The Curse of Ophelia (The Curse of Ophelia #1)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
The scrape of metal against metal rang out across the dusty enclosure that formed our family’s training circuit.
Three sharp clangs, followed by a thud as the double-edged blade of my short sword, Starfire, slipped past Jezebel’s sword arm and came to rest gently against her wrist brace.
Without the gold band, she would have lost her hand.
My sister was lucky I had pulled back at the last second, falling into our training habits rather than unleashing the rage that had festered inside of me for two years.
“Good one,” Jezebel encouraged, tossing her cropped blonde hair out of her face and smiling mischievously. “Again,” she spat the word at me, baiting my anger.
It wasn’t irritation at my sister that fueled me.
It was fury at the world. At the perfect life that slipped through my fingers two years ago as Malakai walked away from me for the last time.
The image burned behind my eyelids as I gripped the leather hilt of Starfire and raised the two-foot blade in front of me: our hands outstretched, holding on until the very end.
That moment my fingers broke from Malakai’s, a cold loneliness slid into his place, and everything in my life shifted.
My heart stuttered, and I blinked away the emotion.
Dawn’s light glinted against Starfire’s immaculate steel and the gold-and-topaz pommel. I’d polished her after yesterday’s training, as I had every time I’d used her for the last decade. She’d seemed so heavy when I was gifted her for my tenth birthday.
She’ll grow into it, my father had assured my mother.
I flipped the blade between my calloused hands. Grown I had.
Jezebel sheathed her sword and braced herself with a spear before me, our weapons unmatched, but our skill equal.
Neither of us acknowledged the fact that training was futile.
These sessions were our solace. A place where we bore the weapons we were born to carry and honed the skills that should have delivered us our birthright.
Had the war not devastated our people.
Had the Curse not been cast against our bloodlines.
Had the Undertaking not been forbidden for our future.
As I swung my blade in the direction of my sister’s heart, I felt the power of the Mystique Warriors sing through my blood.
That ancient magic tunneled through the land and into me.
Into all seven warrior clans across Gallantia.
It manifested as strength and connection; I felt it now, in the precision of my strike, the focus on my target, and the swiftness of my feet as I staggered away from Jezebel’s spear.
It surrounded us, stemming through the willowy branches of each cypher—the trees growing throughout Gallantia since the Angels roamed the continent.
The ash-white trunks and vibrant green leaves were pure conduits of power.
As we fell deeper into spring, I could feel the magic blossoming in the small white buds dotting the space between the leaves.
I flexed my muscles, reveling in the gift of the Angels.
Jezebel lunged, a low growl escaping her lips as she thrusted the shaft of her spear in front of my sword. “You’ll have to be quicker than that,” she taunted, throwing my weight back against me. She twirled the spear fluidly above her head and brought the tip just below my rib cage.
Spears. I had never liked them.
“And you’ll have to be less obvious,” I retorted. My free arm struck out, catching her spear hand off guard and knocking her weapon to the ground.
She was quick. By the time I raised my sword again, she had unsheathed her own long sword from her hip to meet Starfire. Sparks shot up from where the blades collided.
The clashing of metal echoed again, and for a second, I thought this may be the day we were caught. Never mind the fact that our training circuit lay a half mile from our manor, on the outskirts of the Alabath estate. Since the war, many people had grown bored—and meddlesome.
With the suspension of the Undertaking, young warriors were forbidden to train. A bitter taste filled my mouth when I thought of the pointless order. I gritted my teeth against it and swung Starfire.
If war had not broken out, the Curse had not ravaged our people, and Malakai had not disappeared, I would have plunged through the ritual that ascended young trainees into adult Mystique Warriors two years ago on my eighteenth birthday.
Jezebel would have been attempting her own Undertaking six months from now—assuming our parents allowed it.
Often, second children were discouraged from the risky endeavor if the firstborn succeeded.
It was a means of keeping the bloodlines alive and active while also ensuring the safety of their precious children.
But Jezebel never would have allowed that chance to be taken from her. Though, I supposed that no longer mattered.
The Undertaking. Another thing stolen from my life.
Despite the ban, Jezebel and I found ourselves in the training circuit every morning. We danced swift-footed across the dust bordered by the cypher trees and created our own challenge to the authority ruling our lives.
Those first few weeks, our parents had been suspicious when we showed up to breakfast with rosy cheeks and ravenous appetites.
They had not said anything, though. Two years later, I suspected it was feigned ignorance.
Our father was the Second to the Revered Mystique Warrior—our leader.
He could not be found with knowledge of flouting the restriction.
I smiled to myself at the thought of anyone trying to stand between me and Starfire. I had been cheated out of my birthright, but I would not let them steal the power threaded through my blood.
Still, each morning that we donned our training leathers—covering our bodies from neck to foot in the slick, nearly impenetrable black material—and strapped on gold reinforcement bands, a shadow of worry hung around me.
Not for myself, but for Jezebel. At seventeen, she still occupied the space in our culture when you were neither regarded as a child nor respected as a grown warrior.
If we were to be found training, I could not say what repercussions she would suffer.
I closed my eyes for only a moment and channeled my hearing to catch any threats, but that slight adjustment was a distraction I couldn’t afford. In one blink, Jezebel twirled around me, a perfect balance of delicacy and force, retrieved her spear, and swung the weapon behind my legs.
