A Curse of Love (The Shadowborne Trilogy #1)

1. Chapter 1

“I’m breaking up with you, Shay.” Eric’s betrayal lingers in the stale bakery air like a spoonful of unexpected cinnamon, causing me to sneeze so violently my entire body shakes.

Delightful, Shadow. Wouldn’t want to overreact or anything.

As I scrounge up a tissue from my leather bag, Eric’s chartreuse eyes drink me in, making me feel like I’m a carafe of wine squeezed straight from his father’s ostentatious vineyard.

He certainly doesn’t appear like he wants to break up with me.

In fact, his gaze is like a slick oil brush, sliding all over my skin.

I used to bask in those affections like they were serrated rays of the sun, allowing them to wrap me in tendrils of warmth until I was brimming with light.

In essence, Eric had been my oxygen, my lifeline. Until today, apparently.

“Shay, are you alright?” Eric asks with a gentle tilt of his head. After I fail to respond, he reaches over the wobbly table and entwines his fingers in mine. It doesn’t elude me that for someone who’s apparently dumping me, his grip is oppressively tight.

“Shay?” he asks again. This time his voice is someplace far away, like it's taken flight over a listless sea. “Are you even listening?” My world blurs. My eyes burn. Eric’s mop of sun-kissed hair and the freckles that dust his face begin to fade from my vision.

“I’m fine.” God’s teeth, I really wish my ears would stop ringing.

I pull my hands from his sweaty grasp and wriggle my fingers around in an effort to coax the blood to return.

“I must’ve misunderstood you,” I manage to choke out.

“Because I could’ve sworn you said that you’re breaking up with me. Which doesn’t make any sense…”

Eric leans over the table, trusting the wobbly chunk of splintered oak far more than it deserves.

His mouth falls open, but then he falters, catching his bottom lip with his teeth.

The crinkles around his eyes begin to soften, as if he's tilling up a distant memory.

Perhaps one of my personal favorites: the time we picnicked beneath the stars in the Shadowglade Forest and a group of sprites came to steal our cheese.

He chased them off with a wayward branch and then we laughed our asses off until the sun set.

That moment had almost tricked me into thinking we were star-crossed lovers.

But the truth is, we were far from that.

A flicker of darkness stirs Eric back to reality. “I’m breaking up with you. I have no other choice,” he says.

“I don’t understand. You seemed fine this morning.

” As I murmur the words, I catch a glimpse of my raven-colored hair in the reflection of my empty silver plate, which spills down my back in tangled curls—gorgeous hair that I can only assume I inherited from my mother, had I ever known her.

Which brings me back to why I can’t lose Eric.

Without him, I’m alone on this very vast continent, and being alone is a very dangerous place to be.

Especially considering my predicament. Why does it feel like my throat is suddenly closing?

Eric digs around in his leather satchel.

With a flourish, he produces a crisp piece of pale parchment that boasts a golden wax seal in the shape of two halves of the same heart.

It’s a letter signed and sealed by the queen of Aurora herself, the Goddess of Love.

“Have you seen this?” my painstakingly beautiful, green-eyed, ex-boyfriend asks.

“Of course I’ve seen it.” Lies. I have no idea what that piece of parchment says, but my pride is too wounded to admit it.

This really is all my fault. Riding on the undertow of Eric’s love, I’d been numbing the pain with glasses of expensive champagne and wearing gowns of silk that surely belong on someone else’s body, someone much more worthy. It turns out I truly deserve this fate.

“Then you must understand why I have no choice,” Eric says, his eyes meeting mine in a dance of trepidation as he smooths out the creases in the parchment, looking as though he wishes to jump onto the page to relieve himself of this situation.

“Since the Goddess of Love has decreed everyone over the age of eighteen must be married by the end of this week, it seems that I am required to take up a wife…” His voice hitches up a notch, like he’s been kicked square between the legs.

“And my father has forbidden me from marrying you.”

His words are so weighted, so heavy, they make the rich, velvety cupcakes on the bakery’s glass caddy look light in comparison.

Of course he’s marrying someone else. A marriage to me would be completely asinine.

A woman with no magic, no inheritance, no family, nothing to contribute but a snarky personality and a sprinkle of insanity, marrying their only son?

