Arthur
“She is settled, then?”
Piff nodded in irritating jubilance. “Indeed! And she said the colors of the room were very agreeable!” He meddled with the pillows along the headboard of my bed, folding back the blankets he’d just worked so hard to tidy.
“Those dresses will never do, never ever do,” he muttered under his breath.
“I’ll need to send an order into Riche for darker fabric.
Black and perhaps something evergreen, or a deep mulberry wine—”
“Piff,” I interrupted, sipping on my fourth glass of yagsmead for the evening. “Reshina cannot break the curse in the way you’re hoping she can. I’m sorry to inform you, old friend, but I will be leaving you soon.”
“Oh, Master!” he laughed, shaking his head and patting at the sheets. “Your threats don’t fool me. You’ve been at the yagsmead again, and—”
“You don’t understand,” I rumbled, falling forward with my head in my hands. “Reshina is the Cursed Goddess of the Veil. She is cursed to never love another.”
“Reshina?” he gasped, picking up her book at my bedside table. “Reshina is…”
“Yes. That book was originally penned by her. To tell her story.”
“So you mean—”
“Yes.”
“And she can't—"
“She cannot.”
“So that means you—”
“Killing me is her only way out of this curse, and it’s been a long time coming.” I lifted my glass in salute. “It’s been a good run, Piff.”
“No!” he cried.
“It’s how she can leave this mess.”
“But! What is her counter curse? What if you break her curse and then she can break yours!”
I shook my head, sipping the last of my drink. “She’s never revealed how to break her own curse. It’s been over five hundred years. You’d think she’d have broken it by now if it was easy to do.”
He drew nearer, fumbling his hands at his chest. He approached my chair by the fireplace with caution. “Mistress comes looking to speak to Ishtak. Maybe if we made some precautions—”
“I’m not letting her go down the western corridor. Have you forgotten what it was like when I dragged you out of there with me?”
His shoulders shuddered and he pursed his lips. “I remember it, Master. My dreams are filled with those vile things. But if Ishtak can provide some other way to—”
“If I believed she could, I would have trekked down that Goddess-forsaken tunnel as many times as necessary by now.” I rose and poured another glass, tipping in the last few drops. Shaking the bottle, I quirked a brow.
“I have more in the pantry, sire. Shall I retrieve another bottle for the night?”
I gulped down the rest. “Make it two. I’d like to offer one to our guest. She’ll need it for what I have to tell her.”
“Perhaps you could get to know her first? Before you give up and tell her to drive a knife through your heart?”
“I do know her, Piff.” I sunk onto my bed, picking up the book. “I’ve known her story for years.”
“That’s not the same thing, sire. You know of her origins, her story as Goddess, but you do not know her now—here—as flesh and blood not far from where you sit on that bed.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. She could never love me and she never will.”