Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Present Day
My fingers curled around the cool metal of my fork and knife as I dug into whatever roast bird my mother had prepared for us.
I chewed each bite methodically, missing the plentiful meals we used to indulge in before the war.
With so many lives lost, those remaining had to redirect their work.
Trade suffered under the new organization.
Mystique cities throughout the territory had to sustain themselves, rather than exchange goods as we used to.
All efforts were now internal, leaving us without even the minor clans to deal with.
Before, any given meal was rare game and rich produce from the Wild Plains, foreign seasonings brought from the eastern lands of the Seawatchers Clan and presented to my father in exchange for dealings with the Mystique Warriors.
Sure, we still had more than most due to our last name. My father’s bloodline and rank as the Revered Warrior’s Second afforded us a more comfortable life than most after the war, but it was little in comparison to the old days.
Our home, once overflowing with an abundance of rich foods, luxury goods, and well-compensated staff, was now reduced to the bare necessities for survival. Expensive paintings that once adorned the walls had been sold, leaving the grand dining room an echo of what used to be.
Only one long table with a dull green tablecloth occupied the space below the mystlight chandelier. I sat at it now, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows to my left that framed the soft pink sky of a setting sun. At least we still had beauty amid this dreary world.
The built-in bookshelves to my right were emptier each time I entered the room, the belongings sold piece by piece to provide for the Mystique Warriors and Palermanians.
I did not understand why, two years later, artwork, statues, artifacts, and books were still required to be exchanged for food and clothing to keep others alive.
The dining room had two entrances: one into the foyer of our home, and one swinging door into the kitchen. Illia, our lone remaining housemaid, was the only one to enter through the latter now. What used to be a room fit for divine feasts had been stripped to its bones.
My mother kept the house running with the help of Illia and my sister, but the difference was stark.
Our lives were dimmer, like a layer of decay had settled over our home, city, and people.
Each day, it ate away at us more and more.
The war had ended, the Curse was lifted, we worked to restore our land, but still Mystique Warriors suffered.
They lost loved ones—a feeling I knew too well—and without them, it was hard to move forward.
My stomach twisted with guilt at the thought of those suffering. I set my utensils down, unsure I could continue to palate the dull food, though my sister ate as voraciously as she always had.
“I was wondering today, Father,” Jezebel began, spearing a roasted carrot on her fork. The conversation had been a distant buzz in my mind, but the mischief coating her tone caught my attention. “We haven’t discussed the progress of the Curse in some time.” She popped the carrot into her mouth.
“That’s not a question, dear,” my father responded, cutting himself another generous slice of dry bird.
Jezebel’s brows rose. “I have many questions.” She tore a piece of bread.
“Don’t get her started,” I mumbled, my chin lowered and eyes glued to the muted blue fabric of my skirts as my fingers fiddled with the lace cuff at my elbow.
I hated the color—too soft. I hated the lace—too dainty.
I hated the way the binding ran up my back and framed my torso, the skirts wrapping around me—too restrictive.
My mother shot me a glare, but my comment went otherwise unacknowledged.
“Curiosity is a gift, Jezebel. What would you like to know?” my father encouraged.
I gaped at him, unable to believe he was indulging her when I had spent the past two years searching for answers and being told it was a hopeless cause. The light in Jezebel’s eyes only infuriated me further.
“Where did it come from?” she asked innocently, though I knew she knew this already. Everyone knew it. What was she playing at?
“The Curse was placed on the Mystique Warriors during the war, my dear. The leader of the Engrossian Warriors, Queen Kakias, recruited a sorcia from the Northern Isles for this purpose.” My father spoke with patience, but I could feel the wonder bustling beneath his skin.
Clearly, he also suspected a deeper meaning behind Jezebel’s questions.
I clenched my fingers in my lap, tearing my skirts slightly at the mention of the Engrossians, the guards of the pools of dark magic in the Engrossian valleys to the far southwest. As the only other major clan, their jealousy of our mountains was the root of all my misery.
Their wicked queen’s vendetta against us was the reason the Undertaking was suspended.
