Chapter 32
Growing things was stupid.
I didn’t have the patience for it.
Six days had passed since Maren did her own type of magic on the dirt we had gathered from the dead garden, six days since Nico had helped her get the volcanic ash and she mixed it with the soil.
Six days since I had handed over a single seed—the only one left in Eroth—and she’d planted it in the dirt.
But then nothing happened.
Every day the dirt remained only that: dirt.
The flower wasn’t sprouting.
It made it even worse that the room with the brightest moonlight throughout the day was the one with the Magmara, so while nothing happened with the seed, that flaming petal taunted me with each whisper of breath that had it swinging on an invisible thread.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was even looking for, seeing as I’d never grown anything before. But I knew something was supposed to change, and yet the soil remained the same as it was the moment we put it into the pot.
For days, Maren kept telling me to be patient, but I couldn’t find an inkling of it within me. Each day brought me closer to the end, closer to the death of Eroth, and my final breath.
There was no time for patience.
That last petal could fall at any moment, and here I was waiting for a plant to grow in soil that hadn’t grown anything in four hundred years.
This task was foolish. Those queens may have been Pure Fae, but their hearts were bitter and cruel. They knew this was impossible. How could anything grow from death?
The only positive thing that had happened in the last six days was the amount of time I was able to spend with Maren. If I’d been in this position weeks ago, I would have been at my wits’ end with her, wanting to put as much distance between us as possible.
But now she was all I could think about—besides the looming death of my kingdom.
And, of course, I had to ruin whatever was starting to bloom between us by being a grumpy idiot. Why had I done that? Regret was a rancid taste on my tongue that I couldn’t get rid of. All I wanted was to go to her, apologize, and spend the rest of the day at her side.
Moons, I was falling for her.
Or at least I thought that was what this feeling was. I’d never felt anything like it before.
I never knew a human could be so interesting.
When Maren had told me stories of her life back in her world, of her dreams and secret desires that she had never dared to speak aloud before, and about her siblings and how they would hide in the corn stalks outside their farm house and would play hide-and-seek—a strange, childish game—for hours, I felt the hardened pieces of my heart begin to crack and soften.
What really pierced through the cold stone in my chest was when she had told me about the years of abuse that her father had inflicted upon her and her family.
I had made a silent vow that if the curse was broken and I was free once more, I would pay her father a visit.
If it weren’t for my failing magic, I would have marched through that portal and taken care of him right now.
Then Maren and her family would never have to worry about him again. They could stop living in fear. In pain. They could live.
Frustration speared through me as I glanced at the door once again, waiting for her to appear.
Maren had spent days gradually opening up to me, being vulnerable, sharing her life with me—despite everything I’d done to her.
And yet, all I told her was surface-level things about me, unable to get myself to open the door, to let her in.
It was centuries of defense I had built into a stone wall around my heart.
I had learned the hard way never to trust anyone.
And I had thrown all those vulnerable moments into the fiery volcano by treating her so poorly yesterday.
She hadn’t deserved it. Would she be angry and ignore me today?
The thought of not hearing her voice or seeing the curl of her lips as she fought off a smile at something stupid I’d said, made my chest give an unfamiliar lurch.
What was she doing to this old, dark heart of mine? It felt like Maren had found a chisel and slowly chipped away at the stones, revealing more of me a little bit at a time. All the things I tried so hard to keep hidden.
Part of me hated it.
But a bigger part of me was…relieved.
I never knew how much I wanted—needed—someone to see me, to understand.
Though a human could never understand what it was like to be a cursed Fae prince, Maren tried, and it was more than I’d ever expected from her.
Thus, here I sat, on the floor staring at the dirt, like I had for the past six days, waiting for her presence to chase the shadows from the room.
“It’s not going to grow if you keep staring at it like that.” Maren’s voice came from the doorway. I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see hatred or anger twisting her face, but her expression was carefully blank.
“I don’t think that’s the problem,” I muttered.
Boots thunked across the tile, echoing until she appeared at my side and took a seat next to me. Her knees grazed mine, but she didn’t pull back, despite the way I’d treated her yesterday. I had the urge to take her hand, intertwine our fingers, but I quickly shut that down.
“I told you growing things takes time. Some crops back home take more than two weeks to germinate,” she said, bringing my attention back to the pot instead of how the tip of her knee touching mine had a pleasant prickly feeling spreading up my body.
There was no trace of anger in her voice.
How could she not be upset after how I’d acted?
“Yes.” My voice cracked, and I coughed, hoping she hadn’t heard. “Well, I underestimated how frustrating it would be to watch nothing happen day after day.”
Maren’s smile brightened the dark room, and I immediately scowled. I couldn’t afford to keep dwelling on these feelings. Not when I knew how this would end.
“Nothing happened with the curse for decades, and you survived that,” she said, a playful tone to her voice.
