Chapter 58
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
ASTER
I pushed past the flaps that divided Morgana from the rest of the fort. She had her legs curled up to her chest, her forehead pressed into her knees. I stood there for a moment before clearing my throat, opting not to invade her space. She flinched, lifting her head just enough to look at me.
“How are you feeling?” I asked quietly.
“Terrible.”
I smiled softly and nodded. “That makes two of us.” With a hesitant step forward, I made sure to keep my hands clasped behind my back. “Are you up for talking, little dove?”
“Do I have a choice?”
For a moment, it felt as if we’d regressed to our very first days together. She was just as scared too—that guard built up so high to hide it, but it was in her eyes. “You always have a choice.”
She straightened her back and stared at me for a moment before nodding. “Go on, then. Speak.”
I walked over to her and sat on the crate propped up next to the bed. “I should not have unloaded that truth onto you like that. I am sorry.”
“You have a habit of doing that. Did they not teach you the skill of being delicate in the University?”
My mind raced to the trials she’d face in six months. If word got out that she was so much closer to not only my cure, but the antidote to the entirety of Vespera, they’d drill her. They’d test every ounce of her existence to make sure she was the answer. I knew in my heart how strong Morgana was, but I did not think anyone could survive such a fate.
If not due to the trials, then she would perish by the hands of someone who didn’t wish to see Vespera fall.
“They did not,” I finally whispered. “But I have questions. And I have not been delicate prior to today, so I won’t start now.” I twisted to face her fully, my eyes boring into hers. “Why did you threaten Erynna, little dove? What good would it do?”
Her lips thinned into a straight line. “You won’t believe me.”
“Please, Morgana. Have faith in me, as I have faith in you.”
Her lips parted, that glare softening as tears laced her eyes. Eventually, she twisted her focus to the foot of her bed and huffed out a sigh. “She had the mirror.”
She was right. I didn’t believe her. I even laughed, as if she were testing the waters for the real truth. When her eyes closed and that frown returned, my laughter faded into incoherent questions. Finally, I found my voice. “What do you mean?”
“I was walking around the castle after our… fight.” A pang of remorse soared through me, but I didn’t interrupt her. “Mindlessly exploring, rather. I just wanted to find something pretty enough to hold my attention until the sun rose, or I could sleep. But I-I heard her talking, and when I peered through a crack in the door, I saw her standing with a man. She handed him the mirror. I saw it. It was old, ashy, discolored. The man vanished, and she caught me before I was able to walk off to figure out what to do.”
My heart had leapt into my throat. Then my mind raced to the chaos of the castle?—
“They brought me into the throne room and told me you’d asked for mercy. Those bloodsuckers had other ideas though, and they saw everything. My true name. My intention. Our intentions. And then all hell broke loose before I lost consciousness. Something about the prince dying?” She twisted to face me and shook her head. “Aster, I promise you. I did not kill Prince Eamon.”
I breathed out shakily and nodded. “I know, little dove.”
She leaned back against the iron bed frame, her gaze flicking up and down my face. “Then what are you thinking? You look like you’re about to faint. Again.”
I barked out a laugh and rubbed my hands into my face, shaking my head. “Morgana, I am so sorry for what you endured. For what my sister had caused.”
When I supported my chin on the back of my hand and glanced at her, she was staring at me with a slack jaw. “Aster?” she said and shifted so her legs were off the side of the bed, her body swaying from the instability. I shifted onto my knees and tried to support her, to keep her on the bed. I feared she was getting ready to stand and run off.
“What is it?”
She looked at me with that wide-eyed, slack-jawed glare.
And then she slapped me across the face. So hard that I lost my balance, using my hand to catch the fall.
I rubbed my jaw and closed my eyes. Alright. I deserved that.
“You… you caused me to endure. Damn your sister. Damn the treason. The lies. I can survive those things. I have survived those things.”
I turned my face. There was a tear threading down her cheek, her frown so deep it seemed like it hurt. I straightened myself onto a knee again, this time resting it on her knee. “I think I owe you an explanation.”
“I don’t care what you have to say,” she hissed.
I smiled softly at her anger, squeezing her knee. “I think you will. If you’ll let me explain, that is.”
She opened her mouth to retort but snapped it shut and crossed her arms. “Go on then,” she said for a second time. “ Speak. ”
In that moment, I wanted to kiss her. Her rage. Her passion.
But I nodded instead. And I told her everything. About my curse she already knew, about the lies and the threats that existed back home. It was what she didn’t know that silenced her anger. The trials, the things my sister had reminded me of that she had endured once before—with or without her guilt in this alleged treason.
I told her that those trials were lethal, and if they found out about what we’d done, they’d have every right to kill her in the test that touched on morality.
It was archaic. It was useless. But it was how things were—and how they would be, unless we found a way to end my family’s curse—and the plague of Vespera.
The strangest part though? She didn’t even flinch at the idea. She merely stared.
And then she said, “All of that for a fucking trial, Prince Aster?” she said beneath her breath. “Because you thought I’d die if an old man at the University found out I bedded you?”
With a slow nod, I lowered my focus. “And for that, I am so sorry. I thought I was protecting you. That if you hated me, they’d see me as a villain who stole your virtue. Those things I said, they weren’t true. Gods, Morgana, you need to believe me.”
“Aster?”
I lifted my gaze.
She slapped me again. This time, she grabbed hold of my face after and shook me. “ Fuck you . You do not get to dictate what I am able to survive. You do not get to treat me like I am worthless.”
Here, my lip quivered, and I nodded.
“You are anything but. I will spend my days proving that to you, however fleeting. However short.”
Morgana nodded, and then she kissed me. Hard. After a brief pause, she rested her forehead against mine and shook her head. “Aster, I don’t think I’m the cure you’re seeking. I am a curse. Just like you. We are both terribly cursed.”
I lifted a hand to stroke her cheek, shaking my head. “The stars have plagued me once already, little dove. If you are my second curse, then I yearn for my demise.”