Chapter Nineteen #3
He sighed, his shoulders drooping as though a massive weight had slipped from them. “It wasn’t a lie, as you never directly asked me whether I could or could not die,” he argued, flopping into the chair beside her. “It was simply … an omission.”
“Your omission got people killed.” She tried to cross her arms, but it hurt too much, so she settled on glaring at him, instead. “If I had known you couldn’t die—”
“Oh, yes, clearly I’m to blame for your violent tendencies,” he snapped.
“You’ll have to forgive me, but three hundred years of telling people the truth has resulted in a lot of them trying to test exactly how immortal I am, and just because I can’t die doesn’t mean being run through with a javelin doesn’t hurt. ”
“Three hundred years?” she breathed, blinking.
His expression was unreadable. “Give or take.”
So that was why his brother’s coffin had been so far back in the crypt. It was difficult to wrap her mind around the concept. Immortal. He really was immortal.
“How?”
“Once upon a time, I used to be a … bit of a philanderer,” he said, his mouth twisting into a bitter smile. “I was a tourney knight, like I told you before. Unbeatable. The ladies at court practically threw themselves at me, and I was determined to conquer all of them.”
“Gross,” Lyssa said, wrinkling her nose, and Alderic grimaced.
“I know. But one of those ladies was not what she seemed. I bedded her and broke her heart, and she cursed me for it.”
“She cursed you with immortality?”
“I don’t know what, exactly, she cursed me with,” he said, his eyes distant.
“I always thought curses would be poetic, you know, like in the old tales. But it didn’t even rhyme, and half of it was in another language.
I’ve spent centuries figuring out the terms of the damned thing.
As far as I can tell, she cursed me to live until I love someone more than I love myself.
He or she must see me for what I really am, and love me back in equal measure despite it.
And because of what I am, the end result is an eternity of heartbreak—not only have I been rejected over and over again, I have had to watch the people I care about wither and die, while I remain the same.
I broke her heart, so she broke mine a thousand times and counting. ”
“What a bitch,” Lyssa said, because she didn’t know what else to say, and Alderic let out a strangled laugh.
“I very much deserved it,” he said. “I was … quite awful, back then.”
“Even if you were, the punishment seems a tad disproportionate to the crime, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “Besides, you aren’t awful now. In fact, I find it hard to believe that in three hundred years you haven’t found anyone who fits the curse’s description.”
“There were a few that I thought might break it,” he said quietly, his eyes going soft with memory.
“Babette Rochelle. Marie Perdue. William Aberdeen. But as much as I loved them and thought that they loved me in equal measure, there was always that moment when my true self came out, and their love never survived it. After a while, I stopped trying.” There was that bitter smile again, and it threatened to cleave Lyssa’s heart in two.
“Turns out, it is incredibly depressing to find out that you are completely unlovable and therefore utterly alone in the world.”
Her eyes dipped to the ragged scars on his wrists. “Is that why you tried to kill yourself? Because at Bellgaard, you said—”
“What I told you at Bellgaard was the truth,” he said firmly. “I tried to kill myself because of the Beast. But the curse would not allow it.”
She dragged her gaze back up to his face. “So … your brother…?” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Couldn’t stomach the idea that he might have lied to her about that.
Alderic’s face softened, as if he knew what she was thinking. “Yes, the Beast really did kill my brother. He was one of its first victims, actually.”
So, that was the reason she had never heard of a Desmond de Laurent. His death had happened so long ago that his name was lost along with every other record of the Beast’s origins. “Have you been trying to figure out how to kill it ever since?”
“Yes. For a long time, I thought it was a lost cause. The Beast posed a problem quite similar to my own—I couldn’t kill it any more than I could kill myself.
But then I saw that photograph of the Serpent of Ire in the paper, and read about the woman who managed to slay it, and I knew I had my solution. ”
She picked at a thread in the blanket covering her legs, those words gnawing at her. “Your solution,” she murmured. “You’re … you’re not going to ask me to kill you, after I kill it, are you?”
“No,” he said.
“Good,” she replied quickly, her cheeks going hot. “Because you saw what happened the last time you died.”
His face darkened. “Yes, I saw.”
The look in his eyes hurt worse than the sword through her belly.
Like she was some monster. “It was a battle,” she snapped, getting defensive.
“One they started by shooting you full of arrows. Don’t act like I’m entirely to blame for what happened.
If I had known you couldn’t die, I would have picked you up and used you like a shield so that I could have gotten the fuck out of there. ”
That startled a laugh out of him. “Relax, Carnifex, or you’ll pop your stitches. I know you’re not the only one to blame for what happened. And I suppose I can’t lecture you about alternatives to violence, anyway. Not when I’ll be counting on that bellicose nature of yours before long.”
“So, all those second thoughts you seemed to be having, when we stayed at the Plaza…?” she asked, and he looked surprised by the question.
“Oh,” he said, cheeks flushing scarlet. “That. A … crisis of conscience, perhaps. But that was before I knew about your brother.” A storm of emotions crossed his face, but she couldn’t decipher any of them.
“Who am I to keep you from your vengeance, just because I’m feeling a little sentimental?
I want you to promise me something, though. ”
“What?” she asked warily.
His gaze found hers, and there was such sorrow in his eyes that she had to look away. “That you will do everything within your power to survive your encounter with the Beast.”
Lyssa’s throat tightened with emotion. If he had asked this of her a few days ago, she would have been insulted.
It didn’t matter, before, whether she lived or died.
All that mattered was killing the Beast. Even the thought of leaving Brandy behind wasn’t enough to change her mind—she knew he would be okay without her, that Rags and Nadia would take good care of him.
But now …
Well. Now there was a good-hearted man with more ruffles than money and more money than sense who would almost certainly blame himself for a literal eternity if the Beast killed Lyssa.
A man who made her feel like she could be something more than a sword through a monster’s heart, if she managed to survive that long.
There was also the matter of a certain witch that Lyssa had spent years pushing away—a witch who had given up her own teeth in exchange for her blacksmith’s life.
For thirteen years, Lyssa had been fighting for something important enough to die for. And now, all of a sudden, she had found something important enough to live for.
It scared the shit out of her. If she didn’t give this fight everything she had, she would fail. But hadn’t Ragnhild said that love would be the Beast’s undoing? That it would make the sword stronger—and maybe make Lyssa stronger, too?
A sword was not ready to be used the moment she was finished hammering it into shape. The metal had to be quenched, to strengthen it. Tempered, to make it less brittle. What if she was the same way? Rage alone only made her liable to break, if her fight with the mermaids was any indication.
But what if she fought for love, as well as vengeance? Fought for the hope of a life that didn’t revolve around the thing that had destroyed her?
She had already begun to forge something out of the wreckage the Beast had left behind. Something she found she very much wanted to continue forging, once her oath was fulfilled.
“Okay,” Lyssa said finally, looking up at Alderic—her friend.
His brows furrowed. “Okay?”
“I promise I will do everything within my power to survive the Beast,” she said, holding out her hand to seal it. “I’ll swear it in blood, if you want me to.”
“Please don’t,” Alderic told her, threading his fingers through hers instead of shaking on it. “I have seen entirely too much of your blood already.”