Cursed Nevermore (Shadows and Curses #2)

Chapter 1

Elariya

“The Chain You Cannot See”

The sun sank toward the horizon, bleeding burnt orange across the garden in ribbons of fire.

There was always something special about sunset, when day surrendered to night and the world held its breath in the space between. It was a moment suspended. A moment meant for reflection.

And I had far too much to reflect on.

From the stone bench where I sat beneath the old hawthorn, I could see the mouth of Griffin Forest gaping beyond the garden’s edge.

Past the stables where the horses ate in quiet contentment, the forest stared back at me. As if it were beckoning me inside.

It was ridiculous, the thought that a forest in the mortal lands could call to anyone.

And yet…

Something stirred within me when I looked at it. It wasn’t fear or curiosity. It was something deeper.

A persistent tug low in my heart, steady as a second beat.

A pull I couldn’t explain.

Maybe it was because Griffin Forest held the last thing I could remember with perfect clarity.

The day my father vanished.

The day my world cracked open.

The day I was cursed and time stopped moving forward for me.

I watched my father disappear within a swirling vortex—an impossible rift that devoured him whole.

And in the wake of it, that same darkness shoved me into a memory loop.

Every new moon, my mind reset, wiping itself clean. I started all over again.

Like my mind was being punished for trying to hold on.

It had been that way for the last five years.

To survive it, I relied on my monthly journals, my grandmother’s notes, and whatever my family chose to tell me.

It was no way to live. A world constructed from reports and hearsay.

I had no memories past the age of fifteen. The world changed, time passed, people moved on, but my mind was stuck. Stuck on that day, that moment, that hour when I lost my father.

To break the curse, I had to find him. Easier said than done.

How do you find a man when you have no idea where to start looking?

And what more could anyone do when everyone had tried everything to find him and failed?

Besides, telling people a swirling vortex took him wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you could go around blurting in the mortal lands, where magic was forbidden, frowned upon, and breathing a word of it could get you killed.

Now I was running out of time again.

Three days had passed since my last reset, and I was told the last loop had been different from any other.

Because I was sick.

Grandmother said I tried to cast a spell to find my father, and it backfired, sending me into a coma for the entire month. Thirty days gone. Thirty days laid up in bed until the reset ripped me back to the surface.

At least… that’s what I was told.

Like everything else, I was supposed to take it as truth.

I’d never had a reason to doubt my grandmother or my family, but something felt wrong.

Something besides the obvious.

I was home, but I felt displaced. Like I didn’t belong here.

There was a wrongness in my body that stretched my lungs and gripped at the edges of my soul. And then… there was this.

I glanced down at the black sigil inked on the underside of my wrist. It was a soul rune with a band inked around it. At the ends, the loop spread into wings—dragon’s wings.

A mark of the spell, Grandmother had said. She said I’d played with serious dark magic. A spell I’d found in her grimoire.

All week, she’d been telling me I should thank the Blessed Mother I was alive, and that my mage blood had countered the effects of magic I shouldn’t even know about.

She made the mark sound like some kind of punishment from the ancient gods, but…

It didn’t feel like it. I swore that sometimes, when I stared at it long enough, it pulsed beneath my skin, and the same strange stirring I’d felt from the forest tugged at my insides. As if something was calling to me.

And there was more.

My magic felt different. Stronger.

Sure, everything would feel different after five years of resets, but there was a strength in my magic that surprised me. It felt like I must have been practicing. A lot.

Casting a spell to find my father sounded exactly like something I’d do, but I couldn’t imagine practicing magic and putting my family at risk.

Yet I felt it—raw mage magic from the Fray humming beneath my skin, so strong I was sure I could command the trees and they’d listen.

After a month in bed, I expected weakness. Not this power.

Gravel shifted behind me.

I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. The air changed whenever Thayden entered a space. Like the world made room for him.

“There you are.” Thayden’s deep voice settled on my shoulders, his tone careful, as if he’d been worried. “I’ve been looking for you.”

The sound of his voice shouldn’t have made my skin crawl. But it did.

His arrival was a reminder that I had bigger problems than my memories and feelings of displacement to worry about.

We were getting married in two weeks.

Him and me.

Blessed Mother, of all the terrible things to happen to me, that was one of them.

I turned to face him and forced a smile, the best attempt at pleasantries I could muster.

Thayden Fairstrom strode up to me wearing the same arrogant grin I remembered seeing on his face years ago when he had a man whipped for stealing bread to feed his children.

That happened just before Father disappeared. It was one of a host of unsettling memories I had of my betrothed.

His shoulder-length golden hair swished in the wind as he stopped beside the bench and glanced down at my journal. I’d been reading it earlier. It was the most recent one.

Thayden and his father were the only two people outside of my immediate family who knew about my curse.

I wished they didn’t, but it would have been difficult to hide because of their closeness to my family. His father was my father’s best friend, and I grew up with Thayden.

Their family took care of us in the rough times, so all I could be was grateful.

Thayden lived in Zyvaris but had been in Stormfell since I fell ill.

“Hi,” I said, trying to ignore the unease creeping through my nerves.

