56. The Malum’s Curse #2
Noxaeterna. The name of the Malum’s Curse.
My curse.
I was all alone at the bottom of the ocean, looking up at the world through the pieces of a broken mirror, distorting the shadows and shapes around me.
Some of them might have been clouds eclipsing the sun, but some of them were definitely sharks, and my lungs burned as I dragged my tired body to the surface while memories dove for me with wide-open jaws filled with sharp teeth.
“It is the most intricate spell I have ever seen, as a matter of fact, and it was placed on Auralie Roberts before she was born,” Owain announced to the room, as I stood paralysed in the centre of the platform.
“It was woven with the brilliant little caveat that she could not think or speak of it until the curse was named. It’s always risky to embolden a spell with something like that because, at any point in her life, someone might have said it without even realising what they were doing.
Then, she would have figured the rest of it out. ”
My head was spinning so fast that my vision was nothing more than a smear of colours, shapes, and stars within an endless darkness.
I lost all sense of gravity. I could have been floating upside down for all I knew as I burrowed into the recesses of my soul and finally picked up the thing that had been inside me all my life.
It was small, dark, and slippery, wriggling like some kind of leech as I snatched it with my mental hands and snapped it in half.
The sensation was liberating and crippling at once.
In the distance, I heard a scream that I thought was my own, but I was too far gone as my soul raced over two decades back in time to the day that someone put the curse inside me.
I knew my throat was being shredded by my own voice, although it felt like no more than a delicate hum as I lost my hold on time and space, and I named it in every corner and every moment of my existence.
Noxaeterna.
Power seared through my veins as I wrestled back control—knowing it, naming it, banishing it.
I stepped out of the curse like stepping out of layers of clothing that I’d been wearing for my whole life without realising they were making me overheat —until, finally, I became aware that they were suffocating me.
Through years and years of my life in the mortal world, I named the nameless friend that had spoken to me through the dark, and vanquished it.
And it was like breathing.
My whole life, I’d been choking, unable to fill my lungs, unable to keep my head above water, unable to clear my mind.
And then, all of a sudden, I was on dry land, and there was fresh air everywhere.
So much air that I didn’t even have to work for it anymore.
I was light as a feather. I was free from the stifling darkness of my confines.
When I finally caught up to the time and place I had been in when I learned of the curse’s true name, I found myself on my hands and knees on the floor, panting heavily as I faced a puddle of blood and black ink that spilled out beneath my body.
I was lighter than ever. My vision was clearer.
My head was no longer plagued by thoughts that were not my own and could not be controlled.
I lifted my head with a smile, only to find that Lucais was being restrained by five guards—one for each limb, and one for his throat—and the look on his face immediately switched from horror to relief when our eyes met.
Wrenlock stepped between us, brow creased, and a shadow rose from beneath me, pushing him to the ground and out of my way.
“What the fuck?” the former Hand muttered, brushing ash from his hands as he scrambled back to his feet.
“Hmmm.” Owain’s face was wrinkled as he perceived me from the distance of the throne. “Well, that’s going to be a problem.” He gestured to one of the guards holding Lucais. “Bring me Cacindra and the little dark faerie, would you?”
The guard bowed, then vanished. A moment later, he returned to the same spot with a woman on either side. He held ropes attached to iron collars that were secured around each of their throats.
One woman had hair as white as starlight and skin as pale as the moon, tinged with an ethereal sapphire hue.
She held her posture, spine straight and shoulders back, and the fierceness in her silver eyes told me that she was doing it as a statement of strength and defiance.
The iron collar didn’t seem to be scorching her flesh, and her ears didn’t protrude from the curtain of her hair like the High Fae.
In fact, she looked more human than any of them—smaller in stature and frame, with fewer enhancements to her physique, and much rounder eyes with thicker brows—but I didn’t need to see any of that to know what she was anymore.
A Witch. Cacindra.
The other woman was High Fae, and reminded me of Delia before I had turned her white hair black.
Her skin was many shades darker than the Witch’s, though her tresses were white as paper.
She was broad-shouldered with delicate features, slumped against the iron collar with an expression of pain cutting into the beauty on her face.
She wasn’t a Witch or a Secret Keeper, though.
The dark faerie.
“Cacindra,” Owain called pleasantly. “Care to explain why there’s magic pouring out of that redhead over there?”
I frowned, shooting him a glare. “The curse is broken. You named it. Noxaeterna. ” Saying its name out loud sent a thrill rippling through me, and I had to bite back another smile.
“The curse remains intact.” Cacindra’s voice was robotic, rehearsed.
Owain let out a frustrated sigh. “Naming the curse doesn’t break it, you stupid girl,” he muttered.
“It simply removes the block that prevents you from being aware of it, and thinking or talking about it.” He paused, as if he wasn’t sure whether to speak the next words.
Then, with a shrug, he added quickly, “You might also find that one or two of the reality distortion hexes start to fall apart at the seams. And…” He squinted at me.
“What is that?” he asked the Witch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Is that a love spell?”
The Witch remained silent.
Owain threw his hands up in the air. “Never mind, Cacindra. Focus! If the curse remains intact, why isn’t her magic still being suppressed?”
“The fire magic is void,” Cacindra recited politely.
Owain lifted a palm in the air, fire blazing to life against his skin. “If you don’t say something helpful—”
The High Lord was interrupted by the pealing sound of someone’s laughter.
At once, every head turned to Lucais and found him bent over in a fit of hysterics with the most deranged and jubilant smile I had ever beheld upon his perfect face.
Raising his bound hands, Lucais pointed to Owain with a single finger as if he was about to say something, and then he laughed even louder.
Owain gestured to one of his guards, and a moment later, I was staring at the pointy end of a pitchfork. A snarl curled on my lips, but as I considered trying to wrestle it away from him, the High King’s laughter subsided.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.
“You fucking idiot, Owain. She doesn’t need your fire magic.
She doesn’t need any type of Elemental magic.
” He glanced over at me, a gentle crease forming around the corners of his mouth as his eyes simmered down into the gilded smoulder I loved so much.
“Can’t you see it? Aura has been absorbing the magic of the curse this whole time.
And now she’s learning to control it. She owns it.
” He looked back at Owain. “Where did you store the noxaeterna prior to Aura’s conception? ”
“Me.”
For a second, I had no idea who had spoken, but then Lucais was staring into the face of the dark faerie, and I realised that she had spoken for the very first time despite the iron sizzling against her throat.
“He stored it in me.”
“What is your name?” Lucais requested softly.
“My name is Bethanne, Your Highness,” the dark faerie replied. “I am the High Lady of the Court of Darkness. It’s an honour to finally meet you.”