom, an early autumn draft from the window fluttering across my face.

I am also alone.

I struggle to right myself, but pain ricochets through my body. I hiss a breath between my teeth and remember Lilith’s admonition. She said this would be the final season—something that should be a relief, yet instead she’s turned it into a darker form of torture.

I clutch an arm to my stomach and make it to sitting. “Grey.” My voice sounds as though I’ve been eating ash from the fireplace.

He appears in the doorway. “Yes, my lord?”

I run a hand over my face. “What happened?”

He moves to a side table and uncorks a bottle. Red liquid glints in the light as he pours. “Lilith appeared in the arena.”

“I remember that.” I shift forward. The pain is easing a bit with my movement. The marks on his throat have darkened and scabbed over. “Did she harm you after I fell?”

“No.” He holds out the glass, and I take it. The first sip burns my throat, and then my stomach, but I welcome this pain because it will dull the other.

Grey pours none for himself. He never does. At one time it was forbidden among the Royal Guard, but now there is no one here to care.

Still, he would refuse if I offered. I’ve been down this road before.

“Have you checked on the girl?”

He nods. “I have.”

After I turned the lock this morning, I expected her to pound on the door in fury. Instead, I was met with a silence that seemed loaded with furious resignation. “Would she speak with you at all?”

“She drew a dagger and seemed willing to fight over one of those devices they all carry.”

I sigh. Of course. “Anything else?”

“She is interesting.”

My eyes flick up. That’s not a word I’ve ever heard Grey use to describe one of the girls. “Interesting?”

“She’s impulsive, but I believe she would fight to the death if cornered. If there was something she wanted.”

That is interesting.

Considering that she wants nothing more than to go home, it’s also disheartening.

She’s afraid of me now. Such a turn of events. Just wait until she sees the monster.

These thoughts are not productive. I drain the glass. Grey moves to refill it, but I wave him off. I need to move.

He steps back to stand against the wall, his right hand gripping his left wrist. Something has changed about him, and it takes me a moment to discern what it is. He’s fully armed, from his long dagger to his throwing knives to the steel-lined bracers guarding his forearms.

Grey hasn’t been fully armed in ages. We so rarely leave the castle grounds, and there’s certainly no one here to pose a threat. I smile as I pour. “Does this girl have you spooked, Commander?”

“No, my lord.”

His voice is even, unaffected. He never lets me bait him.

Like his refusal to drink, this is part of Grey’s unfailing commitment to duty. It’s something I envy, but also something I hate. He is not a friend or a confidant. Maybe he could have been, once, if the curse had begun a different way. If I had not failed in my obligations—and if he had not failed in his.

I drain the second glass. I could order him to drink. He would obey then.

But what fun is a drinking partner if you have to order him to do it?

Grey was like this in the beginning, too, before the curse trapped us in this hell together. Then, he felt he had something to prove. He would have carried lit coals between his teeth if I’d ordered it. He’s lucky I never thought of it or I might have.

The thought makes me wince. I don’t like to think of before, because too many memories crowd my mind, until the weight of loss and sorrow makes me want to fling myself from the ramparts. But Grey weaves through so many of them.

Grey, fetch me fresh water.

No, I said fresh water. Bring it from the waterfall, if you must.

Grey, my meal is cold. Fetch me another from the kitchen.

Grey, my meal is too hot. Tell the cook I will have you bring me his hands if he cannot do better. Make him believe it.

Grey, the Duke of Aronson says his man-at-arms could ride a full day without food or water, then win a sword fight at sunset. Could you do that? Show me.

Grey could do that. He did do that. I watched him almost die trying.

I pour a third glass and take a sip. “Grey, I have orders for you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“When I begin to change, I want you to kill me, while you still can.”

I’ve ordered him to do this before. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

This time is different.

I’ve watched him long enough that I know he is weighing the words. “If Lady Lilith has declared this to be our final chance, killing you would be a true death, not a new beginning.”

“I know.”

“I swore an oath to protect you,” he says. “You cannot order me to break it.”

“I can,” I snap, then wince as my body protests this motion. “And I will.”

“You would leave your people with no one to rule them.”

I want to slam the glass down. “There is no one to rule now, Grey. If this is our last season, I will not risk destroying more of them. I refuse.”

He says nothing.

“You will do this,” I say.

“I can lead the monster through the forest. I can keep it away from the people. We have been successful for many seasons.”

It. The monster. As if we both don’t know what I become. What I can do.

“Silver hell, Grey. Are you prepared to lure me away from the people forever?” I gesture at the window, at the sunlit stables beyond. “Are you prepared to run a horse to ground every night for the rest of your life?”

He says nothing.

“Are you prepared to die, Grey?” I demand. “Because that is all that exists at the end of this path. I am sure of it. This was never a curse to be broken. This is a death sentence. The true curse has been the thought that we might find escape.”

His eyes flash with something close to defiance. “We may yet escape.”

“If I have not succeeded by the time signs of the change begin to appear, you will do this, Grey. It may happen quickly, so I am giving you this order now. I will release you from your oath.”

“So you limit your final season to what … six weeks? Eight?”

“If I have not broken this curse by then, there is no hope once I am lost to the creature.”

His voice is cold now, irritated. “And once it is done? Do you have further orders?”

“Find a new life. Forget Emberfall.”

“An easy task, I am sure.”

“Grey!” I slam the glass onto the bedside table so hard that the base chips and glass tinkles to the marble floor. “This is my last chance. I can offer you nothing here. I barely have a kingdom left to rule. I have no life left to live. Nothing. I can offer fear and pain or death, or I can offer you freedom. Do you understand?”

“I do.” Grey is unmoved by my outburst. “But you owe me nothing. You are all that matters here. You alone can break this curse. You must find a woman to love you. You, not me. If Lady Lilith wants to break me again, I would ask you to let her.”

“I will not watch her cause more damage, Grey.”

“Time and again, she finds your weakest point.”

I look away. Once, I would have punished him for voicing my vulnerability.

Now I feel nothing but shame.

Darkness is beginning to crawl across the sky. I meet his eyes. “You will obey, Commander.”

“Yes, my lord.” He does not hesitate. He’s said his piece.

I sigh. I’m so tired of this.

One last season.

I throw the chipped glass into the fireplace. It shatters into a thousand sparks that flare and die.

“I will dress for dinner. Let us play this game one last time.”