Of all the clans, the Engrossians were the only ones who referred to their leaders with the regency titles. It reflected their inability to accept shared power—a trial we felt the repercussions of in the war.
Our groups protected the two largest sources of magic on Gallantia—truthfully, in all of Ambrisk—but ours was stronger, winding through the land like a living being. While dark magic was manipulative, there were goals only our power could achieve.
Envy and suspicion had positioned us as enemies for centuries leading up to the war, when their queen sought to wrench the mountains from our grasp. Though a truce had been reached, I often felt as though we were waiting for the day she would strike again.
Jezebel nodded, pursing her lips in mock consideration of our father’s words. This conversation was clearly progressing as she planned. “How did the Curse manifest itself?”
“Jezebel, what—” my mother began, but paused when my father held up a hand, intrigued by his younger daughter’s game.
“It started with the darkening of the veins, the paling of the skin, and the redness of the pupils, until all sense was lost. It drove one mad, bloodthirsty, turning them into a threat to everyone around them—even those they cherished the most. If it had continued, it would have meant the extinction of our people.”
“And how—”
“Was it passed?” He anticipated her next question.
When Jezebel nodded, my father’s lips pulled into a tight line, his face grim.
“It targeted our people at our most imperative source. The place where our power lives. Our blood. If one was plagued, it was a guarantee that anyone who shared their blood would be, too, starting with the eldest. It was also contagious, should you come in contact with the blood of a Cursed victim.”
All four of us examined our own veins, silently thinking the same, unanswered question. How did we, one of the most powerful bloodlines in Mystique history, escape unscathed?
The question hung in the air, a taut string of guilt stretching between my family.
After a moment, my father cleared his throat. “Was that all, Jezebel?”
I knew it wasn’t. I knew my sister better than anyone, and I felt that she was building to strike.
Jezebel viewed the world as a series of opportunities.
Just as when we trained, her common tactic was distraction.
She led her opponent down one path, sensed when her chance was strongest, and attacked where they were blind.
Who was her opponent now, though?
My sister brushed her cropped blonde hair behind one ear and straightened her shoulders. This was it, the moment she would hit her unnamed target. I glanced at my father. The crease between his brows deepened.
“What changed? What caused the treaty ending the war and lifting the Curse? Why has no one been struck in two years”—the tattoo on my arm heated—“since Malakai disappeared?”
Breath cascaded from my lungs at a dizzying speed. No one in my family dared speak Malakai’s name around me, but my sister was a ruthless fighter, and for a reason still unclear to me, I realized I was her opponent.
The bindings on my dress felt too tight. I struggled to catch my breath. I couldn’t think, couldn’t understand. It was as if the blood in my veins stilled then heated, igniting every ounce of rage I had built up over the past two years.
I pushed back from the table. “You’re cruel,” I hissed, leaving before she could respond.
The gentle noises of our family’s horses calmed me, though each inhale felt like it would burst my lungs. I timed my breaths to my mare’s.
Brushing my hand down Sapphire’s nose, I brought my head to rest against her cool coat and inhaled deeply. She was one of the few that didn’t set me on edge these days. I always had a sense that during these past two years she understood me better than most people did.
As a warrior horse blessed by Lynxenon, the God of Mythical Beings, she would live over a century and be my support throughout that time. I didn’t want to think about the years after, when my extended lifetime would allow me to live for centuries after her. Another thing I was destined to lose.
White moonlight reflected on her pristine, snow-like coat.
I stared into her turquoise eyes and wound my hand into her deep blue mane—the feature that was her namesake.
She exhaled gently against my cheek, as if to say she read my ricocheting thoughts and held all the same questions but was here for me.
“I don’t know, girl,” I whispered. “I don’t know where he is, but I know he’ll come back.” My voice cracked over the end of my sentence as I remembered Malakai’s words on the night we received the Bind, mere weeks before he left: My North Star, so that we may always come back to each other.
But why hadn’t he?
Soft footsteps punctured the stillness, crunching over layers of hay, and I prayed it wasn’t my sister. I wasn’t ready to dissect her strategy.
