Chapter 4 #4
“To answer your question, yes,” he continued. “Wine stays wine inside me. Just as food stays food, at least until it goes through the usual transformation during the digestion process. The curse would be too merciful otherwise, wouldn’t it? If it allowed me to eventually die from starvation?”
His tone of voice didn’t change. Yet despair dark as night descended over the table like a suffocating shroud. How horrible one’s life had to be to view death from starvation as an act of mercy?
“Is that what made you the way you are?” I guessed. “A curse? But why? Who cursed you?”
I remembered what he’d said to Leslo, “My mother’s love.” But it made little sense. If his mother truly loved him, why would she condemn him to the life he so clearly loathed?
“Or was the purpose of the curse to make you more powerful?” I speculated. “You can kill a person with a handshake. Many men I know would give their souls to have that power.”
“Hm.” He put a piece of crab into his mouth and chewed while staring out into the ocean through the arched opening to the patio. “There was once a time when I possibly would’ve considered it a power too. But even then, I never asked for it.”
He put his fork down. In the process, his thumb bumped a cherry tomato on his plate. I didn’t even notice any shimmer this time. One moment, it was a normal red tomato, the next, a glass ball rolled around his plate.
With an annoyed grunt, the king picked up the glass tomato and tossed it out onto the patio. The ball bounced off the glass patio stones, then rolled off them toward the ocean.
“If it’s a curse,” I said, staring out into the ocean where the glass tomato had disappeared into the night, “then it could be broken, couldn’t it?”
“That’s what they say,” the king replied between bites of his dinner. “Only no one has found the way to break it yet, and I’m starting to believe no one ever will.”
“But don’t curses always come with conditions attached? Isn’t that the point of cursing someone, to force them to do your bidding in order to break it? What did your mother want you to do when she cursed you?”
He paused, going completely still. “My mother didn’t curse me.”
“But you said—”
He slammed his fork onto the table a little too hard, snapping the utensil in two.
“My mother, the late queen of Olathana, the most esteemed, merciful ruler of our kingdom, was misled,” he said the last word gently as if to soften an insult to the memory of the queen.
“She didn’t know what she was doing. Otherwise, I’d have to assume that she hated me, which simply couldn't be true.”
There was something endearing about the mighty king’s faith in his mother.
But faith, like love, could be blind. Just because he didn’t believe it, it didn’t mean there hadn't been a malicious intent behind his mother’s actions.
However, I feared pointing that out would result in more things being broken or possibly turned to glass, perhaps including myself.
So I wisely held my tongue behind my teeth.
“And no,” he continued, “no one left a list of conditions for me when I woke up one fine morning in a bed made of glass with a glass statue next to me that had been a living, breathing woman just a few hours earlier.” He drew in a long breath, fisting his hands on the table.
“Over the past century, twenty-seven people have claimed to know how to break the curse. I now have twenty-seven glass figurines to show for all their efforts.”
“You killed them all?” I exhaled, unable to eat a single bite more.
“I promised a fortune to anyone who would free me from the curse,” he explained.
“That brought a crowd of liars and charlatans to my palace. I tried everything they offered, but they also had to be the ones to test the results of their efforts. It’s only fair, don’t you think?
Every time someone claimed they broke the curse, I shook their hand in gratitude.
And every time, it proved they had lied. ”
“Twenty-seven people are dead because of this curse?” I repeated in horror. I was sharing dinner with a serial killer, one that murdered people like flies.
“More than that,” he said gravely. “Far more than that. The twenty-seven charlatans were the ones I killed on purpose. The rest...” He swallowed hard, leaving the last sentence unfinished.
I had a feeling I knew what happened to the rest, though.
He didn’t mean to kill them, but they died anyway through contact with him.
Like the woman who he said was in his bed on the day he first discovered the curse.
The woman he must’ve cared about at least enough to share his bed with her.
Was she his lover? His girlfriend? His wife?
If so, I couldn’t even imagine what he must’ve felt finding her as a slab of lifeless glass, then learning that he was the cause of her death.
Emotions rose in my throat, but I couldn’t let them take over. Now more than ever I needed a cool head to find a solution out of my predicament, instead of worrying about the king. But maybe his situation offered a resolution for us both?
“What would you give to someone who actually discovers the way to break your curse?” I asked, leaning forward.
He gave me a tired look. “The offer still stands. I never withdrew it. Anyone who breaks it will be rich beyond measure.”
