Chapter 8 The Crestwood Curse
The Crestwood Curse
Okay, maybe I’d had a lot more to drink than I’d realized. Because I could have sworn Octavian had just said they were cursed.
“This isn’t funny,” I told them. “In fact, all of you are sick. Whatever sort of twisted, rich-people game this is, I don’t want any part of it.”
“We can assure you, this is no game,” Octavian said.
“What does your gut tell you?” Radven asked.
It was hard to hear my body say anything through the shiver. But that in and of itself was proof that there was something unnatural going on here.
“My gut is telling me I need another drink,” I said, twisting around to see if I could easily reach that glass of Scotch I’d left on the table.
That’s when I realized Alastor had come up behind me, effectively pinning me in the middle of all three brothers.
“Uh…do you mind if we sit?” I said. “Or do the three of you plan on interrogating me like a prisoner? I thought you were supposed to be answering my questions.” Esmer probably would have encouraged me to do a little prisoner roleplaying with the sexy billionaires, but that could wait for later.
Alastor looked like he had no intention of budging, but Octavian said, “Of course we can sit.”
That drew a frown from Alastor, who was probably just bitter that I was insisting on a seat after refusing his commands only moments ago. But he stepped out of the way, though his continued scowl made it clear he was not happy about it.
And I took my place at the table once more and pulled the tray of cheese back in front of me for good measure.
I felt like I deserved some fancy cheese after everything they’d put me through, and I was still secretly hoping that the shivery-ness running through my entire body was low blood sugar or something.
Alastor took his old seat across from me. And his brothers sat down on either side of him—Radven to the left, Octavian to the right.
They also took off their masks.
I didn’t want to stare, but I was too fascinated by these brothers to fight the urge. I compromised by not letting myself look at either for too long, instead glancing back and forth between them until I got the full picture.
Octavian was, as I’d guessed, absolutely breathtaking.
He had one of those jaws that looked like it could cut glass, which was covered with a finely groomed layer of stubble that was one shade darker than his relatively short, sandy hair.
His azure eyes were even more vibrant when his face wasn’t hidden behind a mask, and he somehow seemed even bigger and broader now, too.
If Alastor was intimidating and Radven was dangerous, the one word I would have used for Octavian was majestic.
He was big and imposing, but in a mesmerizing way.
And then there was Radven. He was intriguing as well—beautiful, even—but in a way that gave me the distinct impression that he would absolutely murder me if he thought I was a threat to something he cared about.
His face was narrower than I’d expected, his features angular and refined, and when he was still, he almost looked like a work of art.
When he moved, though, even a little bit, it was with that same primal, predator-like grace that I’d noticed before.
He was like a sleek but deadly panther, cruelly beautiful.
He leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the table in what should have been a casual pose, but his dark green eyes watched me sharply, following every move I made.
His hair, like Alastor’s, was nearly black, but Radven’s was straight and tied back, and a stark contrast to his pale skin.
My eyes flicked back to Alastor in the middle.
In fact, the dark hair that Alastor and Radven shared was the only similar trait I noticed among the three brothers.
Radven was pale, while Alastor’s complexion was a golden brown, and Octavian’s skin was olive.
And their eyes—forest green, nearly black, and azure blue—should not have been genetically possible in brothers who shared the same two parents.
They were all striking, but in completely different ways, and none of their primary physical features showed any familial resemblance.
“You guys aren’t actually brothers,” I blurted in my shock. I quickly realized how rude that was, so I added, “I mean, not by blood. Obviously there are other ways to be brothers. Family comes in all shapes and sizes these days. Nothing wrong with that at all. I’m just…surprised.”
It was Octavian who said, with much patience and a quick glance at the other two, “Yes, brotherhood comes in many forms.” He turned his eyes to me once more, his mouth sliding into one of his charming smiles. “But that’s not your most pressing question, is it?”
“No,” I admitted sheepishly around the big hunk of cheese I’d just shoved in my mouth.
Sometimes the only way to keep myself from babbling was to stuff my face with food.
“You were going to tell me about this curse.” It still felt really silly to use the word curse as if I were talking about a real, serious thing.
But the brothers—if that was in fact what they were—were obviously taking this quite seriously, and Alastor had shifted from brooding into visibly angry.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, his hands curling into fists on the table. “She’s obviously not the right one.”
“Trust me, Brother,” Octavian replied in that deep rumble, his eyes never leaving me. “I can feel it.”
“As can I,” Radven added, propping his hands behind his head and still watching me like a cat watching a mouse. “I’m itchy with it.”
Itchy was a pretty good way to describe the weird shiver on my skin. “Wait—you guys can feel that too?”
Radven gave a single nod, and Octavian said, “Yes, though probably not to the same extent as you.” He looked down at his big hand, flexing his fingers and tilting his palm this way and that as if watching something invisible run across his skin.
“It’s the essence of our world. Everything is made of essence, but certain things have more.
And certain people can feel it and manipulate it.
” His blue eyes met mine again. “Here, you would probably call it magic.”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. But I’d had a lot of alcohol and not a lot of food and this was all feeling a little…absurd. Even for a bunch of delusional rich guys.
Alastor’s fists tightened. And his jaw went rigid with repressed anger, as if he was offended I wasn’t taking this seriously despite his own claims that I wasn’t “the one” or whatever.
“But this has to be a joke,” I protested, lightly scratching my arms against the shivery itch. “You guys are talking about magic and curses as if they’re real. I’ve had a lot to drink, but not that much.”