Thankfully, it was my father’s strong hand that snaked across my shoulders and tucked me into his side. I fought every instinct to push him away.
“That was callous,” I said coldly when he finally released me. I picked up Sapphire’s brush to busy myself and kept my eyes on the soft silver specks that glowed in her coat, smoothing them with each brushstroke.
“Your sister will apologize,” he assured me, braiding Sapphire’s mane with his nimble fingers as he had regularly since he brought her home to me.
“But she is right. Though her methods may be harsh, she only hopes to push you toward acceptance. She loves you, and she does not wish to see you suffer, Ophelia.”
I stilled at the sound of my full first name from my father instead of the nickname he usually opted for: Sorrida, a word in a tongue I didn’t know, which he claimed roughly translated to smile. For the smile your birth brought to my face, he always said, though now it felt so misplaced.
“She is wrong. You are all wrong.” The bite in my words was clear—I had no use for their doubt.
My father turned to me but kept braiding. “You are living in the past. We must move forward.” This wasn’t the first time he had given me this speech, but it had become more frequent as of late.
I couldn’t bear to speak of Malakai at this moment, not with the flaring heat still surrounding my Bind. “The Undertaking,” I whispered, choosing a safer subject. A pain that still ripped through my body when it was taken from me, but one my father understood as a warrior.
His voice was softer when he spoke. “What about it, dear?”
“It’s all I ever wanted. All I ever saw for my future.” I closed my eyes, seeing the life I would now never have, with Malakai as Revered and me as his Second.
“Now you will find a new vision.”
“I was born to be a legendary Mystique Warrior. Without that chance, I have no purpose. I feel useless, aimless.” Broken, I didn’t add aloud.
“That’s why I do it. That’s why I cannot give up hope that our people will be restored.
” My hands froze on the brush. I took a determined breath to collect myself.
“That all of our people will be restored,” I added. And he understood. Malakai.
He sighed, and I could tell by the dramatic rise and fall of his shoulders that his next words would be heavy.
“Sorrida”—there it was—“our people were born of the Angels. The First Revered Mystique Warrior, Damien, ascended as an Angel himself, as did the prime leaders of the other six clans. No matter what fate has befallen us, we are still Damien’s faithful servants and he our guide.
We are still protected by the Spirits of past Mystique Warriors.
We are still us, regardless of it all. Sometimes, change is okay. ”
“We didn’t change. We were obliterated.” I tossed the brush aside, my fingers growing twitchy, and moved to the wall where a number of tools were hung.
I removed a length of rope and knotted it, untying and retying different styles as I waited for him to speak.
The quick actions of my fingers and required focus steadied my breathing.
“It was a check on the balance of power. Just because we are no longer the premiere clan doesn’t mean we are any less significant.
You still have a role to play in the world.
” He spoke with such tenderness that I knew he believed the words, even if I didn’t.
The balance of power was what magic demanded, a justification for the order of the world.
But I would never understand why something we defended would require our downfall.
“My purpose feels squandered now,” I admitted, squaring my shoulders. “But I will make it right.”
“Your faith is inspiring, Ophelia. It truly is. But there is a point when blind faith becomes reckless. That time has come and gone.” I knew he meant it to be soothing, but it had the opposite effect.
“I must complete the Undertaking.” I threw the rope aside and whirled on my father.
“You know that you cannot,” he reminded me, keeping infuriatingly calm. “All Undertakings were suspended after—” I flinched, and he paused, reconsidering his approach. “Our people had grown too weak. We couldn’t risk any more loss of life.”
“But why?” I demanded. “It is senseless to cease the training of warriors when war is always a threat.”
“The Revered made the decision, Ophelia.” He crossed his arms, the motion sharp after over a century of training with swords and spears.
When he spoke again, his tone left no room for argument.
It was the voice of the Second, born of a different form of training.
“You will not be completing the Undertaking now or in the future.”
Though my father’s eyes heated, I did not back down. He may no longer see a future for me as a warrior, but I could see nothing else.
“I was not made for skirts, Father. I was made for swords.”