Such would be blasphemy. In fact, now that I consider it, I’m shocked our relationship has even lasted this long.

“Wait.” I really mustn’t have been paying close enough attention.

“The Goddess of Love has decreed what?” I snag the piece of parchment from his grasp, the one with my fate sealed across it in pretty looping cursive.

After I read it, I rip it to shreds. But even after it’s destroyed, the words sear into my memory.

A letter from Her Majesty, the Goddess of Love:

Attention miscreants and heathens, including those who irritate me greatly, and the rare few who are in my good graces.

On this day, I have decreed all mortals over the age of eighteen must unite in holy matrimony by week’s end.

Those who fail to heed my divine mandate will be charged with treason and shall lose their heads.

May the love and good fortune I have imbued in this realm guide your fickle hearts, now and forevermore. Happy wedding!

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” Eric stares unblinking at my pile of homemade confetti as a muscle in his carved jaw twitches.

“The word of the queen is law, and that law is not to be scorned upon or ripped apart. There are thousands of people rotting behind prison bars for far less than what you’ve just done.

” As his voice dwindles down to a whisper, I scan the bakery to ensure no one is eavesdropping on our conversation.

We’re entirely alone, bar the table of older ladies tucked in the room’s corner, giggling over the contents of a book that looks to die for, if the illustration of the couple entangled in a kiss on the front cover is any indication.

They share a peach cobbler amongst themselves and tilt their heads back with carefree laughter, coaxing a trickle of envy to the forefront of my heart.

I would sacrifice Eric in exchange for some friends, without question.

“As if I have anything left to live for,” I remark, feeling as though droves of salt are being used to douse the gaping wounds of my heart.

“To be quite frank, I wish the gods would have remained in the skies where they belong.” My words are treason.

I know it, and Eric knows it too, which is why he tucks his clammy hands into his lap to keep them from clamping over my mouth.

But instead of apologizing for putting his life in danger with my tongue, I snatch the forgotten scone from his plate and wolf down a bite before he can protest. “I must admit that I’m surprised,” I grind out between bites.

“I never envisioned that you’d dump me onto the streets like a good-for-nothing whore… ”

He stares at me in stark silence, seemingly blindsided by my sudden abrasiveness. Although I can hardly understand why. He should be used to this by now. “I loved you, Shay. I still love you…” he says.

I lick my fingers clean as I bask in the newly hewn apathetic hollowness of my heart.

“Love doesn’t change the fact that you’ll leave this bakery with your head held high, your magic in tow, your wealth pocketed, and your status unscathed.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave here empty-handed.

” And poor. As I take another bite of Eric’s cream-filled delectable treat, I watch the tears dribble down his cheeks.

Satisfying.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. My father has already ordered the servants to remove your belongings from the estate,” he says. His eyes glisten like wet orbs, which is kind of sweet. But tears aren’t going to save me from a life of circumstantial poverty.

“Of course he has.” I release a hollow laugh from the dregs of my throat, then stuff the rest of the scone into my mouth.

“You’ve never had the gall to disobey his authority.

” I wipe my messy mouth with the back of my sleeve, then heave a sigh and embrace my new reality. Which looks quite grim, in all honesty.

“Shay, don’t be like this. My father is just doing what he believes is best for me.

” Eric sits up a little straighter in his seat.

“If it’s any consolation, know that I’ll think of you daily.

The thought of missing you is already making my heart sink.

I detest the idea of marrying someone else, but Father is rather confident that my betrothal will please the gods greatly.

Apparently, she is a Flavorsmith.” As his last words ring out across the table, it feels like I’ve been gobsmacked in the face.

A Flavorsmith, of all things. A person who manipulates food to literal…

fucking… perfection. A person with the spellmark of a spoon, a little golden tattoo etched onto their wrist that allows them the ability to use magic, just like everyone else in this godforsaken place. Everyone aside from me.

Eric slumps his shoulders forward like he’s offloading the weight of all my secrets onto the floor. And considering how I’d wrapped my tentacles around his heart and gripped on like a leech, doing everything in my power to entice him to fall in love with me, he must be feeling quite relieved.