Chapter 19 #4
“I have no reason either to approve or disapprove. You’re old enough to do as you please.” She waved me off, looking a bit sheepish after realizing how silly it was to feel jealous about an encounter that took place long before she was even born.
Seeing Maren jealous was new to me. And cute, I decided. She looked adorable like that with her cheeks flushed, her lips pursed, and her eyes darting away from mine in her struggle to look like she didn’t care. And it thrilled me to discover that she did care.
“Anyway,” she urged. “I still don’t understand how your talking about some dangerous things led to anyone’s death?”
“Sometimes talking is just as dangerous as doing,” I explained. “Sometimes, words are more lethal than a weapon, and they kill more effectively than a sword. I went to bed that night, but my friends went to Sarnala.”
“Without you?”
“Without me. Drunk on wine and the prospects of glory, they were too eager to jump into action without a delay. One of the two court ladies woke me up a couple of hours after my friends had left, and I went after them.”
“Did you go to join them?”
“To stop them, if I could, or to join them if I couldn’t. I swam as fast as the ocean would carry me. And when I arrived...”
I didn’t expect my voice to break. A hundred years had passed, and I’d been paying for my mistakes every second of each of those hundred years. I’d had plenty of time for my sense of loss to fade, for my guilt and shame to wear off, and for my pain to heal.
Yet a painful thud echoed through my chest with the memories of that day. Guilt proved to be an enduring emotion, and shame clearly was immortal.
“Almost all of them were dead already,” I found the strength to continue, but I couldn’t look Maren in the eye as I spoke.
“Pieces of their dead bodies were strewn all over the beach, next to the werewolves they had killed. I saw there was no glory in dying like that. And what an impossibly high price that was to pay for that lesson. Their useless, senseless deaths accomplished nothing and didn’t prove anything. Elar, Zaren, Jasmar, Aeris...”
The names of the men I knew since we all were boys, the men I grew up with and who would never grow old now, burned my throat as I recited them all out loud for the first time in so many years. All twelve of them.
I ran a hand over my face, closing my eyes for a moment to find my composure. But that made it worse. The images of my friends’ bloody remains appeared behind my closed eyelids, as vivid as ever. Horror hollowed my chest all over again. Agony and regret squeezed my throat in an iron grip.
“I found only Delmar still alive,” I said in a hoarse voice.
“He was pinned to the ground with a sword made of Nerifir iron, the only weapon capable of killing a fae. Werewolves don’t use weapons when they’re in their monstrous forms during the full moon.
He must’ve been stabbed earlier that morning, after the werewolves who had survived the night sought revenge for the night’s massacre.
I pulled the blade out of Delmar’s chest, then swam back to Lyrei, carrying him on my shoulders. ”
Maren listened quietly, the blanket pulled up to her mouth, her eyes open wide. The story didn’t make me look good, no matter how it was told. There was no way to embellish it in my favor, unless I lied, which I didn’t want to do. Not to her.
“The sword had been left in Delmar’s body for too long before I found him.
Pulling it out didn’t help. He died by the time I reached the reef on the morning of my twenty-first birthday,” I smirked bitterly.
“Mother planned a lavish celebration with a ball and festivities throughout the day. And I showed up late, with a dead body in my arms...”
“What did she do?” The question fluttered like a sad, fragile butterfly from her lips.
“I believe that was the last straw for the queen, my dear Maren.” I gave her a smile, because the alternative would be breaking down into tears, and I was terrible at crying.
“The royal court practically exploded with grief and fury. But Mother remained quiet. She didn’t say a word to me that time, just stared at me with so much sorrow and disappointment. ”
A shudder crossed my shoulders. The memory of that stare was still as vivid as ever, even after all those years.
“Why didn’t she talk to you?” Maren asked from under her blanket.
“Oh, she had tried to talk to me plenty of times before. Reasoning, pleading, threatening... She’d tried it all, hoping to make me the king Olathana deserved. And there I was, showing up at my birthday ball with my dead friend in my arms. The friend who died because of me.”
“But you weren’t even there when he was attacked,” she protested.
“My sweet, gentle butterfly,” I murmured.