“As I told you before, this is quite real,” Octavian replied in his deep timbre. “But I understand that this is a lot to take in.” He glanced at his brothers again before proceeding. “But you’ve just admitted that you can feel it—the essence.”
“I can feel…something,” I admitted, rubbing my arms again.
“But I thought it was just nerves. Or the alcohol. Or low blood sugar. Or…” The result of being a sexually frustrated twenty-three-year-old.
Or a million other things, really. A terrible thought occurred to me.
“Oh my god, you guys didn’t drug me or something, did you?
” I glanced at the glass of Scotch, then thought of the goblets of Nectar I’d had upstairs.
“If you’ve fed me some sort of weird designer hallucinogens or—”
“You’ve consumed no dangerous substances,” Octavian assured me. “Not by our hand, anyway.”
“Then Nectar was…?”
“Initially from our world, yes. But no different than the alcohol you have here. Except you, perhaps, may have felt its connection to our world.”
I was trying to process all of this. “When you say your world, you mean…?”
“The world where we come from,” Octavian said. “Our homeland.”
There—the emptiness was back in his eyes, only for an instant, when he mentioned homeland. But then it disappeared as quickly as it ever did.
I had so many questions I wasn’t even sure where to begin. “So this other world you say you’re from—”
“Therador,” Alastor growled. “It’s called Therador.”
“Therador,” I repeated, still not convinced this wasn’t an elaborate joke at my expense. “Where is this place? If it’s another world, then how did you get here?”
“The curse,” Octavian explained. “We were sent here—and trapped here—by a curse. I cannot tell you were Therador is, at least not in relation to this world, but they are obviously linked somehow.”
“At first we assumed this was some sort of illusory plane,” Radven added.
“A temporary dreamworld created by the curse itself. I even thought we might be dead, but further investigation suggested that was unlikely.” As if to prove his point, he produced a knife out of nowhere and slashed the tip of his finger, the blade moving so quickly it was gone again—probably up his sleeve—before his blood even began to well.
“We’re still alive. And this place, wherever it is, has few traces of the essence of our homeland, which means it couldn’t have been created by the curse itself. ”
“This world is larger and more complex than our own,” Octavian said. “And essence is…different here. We can’t feel the essence of this world, if it exists at all. And though we can feel the remnants of our own, we can’t manipulate it.”
In the time they’d been talking, I’d shoved half of the remaining cheese in my mouth. Unfortunately, contrary to what my subconscious apparently believed, a stomach full of cheese wasn’t helping me understand this any better.
“So are you guys saying you’re like, aliens? Or more like wizards?”
The corners of Octavian’s mouth deepened.
“Our world is similar to what’s depicted in many of the stories you call ‘fantasy’,” he said.
“In fact, our research into those stories has led us to believe that this isn’t the first time people have traveled between our worlds.
” He gestured to the bookshelf just behind me, and when I twisted around to get a better look I realized it was stuffed full of famous fantasy novels, including Thrones and Kings and several more of my favorites.
“So you’re suggesting those stories are real,” I said, wanting to believe in spite of myself. “That magic and unicorns and all of that stuff actually exists. And you think the authors of these books actually traveled to your world? How can—”
Alastor’s fist slammed down on the table. “We’re wasting time. If you’re convinced this girl can help us, then just tell her what we need her to do and be done with it.”
“Yes,” Radven agreed, finally swinging his feet down to the floor and leaning forward in his seat. “There’s no reason to drag it out, Oak. Either she’s willing to help us or she isn’t.” The way his green eyes sharpened on me, though, suggested I had less of a choice than he’d suggested.
Octavian sighed, and there was an apology in his eyes as he addressed me again.
“We need you to help us get back home,” he told me.
“That’s the part I don’t understand,” I said.
Okay, it was actually one of many parts I didn’t understand, but sort of the Big One.
“How exactly can I help you? You’re the ones from the magical world.
I’m just a normal girl.” And not just a normal girl—a normal girl who had no life, spent as much time talking to succulents as to people, and whose greatest superpower was getting a bunch of internet people to read her mediocre fanfiction.
“Alastor has a theory,” Octavian said. “That if people have traveled here from our world before, they might have descendants who possess the essence of both worlds—people who are of this world but can touch Therador as well. We can’t open the connection between our worlds from this side.
It has to be someone from this world—but someone who can connect to our world’s essence.
Someone like that might be able to create a bridge between the two. ”
“What are you saying?” I was pretty sure I already knew, but I wanted him to spell it out for me.
“You are from this world,” Octavian said, “but you can feel the essence of ours. You respond to it.”
“But I’m not magical,” I protested. “I’m not a wizard or whatever. I don’t know anything about curses or other worlds. And as far as I know, all of my relatives are normal.”
“But you can feel it.” Octavian reached across the table and took my hand, his big, warm fingers enclosing mine.
Immediately a fresh, shivery shockwave shot up my arm, then tingled its way up the back of my scalp.
“That means something, doesn’t it?” His eyes caught mine, and I suddenly remembered how close we’d been only an hour ago, how I’d allowed this man to hold me against his body and even kiss me when he was still a stranger.
He had that same warmth in his expression now, but also an undeniable hope, like I was the answer to everything he’d ever been looking for.
My heart fluttered. I couldn’t put it into words, but something about this man made me want to trust him, to lean in, to offer him anything he wanted so he would keep looking at me like that.
“So what do you say?” His rumble of a voice was gentle, intimate, like a river tempting me into its deep waters. “Will you help us?”