He lowered himself to sit next to me. When our knees brushed, a shiver of awareness raced through me. Not the giddy way you’d expect to feel around someone you love. The other kind. The kind that alerted every nerve with a warning.

“It’s late. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.” He held my gaze, his eyes searching mine as if he were trying to probe into my head and steal my secret thoughts about him.

“I just needed some air.” That wasn’t a lie. Being inside the house was suffocating with everyone watching me. Especially him and his men.

Apparently, he hardly left my side last month. He came here to Stormfell for our engagement celebrations and never returned to Zyvaris when I got sick.

The thought should have been endearing. He was a knight of high standing who was always off on some mission for King Varis. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was always doing something for one of the seven kingdoms of Nelkaraad.

I should be in awe at his obvious care for me, but I couldn’t get my heart to budge.

If anything, I found it more unnerving that he was at my bedside watching me sleep. Watching me in that vulnerable, helpless state.

“I don’t like you being out here by yourself.” He straightened slightly, as if the decision had already been made. “Your mother and Emabelle are inside planning the wedding, and your grandmother is making dinner. Why don’t you go inside and sit with them? You can still read your journal.”

“I’m done reading now, so I can head inside.” I gave him a stiff smile and nodded, deciding not to insist on staying out here, even though I wanted to.

“Learn anything interesting?” he asked, as if he hadn’t read everything for himself.

“Not so much. It seemed a little repetitive from the month before. I mostly helped my mother in the healers’ quarters with her patients.”

“Ahh, of course, you love that.”

“I do.” Bastard. I wished he wouldn’t put on the act. He’d know I’d hate the idea of him reading my private things.

Grandmother told me he read all my journals the moment I got sick. He’d insisted on it.

I would be more worried, but the crazy thing was, there was nothing untoward in any of my journals to worry about.

Nothing about my life. Nothing about my thoughts on people I interacted with. Nothing about Thayden that would have reflected my true thoughts.

Everything I wrote about him was bland and complacent. It was odd. One more thing that felt displaced. The journals didn’t feel like…like they were mine. Like I’d written them.

“I was thinking of taking you to the craft market next weekend.” He grinned, looking me over with expectancy. “I hear it’s going to be good.”

“I’d love that.” I did love anything like that, but I didn’t want to go with him.

“I’m trying.” He straightened but cocked his head. “I’m trying to make you feel better. Happier. I want to make the most of the little time you have left in Stormfell. I don’t want you to be too homesick.”

“That’s kind of you.”

His expression softened, and his eyes brightened. “You know I’ll do anything for you.”

I doubted that. But he wanted me to believe it. Believe it like the stories he’d told me about us being madly in love.

I was having a hard time getting my head around that one.

But I didn’t know if it was true or not.

And there was something more that troubled me.

I wasn’t a virgin. And there were no records of me losing my virginity in my journals.

In my earlier journals, I talked about wanting to be with someone I loved when I lost my virginity. Then it was like I’d just forgotten about it.

I only knew I wasn’t a virgin anymore because my mother did a virginity test on me when I woke from the reset. She claimed it was standard procedure because of my upcoming nuptials. When she discovered I wasn’t a virgin, she looked thrown.

I didn’t know what to say and only prayed I hadn’t lost it to Thayden.

He reached out and cupped my jaw. “I know you’re still getting used to me, but you will. You always come back to me.”

“Do I?” I genuinely wanted to know.

“Always. And no matter how many times your memory resets and you forget me, I’ll be here waiting to remind you how much I love you.”

Discomfort spread through my body like frost in the first kiss of winter. I found it hard to speak, but I tried, just to say something. “I appreciate you.”

“I know.” He nodded and smiled. “Come on, I’ll get you inside and comfortable by the fire.”

“Okay.”

Agree with everything.

Grandmother had warned against any form of defiance. Other things had changed during last month’s loop. King Varis was dying.

He’d fallen ill during an expedition beyond the eastern wards. Some said it was a blight carried on the wind. Whatever it was, it had left him weak and bedbound, his court restless and hungry for certainty.

And with him fading, so, too, was the protection he’d always afforded my family, especially in my father’s absence.

King Varis went above and beyond to protect us because Father was one of his closest friends. With him on the verge of death, his son, Maelor, was set to take over.

Maelor wasn’t like his father. He loathed the idea of anyone magical—like my family—having claim to any form of property in the mortal lands.

Thayden’s father, Mattieu, had stepped in as the interim hand of the king to steady the realm and oversee matters until the crown had passed.

That meant that once King Varis died, the people in power would be Maelor, Mattieu, and Thayden, the new commander of the King’s Guard.

That was why this marriage had to happen. If it didn’t, Maelor would see to it that we lost everything—our home, lands, and standing in Stormfell.

My father had been made Warden of the South. That title would dissolve with King Varis’ passing, along with everything else.

Thayden stood and held his hand to take mine.

I picked up my journal and gave him my hand, rising when he guided me to stand.

No matter what happened to me, my one constant was my family.

I would do anything for them.

Even marry a man I didn’t love.

We walked back toward the manor, but the forest still called to me. Willing me to go in.

But I kept walking pretending I felt nothing.