“Oh, how many times I’ve said the same thing to myself over the years.
I wasn’t there. I didn’t go. I had two beautiful women ready to spend the night in my bed, and I chose them over my friends.
But none of that absolves me of the responsibility for their deaths.
I was the prince. I put the idea into their heads.
I could’ve stopped them. Fuck, I could’ve ordered them detained and put in chains if they didn’t listen.
At the very least, I could’ve gone with them and possibly actually saved someone’s life.
I was the best swordsman among them. If not, dying alongside them would’ve been a far preferred option.
Instead, I planted the seed in their heads and left them to it because I was in love with two court ladies for all of ten hours and couldn’t wait to get them into my bed.
Then, when my friends died because of me, do you know what I did after I came back to Lyrei and delivered Delmar’s body to his devastated family? ”
“What did you do?”
“What would a ruler do in case of such a tragedy?” I countered with a question.
“A true future ruler of a kingdom would’ve accepted the responsibility, comforted the grieving families, mended the broken relationship with the neighboring kingdom that had been attacked.
I did none of those things. I refused to do anything at all and dealt with it the way I’d always dealt with everything back then.
I got drunk and fucked the night away. And in the morning. ..”
“You woke up cursed,” she ended the sentence for me.
I felt the weight of her gaze pressing on me, and I had no choice but to finally face her.
“Yes,” I exhaled, meeting her eyes.
“You said it was your mother’s love that cursed you,” she remembered the words I told the brack the day I first met her.
“Right. My behavior that night pushed the queen’s patience to its limit. She’d given me way too many chances before that. I don’t blame her for what she ended up doing out of frustration and desperation.”
“She cursed you!” Maren exclaimed indignantly. “Was there really no other way?”
“I’m afraid Mother had exhausted all other ways, my dear.
I really was that horrible of a person. Still am, possibly.
” I frowned, hoping it wasn’t true. But what good had I accomplished in the century that passed to disprove that?
“In Mother’s defense, she was misled. She didn’t realize the full extent of the curse or its consequences.
She simply tried to teach me a lesson, one that would actually get through to me.
Like I said, I don’t blame her. Her royal hag, Odine, told me that Mother obtained access to the divine power of Goddess Nanami, the Mother of the Ocean.
She used it, hoping to teach me humility and patience, as well as to give me some time for reflection and contemplation, for me to rethink my life choices.
The curse’s purpose was to isolate me from all my usual vices.
No more fucking or fighting or gulping wine by the bottle.
I had to be more careful about everything I did.
The curse forces me to think carefully before acting.
Carelessness results in graphic, horrific, irreversible consequences.
” I heaved a long, heavy breath. “The gods know I’ve been doing nothing but reflecting, contemplating, and rethinking ever since.
Sadly, Mother never got the chance to explain how it all was supposed to end.
Frankly, I don’t think she knew herself in what form the curse would be delivered, otherwise she would’ve taken precautions to protect herself and the kingdom.
Fuck, I wouldn’t even mind if she locked me in a cage somewhere.
In fact I would’ve preferred that to everything that happened.
Now, I’m beginning to think there is no end.
There is no way to break this, and maybe I don’t deserve to end it anyway.
The curse is my punishment, for as long as I shall live. ”
I searched Maren’s face, trying to read her feelings in her expression. For her, I wished to be a far better man than I was. But I couldn’t keep shifting the blame for my actions onto others, least of all on my late, long-suffering mother.
“The queen only wished the best for me,” I said.
“And isn’t that what all parents want for their children?
How many of them end up making mistakes despite their best intentions or maybe because of them?
At the end of the day, I deserve everything that has ever happened to me.
Every single fucking thing, no matter how cruel or brutal.
The only thing that puzzles me is how in the world have I deserved you?
” I marveled. “What good deed in my sinful life earned me this favor from the gods? For them to send you to me?”
I gladly accepted all the suffering, guilt, and loneliness, if it all led me to meeting Maren.
She frowned, clearly not sharing my gratitude to fate for bringing us together.
“I was kidnapped and trafficked, Kye,” she reminded, “Leslo abducted me. I wouldn’t exactly call it a divine blessing.”