A cloud of dust surrounded me where I fell.
“Focus, Ophelia,” she growled, extending a hand to help me up.
Her tawny eyes burned with anger, stark against her bronze skin.
They were the most notable difference between us, my eyes being a bright, inexplicable magenta.
My parents thought it might have been a temporary discoloration when I was born, but it never faded.
Beyond that, our heart-shaped faces, full lips, and coloring were nearly identical, her features a bit slenderer than mine.
As she hauled me to my feet, it was clear she knew what had distracted me. That protective guard an older sister held over the younger.
And she hated it.
When the sun had fully risen, we opened the creaky wooden door of our family’s weapons shed and disarmed.
The structure had once been guarded against intruders with impenetrable wards on the lone door, but no one in Palerman bothered to lock their weapons up anymore.
They had no use. Now the space only remained free of cobwebs and rodents due to my and Jezebel’s weekly cleanings.
We polished our weapons in silence, peeled off our leathers, and discarded them into a soiled pile that was growing steadily. Wash those soon, I reminded myself. We’d have to sneak them to the manor.
A thin beam of light shone through the cracked door, brightening Jezebel’s frame where she stood in only her undergarments. She held her hands before her, turning them over slowly. Her lips twisted to the side, eyes narrowing.
“What is it?” I asked, tossing one of the dresses we were forced to wear at her and pulling my own up my body. I tugged my long golden hair free of the backing, cursing when it tangled in the bindings.
I should not be wearing such restrictive clothing anymore.
I should have spent each day in the leathers of the ascended Mystiques, having completed the Undertaking.
The garb was customized by each warrior, with leather straps and bracings to the wearer’s preference, providing flexibility and weapon storage.
The sketch I’d designed years ago for mine was tucked away in my room for the day I needed it—a day that would never come now.
Jezebel freed my hair, still wearing nothing more than her lace undergarments. “It’s odd, isn’t it? The way the Curse just disappeared.”
My stomach turned to ice as the spot on the inside of my elbow tingled. “Yes.”
“I don’t understand why it stopped when—”
“Get dressed,” I ordered, storming out of the shed.
Dust swirled around my skirt as I stalked the half mile back to our house and crawled through my open window.
With my back pressed against the cool glass, I exhaled, forcing away the pain that twisted its way through my body and prodded at my already-shredded heart.
My father’s study had always been my favorite place in our house.
Books overflowed the dark wood shelves, stretching from floor to ceiling.
Volumes were piled in corners amid scrolls and maps, and two plush velvet armchairs sat beside a fire that never extinguished thanks to the mystlight flowing directly from the earth to power every building on the continent.
The scent of leather, parchment, and smoke accenting the air had wrapped itself around me in childhood, nurtured my curiosity, and transformed me into the wandering mind I embraced now.
My favorite piece of the room was the dark wooden desk positioned beneath the window.
From this spot, mounted behind the surface of study and knowledge, I had felt powerful as a child.
When I had looked out over the cypher-packed land and heard the calls of wild animals, I felt alive with possibilities.
The study had symbolized comfort and warmth, wisdom and wonder.
Now, it was the place I came to brood and obsess over my losses. Where I searched for something—anything—that might help me restore the future I deserved.
A soft knock sounded at the door, and I knew I could tell him to go away, but I didn’t. “Come in,” I called without looking up from the volume I was reading, The Six Gods of Ambrisk, Volume One: Thallia, the Witch Goddess of Sorcia.
My father’s blonde head poked around the door. I appreciated the way he yielded his space to me, knocking before entering when he knew I was lost in my world of research. “It’s time for dinner,” he said.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” I droned. Dinner didn’t interest me. Nothing did but training for the future I’d lost and researching how to restore it. And rum—to numb the painful present.
“Two minutes.”
My head snapped up at the cold tone in his voice. His jaw was set, his beard quivering as he exhaled. His tawny eyes—a perfect mirror of my sister’s—narrowed, daring me to challenge him.
I didn’t have the energy to fight my father tonight. I nodded, closing the book in my lap and rising to follow him as he turned from the room.
His footsteps were echoing down the hall when the rendition of the Mystique Mountain Range above the fireplace caught my eye. The source of Ambrisk’s magic stared back at me. I felt as though I was there, standing atop a boulder at its base and soaking in the beauty of our cause.
Atop the peaks, warriors lived in the city of Damenal where they guarded this majestic mountain range and the secrets within. The purpose I had been born into. The birthright the fateful Undertaking would have confirmed.
The sky around the snowcapped mountains was peppered with stars, and hovering above the highest peak, one particular star outshone the others.
I exhaled when my eyes landed on it, unable to tear them away as the sight of the North Star crawled beneath my skin and tore my heart to pieces.
I didn’t know it was possible for a broken heart to repeatedly sever, but mine found a way.
I inched closer to the painting, lifting a hand to graze the star. The paint was rough beneath my fingertips, but I lingered there, as if that touch might guide me in repairing the scraps of the life I once dreamed of.
The spot beneath my inner elbow tingled.
A reminder of another lifetime, two years ago, when the stars shone brighter.
A reminder to hope for the day that they may again.