I scowled. “Like I said, frustrating.”
Her smile made my stomach twist into knots, but the feeling wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“Maybe something will happen tomorrow. For some plants, a week is the magic number.” She nudged my shoulder with her own. “Don’t give up yet.”
“Why are you doing this?” The question was out before I could think it through. I shouldn’t have asked it. I didn’t want to hear that she was trying so hard to grow this flower because she wanted to go home, and not because she wanted to help me, spend time with me.
Maren blinked. “To break the curse.” She said it as if it were obvious.
Idiot. Of course that’s her answer. Why would it be anything else?
“Right.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice, and the confused twist of her face told me she didn’t understand why I was upset.
I didn’t even fully know why.
I wanted her to break the curse. She was trying.
That was what I had searched all these years for. Someone who was willing to try.
She sighed. “I was just trying to cheer you up, Rhydian. You don’t need to be such a…”
“Prick?”
“I was going to say jerk, but prick would suffice.” Maren sighed again, those gray eyes piercing straight through me.
Instead of finding frustration on her face, there was something closer to understanding—like she understood why I was acting like this, but wished I would choose something different. It was resignation.
The sight of it was a knife stabbed through my heart.
Don’t give up on me, Maren.
“I was just trying to help.” She pushed to her feet, turning her back on me before I could say anything else. “I’ll come check on the flower later.” Then she was gone.
Why was I like that? She had done nothing wrong. I hated that I was acting like this, but I couldn’t figure out how to stop. It was my heart’s defense mechanism.
Being cold and stonehearted had been ingrained in me. It was the only way to survive now. Irritated, I stalked back to my chambers and paced around the room, trying to quiet this unfamiliar feeling inside me.
“Maybe you should try not being grumpy all the time,” a voice said, and I spun around to find Nico with his arms crossed. “That’s usually a good way to get somebody to like you.”
“I’m not grumpy,” I snapped, getting to my feet.
“Shall I search the library for a dictionary, Rhydian? I’m fairly certain that your picture would be next to the definition of the word.”
“Ha ha, you’re so funny,” I deadpanned, not amused in the least.
Nico’s lips split into a satisfied smile before he sobered. “You really should try to be nice to her.”
I turned my back to him. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.” Nico was next to me, his fists clenched at his sides.
“Enlighten me, Nico. How does it matter? You heard her. She’s only doing this to break the curse so she can go home. Which at this rate will never happen. Forgive me for being angry about that.”
Nico shook his head. “I talked to her when we went to get the ash.”
“You always talk to her.”
“That’s not what I mean. I…I asked her about you.”
My eyes snapped to his, heart suddenly, inexplicably, quickening. “What do you mean you talked to her about me?”
“She’s not just doing this to break the curse, or to save Eroth.”
Doubt filled my mind, but before I could utter a retort, he added, “She’s doing it for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Maren has feelings for you, dimwit.” The words were so surprising that I couldn’t even get my tongue to cooperate to reprimand him for calling me such a name.
“She said she liked you.” He ran a hand over his short hair, visibly frustrated.
“I told her I wouldn’t say anything, but I can’t watch you squander this when you two could quit fighting and love each other.
When she could finally be the one to set us free. ”
“Are you sure you didn’t just hear what you wanted to hear in her words? I kidnapped her, for Moon’s sake. How would she have feelings for me?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t understand it either.”
“Helpful.”
“And if there was anyone else left here, they would be able to see—plain as day—that you have feelings for her too. So quit being a grumpy prince and do something about it. You want her to fall for you? Give her a reason to. Stop pushing her away.”
“You seem to forget how this ends even if the curse is broken.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Wouldn’t you rather have a few moments of feeling alive after centuries of death?”
His words made me go still. It had been centuries since I’d felt anything, let alone happy or alive. My life before the curse was…quite different. Alive had a different meaning then.
But the way Maren had begun to make me feel…it had indeed been new and almost addicting. I wanted more.
And yet it was so hard to give into the desire when I knew how this all ended.
If the curse was never broken, Eroth and I would cease to exist, swept away on the wind like ash.
But if Maren was the one to break it, to finally set us all free, she would still perish.
The queens covered everything when they laid the curse.
Not only was it impossible for me to free myself, but also, on the off chance that I did somehow break it, they’d made sure I would live the rest of my days without the cursebreaker.
The moment the curse was broken—if it ever was—a timer would begin on Maren’s life.
There was no happy ending for us.
Either way, she would die, and one of the ways meant that I would have to watch her die, and that was a fate I couldn’t stand to think about.
Nico’s words crept under my skin even still.
Maybe a few fleeting moments of happiness would be worth it in the end.
Maybe Maren was worth it.
I would never know unless I found out, right?
The decision snapped through my veins like lightning, forcing me to my feet and out the door.
Nico’s smug smile followed me out, along with a single word.
“Finally.”