“I don’t want your riches. But if I find a way to break your curse, will you set me free?”
He smirked, leaning back in his chair and propping his elbows on the armrests.
“You don’t belong to me,” he said. “I have you only for safekeeping. You aren’t mine to set free.”
“I’m sure you can find a way to persuade Leslo once your deal with him is over.”
I didn’t know the full power of his position, but surely the ruler of the ocean would be able to stand up against a dirty kidnapper.
“What do you know about magic, little human?” the king asked.
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Then why do you think you can break my curse?”
“Because maybe that’s what we need here? A fresh, new approach, not weighed down by any preconceived notions of this world?”
He looked at me closely before asking the next question. “Are you ready to risk your life for your freedom? You know what happened to those who didn’t deliver on their promise to break my curse.”
The threat was real. Twenty-seven people had paid with their lives for their failure to accomplish what I was taking upon myself here.
“Well, I won’t come to you to test some half-baked theories,” I replied carefully.
“I’d only come to you with something I’d be absolutely sure about.
If I put an idea forward, I always stand fully behind it.
” In a way, this felt like giving a sales pitch to a new client, except that it would likely be the most important deal of my life, with my actual life on the line.
Until now, I’d fought for opportunities, for promotions, sometimes for simply being heard. Never before did I literally have to fight for my life and freedom.
He gazed at me with the same tired expression, like I was an ant under his foot and even my biggest efforts couldn’t possibly make any noticeable difference in his life.
“Your determination would be admirable if it didn’t come from ignorance,” he said. “Like a tiny minnow, you’re trying to swim against the current without realizing how much stronger than you it is. No matter how determined you are or how tirelessly you work, it’ll sweep you under just the same.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“You want me to give up before I even start?”
“I simply don’t want you to waste your time,” he replied.
“What else am I to do with my time while you’re holding me hostage?
” I snapped, shoving my chair back as a flare of anger sent me to my feet.
“I have a life back home. A life that I’ve worked very hard to build.
I have a job I’m good at, a man I promised to marry, my parents, my friends, and I’ll do anything to get that life back.
I’ll lose everything I have and everyone I love if I don’t try.
What do you have to lose, even if I fail? ”
I marched toward him to loom over him as he sat in his glass throne at the other end of the table.
He raised a hand in warning to stop me from coming too close.
Then, pushing with his hands into the armrests, he rose to his full height.
His chest came to my eye level, but instead of looking up at his face, inexplicably my eyes traveled down the well-defined ridges of his abs, to the v-muscles below, and along the trail of transparent hair cutting through it.
For the first time, I took a close, deliberate look at his dick.
Of course, that part of his body was flawlessly gorgeous, too, just like the rest of him.
His cock remained down, but it no longer looked entirely flaccid.
It swelled in both length and girth under my stare.
The skin over it smoothed, gaining a luxurious satin sheen.
As I stared, a thick ripple ran along its length, like a wave rolling across a smooth surface of the ocean.
The dick suddenly jerked higher, and I shot my gaze up to his face.
He seemed surprised by this particular reaction of his body, but only for a moment. A lazy smirk spread across his beautiful face as he met my eyes.
“What do you know?” he mused. “You possess your own kind of magic after all, little minnow. So powerful indeed that it raises things from the dead.”
With hooded eyes, he gave me a slow once-over with considerably more interest and attention than ever before. I drew in a breath, growing acutely aware of every inch of my body during his close inspection.
I wet my lips as my mouth grew suddenly dry.
“You can’t touch me,” I reminded him.
“And isn’t that a shame?” he sighed, then cleared his throat. “Well, let’s pretend I’ll make a deal with you. My curse for your freedom. What will you do next? Where will you start?”
Taking a precautionary step away from him, I crossed my arms over my chest again. The gesture made me feel safer in his presence. “First, you’ll have to tell me everything you know about this curse and what led to it in the days prior.”
He snapped his fingers.
“Ah, and that’s where we’ll stop.”
“Why?” I frowned.
“Because I don’t believe for a minute that you would succeed in this endeavor, my dear. That said, I would still entertain the idea of humoring you for a while if it made you happy and gave you something to do, but not at the expense of my spreading my past open for your idle perusal.”
“But it isn’t idle. If there is even the slightest chance—”
“No,” he cut me off, striding out of the room. “I’m not resurrecting hope simply to watch it die again. Now, if you’re no longer hungry, I’ll get the servants to clean it up in here because I’m ready for bed.”